We’re always listening to customers and working to improve the Single platform. From minor tweaks to full feature launches, things are always getting better.
How you use Single can also be impacted when other companies – like Shopify or Billboard – make changes. So we try to include some of their updates here too.
Read on for some notable changes from the past month.
Single product updates
Updates to White Labeled Delivery Emails
Whenever your customers buy a Single-created-product from your store (digital album, Live Stream ticket, video rental, membership etc.), we send them a notification email, which you can personalize from your settings. To date, those emails have all come from ‘noreply@single.xyz.’
Now, based on your feedback, we’ve added functionality to update that ‘from address’ to an email domain of your choosing, which can help with deliverability. Read more here.
More free members on all plans
We’ve talked to many of you about how a ‘free tier’ on your Membership program or Fan Club is a great way to increase interest and signups. In those conversations, we learned that our approach to member limits weren’t aligning with how your programs were being adopted by fans.
With that, we made two changes:
- You can now have unlimited paying members on any Single subscription plan (including Starter)
- We increased the amount of free members you can have on each plan (details here on pricing page)
Learn more about Memberships here.
$3 Max Transaction Fee on Music Products
As part of our recent price change, we asked many of you for feedback. One thing we heard consistently was that the 15% transaction fee with a max of $5 on music products made it difficult for you to maintain a profitable margin. We approach our business with the mindset that we’re only successful when you’re successful – so with that, we reduced the max transaction fee to be $3 on music products. As always, we appreciate your business and feedback.
Shopify updates
Collective
Shopify rolled out a slew of updates as part of their Summer product event. One that caught our eye was Collective, which lets you partner with other Shopify stores to sell their products in your store for an agreed upon revenue share. The products appear in your store just as if they were your own, but after checkout the partner store handles all shipping and fulfillment.
Sounds like a perfect solution for a Live Stream shopping event to us… do a stream talking about your favorite products and have them listed below the video for sale. Learn more about Single Live Streams here and Shopify Collective here.
Solana Pay
A big benefit of Shopify is the flexibility to accept different payment methods through your store – credit cards, PayPal, Shop Pay etc. Back in June we were thrilled to see the DePay app open the capability to pay for goods with SOL. As of last week, that flow is even easier with the release of Solana Pay as a direct payment method that can be used in stores. Learn about releasing an NFT Collection through Single here and read more about the Solana pay news here.
Billboard updates (Chart Reporting)
Have a subscription to Music Connect? Get full access to Luminate’s Knowledge Base here.
Min for reporting: $3.49 → $4.99
We recently learned that Billboard changed their minimum an album can be priced to be eligible for chart reporting from $3.49 to $4.99. Be aware – if you have any albums priced under $4.99, we will no longer submit them to the charts.
Digital Single (one track) Reporting
Billboard has implemented a new policy, which states that digital single sales (singles meaning one song) made through your D2C (Direct-to-Consumer) store will no longer be considered for charting purposes. This means that these sales will not contribute to your position on the Billboard charts moving forward. We will continