Metalabel is the first release platform for creative work.

It’s a space for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, writers, and other creators to release their work, be discovered and supported, and support one another.

A release platform is a space for creative people to introduce and distribute their work.

In the early days of the internet, creative people shared work on social media. In fact we made social media. That's how we gained our audiences and the platforms built theirs.

Today those same channels are dominated by influencers, advertisers, and attention-seekers. Our voices are drowning in the noise.

The answer isn’t to give up or retreat. It’s is to make a space just for us. Where we still get the benefits of being part of something bigger together, but where we don’t have to compete against the noise and the algorithms to be heard.

That’s what Metalabel aims to be. A space where artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, performers, podcasters, and writers can release and build community around their work. Other platforms exist to support parts of these creative practices (crowdfunding, subscriptions, etc), but none exist to promote the release and sale of new creative work across mediums and categories.

On this release platform you’ll find people releasing new creative ideas, discovering new things they love, supporting each other, and sharing revenue and credit from their work.

Metalabel helps artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, performers, writers, and other creative people release new work and celebrate the collectors who discover and support them. Here’s how it works:

Metalabel is supported by a small, egalitarian team spread around the world. We include the founders of Kickstarter, Etsy, and The Creative Independent, as well as past work with the Berghain, Opening Ceremony, Powerhouse Arts, Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, The Kitchen, and more. We’re supported by a close network of friends, investors, and frequent collaborators.

Squad: Yancey Strickler, Ilya Yudanov, Lauren Dorman, Brandon Valosek, Gina Pham, Erin Rimmer, Clayton Kenney, Thaniya Keerepart, and Rob Kalin (Board)

Cofounders and squad emeritus: Austin Robey and Anna Bulbrook. <3

Metalabel supports releases in the worlds of Art, Design, Games, Music, Performance, Podcasts, Publishing, and Video and Film.

Our platform supports physical work, digital work, tickets, experiences, tokens of appreciation, collectibles to celebrate moments, bundles of any or all of the above, and anything else to reflect and amplify a creative effort.

Releases do not need to be exclusive to Metalabel. A work can be on Metalabel and available on another platform, or be previously released elsewhere.

If you’re an artist or creative person making work, absolutely. We exist to help you release and express your creative visions.

We’re not a space for general business operations, raising money for personal causes, influencers or commodity products, and other non-artistic pursuits.

To support this space, we require people to tell us about their plans before releasing with us. For artists and creative people, this is a simple, no-stress step. Most people are welcomed in within less than a day of reaching out to us.

Metalabel has been used by artists as esteemed and varied as the musicians Brian Eno and YACHT; visual artists Jeremy Deller, Shantell Martin, Josh Citerella, and Molly Soda; writers Venkatesh Rao, New Models, and Yancey Strickler; and other types of creative people.

A few specific releases to highlight:

Metalabel charges a 10% commission on sales. Stripe charges 3-4% in credit card transaction fees. We suggest adding 15% to your price to cover these costs. There are no ongoing monthly costs for storing your work or maintaining your release pages.

You can use Metalabel to release digital work, physical work, and IRL events on their own or in bundles with each other. You can use the “What’s Included” tab to build bundles, adding as many pieces as you wish to each one.

Editions are a way to make your release more flexible and tell a deeper story. A few ways to use them:

When making a new release, the “What’s Included” tab allows you to specify what collectors receive in exchange for their support. To make a release limited, choose to set a maximum quantity or a deadline when the release will end (coming soon). Once you publish, collectors will be able to reserve editions until they’re all gone or the deadline is reached.

A release can also have multiple editions at once or sequentially. For example you could:

• Offer an edition of just a digital copy at one price point and a signed physical edition at another.
• Add a new edition to a release if the first one sells out. People like your new drop more than expected and it sells out fast? Amazing! Add a second edition to preserve the spot of your early supporters while welcoming new collectors to experience your work.
• A release can have a max of five editions.

Absolutely. Some advice on how to successfully release:

You can collect a work on any release page. Releases can be free, pay what you want, or have a set price.

When you collect a work on Metalabel, you’re taken through a Stripe checkout process where you input your credit card and mailing address.

When you complete checkout, you’ll receive an edition of the work in your Collection with your unique collector number. (If you choose Guest Checkout, rather than creating an account, this will be available via your email.

In your Collection (accessible from the left-hand navigation menu when logged in), you’ll be able to click into anything you’ve collected. At the bottom of the page you’ll find links to download the work (if it’s digital) as well as the estimated shipping date (if it’s physical). You can also contact the creator from this page if your pieces have not yet arrived.

It varies. For digital work, downloads are available immediately after purchase. For physical works, the estimated delivery date sets expectations for when the work will be shipped.

There are people who visit Metalabel to discover new creative work, but for most releases the initial set of collectors will come from the audience they’ve built up over time.

Collectors are looking to support creators they love, creative work they care about, and releases that give them the opportunity to feel special or seen. Limited edition releases, time-bound releases, and other forms of intentionally scarce output is one way to develop loyalty among your collectors. A release that offers a unique combination of both physical and digital media may also create a unique collector experience.

A few strategies to consider:

• Collaborations between creators with different audiences is a great way for two people to mutually benefit one another
• Releasing work on a consistent cadence builds understanding and awareness
• Experiment with release windows and limited edition strategies to make your release pop (see below)

A label is our term for the publisher of a release. This can be just a person (if you’re a solo artist), a person curating releases by others, or a group of people working together.

Metalabel expands the idea of the label beyond music or fashion to all forms of creative expression. There can be writing labels, YouTuber labels, photographer labels, artist labels, culture labels, metaverse labels, whatever forms of creativity people wish.

Labels allow creative people and scenes to share resources, audiences, money, and build collective credibility and awareness around their ideas. A label can be an existing collective or an ephemeral standalone project. A label can also be for solo/individual releases and just be an artist’s name.

No. You don’t have to be a label at all.

Think of your label as the public profile or business entity that represents your work.

By creating a “label” that represents you, it allows you to more easily collaborate with other people, build shared context around your work, and operate more like a business without having to be one.

Yes. You can start as many labels as you like once you have permission. Go to the navigation menu in the top left corner and click “New label” to start a new one.

Yes, and this is the advantage of the label system. You can invite people to collaborate on both the label and the individual release, with admin and contributor levels for both.

Yes. It makes a huge difference when all contributors are committed to the plan for promoting the release. Much of the power of a model like Metalabel is that it encourages multiple voices to come together in support of ideas they share. This is especially important when it comes to releases they make together.

We recommend building a common understanding among the group of timelines, when people are meant to start posting, what you’re going to say, and even planning things that you’ll do together physically or online to celebrate and bring attention to the drop.

This isn’t easy! To do this well, you’re going to need a central group coordinator who has the energy and drive to get people to pay attention and follow through. Everyone is going to have their own things going on, so make sure to plan ahead and use the communication channels that are most natural and effective for your group.

One more tip: direct messages, texts, or emails work much better than group messages when it comes to getting commitments and making decisions. Use group threads to share high-level information, but to get anything done, be prepared to go direct.

Every label has some core point of view that brings the group together: a specific style, a similar background, a shared creative or cultural worldview.

Labels release work that reflects their point of view in the wider world. Some of this work will be by members of the label, and others will be from other creators who they discover or raise their hand to collaborate.

Labels tend to have standard agreements with the artists and creators they work with. A standard agreement might have a label get 30% of the revenue from a release based on their commitment to help publish, promote, and fulfill the work, as well as to be paid back for certain fixed costs.

This partnership between a label and creator allows them to share in the responsibilities and success of releasing work.

Most discussions of labels these days don’t go much beyond how much they suck. Labels are seen as a cultural horse and buggy — an old model nobody wants back (see this tweet-thread from Steve Albini as an example of why).

But that sentiment is really about the major labels (in every industry) who dominated the 20th century, and continue to reign today. Many of those institutions have proven themselves to be hostile and dishonest to the needs of both artists and fans.

Indie labels are more grassroots projects where groups of people who come from the same place or a similar style come together to spark new scenes that grow and spread. Indie labels are the David to the major label’s Goliath.

Metalabel makes it so anybody can start an indie label in any creative medium. The platform helps you sign and put out work, build an audience and identity, and earn and split money with the artists you work with.

It’s good to set a few base-level agreements about how you’re going to work together from the beginning.

What kind of work are you going to put out?

How will money work?

How do you make decisions?

We made a simple tool that can help you walk through this experience in the style of 8-bit tarot cards, because why not? Explore your values as a label.

Every project is different and setting prices and quantities are part art and part science. We have a worksheet you can use to scope out basic costs (view that here — be sure to ‘Make a copy’ to use for your specific release) and calculate what you can net out from your release.

Yes. One of the things that makes Metalabel unique is our split payments architecture.

A Split is an agreement that sets how earnings from each release will be distributed.

The release’s Owner sets the Split that will result from each sale. Only creators who have accepted an invitation to join a release and have a Stripe account set up and connected can join the Split.

As money accrues from sales of a drop, those funds will be automatically pushed to everyone’s individual Metalabel balances once the release ends. (Note that this is currently something Metalabel controls on the backend for now, but will become more self-serve soon.)

Splits are a great way to offer collaborators upside in your release.

Imagine someone has the choice between two offers: a flat rate for $500 or $300 plus 25% of the proceeds from the release. Which would you choose?

Splits let us create that kind of structure around any release. Portion out future revenue however you like.

Splits can also make your work sustainable. For example in the Dark Forest Collective, the group makes it so that 70% of all income from a release goes to the artist(s) behind it, and 30% returns to the Dark Forest Collective's treasury where it can be used for future releases. Having standard structures for each release removes the emotional charge of discussing money and establishes precedent for the future.

If your release offers a physical item for sale, the Release Owner will have access to the mailing addresses of your collectors as they come in. Those appear in the Release Order CSV, which can be downloaded and imported into external shipping and fulfillment partners.

When setting up your release, you can select the countries where you will ship your physical piece to, and how much collectors will pay for shipping and handling. This shipping and handling charge is a flat rate that will apply to all territories and shipments. We do not currently have per-country shipping costs.

When your funds are collected, Metalabel’s system automatically puts the shipping and handling charges from collectors into a separate account balance set aside to pay out shipping costs as they incur.

Yes we can share resources for fulfillment services you can reach out to. However, if it’s a small limited edition run, we recommend taking care of fulfillment among the collaborators of your label since working with a third party fulfillment provider will cut into your release income.

We recommend padding in time for production of physical items, shipping of those items as well as any delays and contingencies that may arise. Every release includes an “Estimated Ship Date” field that lets you set expectations with collectors.

As the date for shipping nears, we recommend reaching out to collectors to let them know. You can do this by downloading your CSV list that includes emails for all collectors and contacting them using your email provider.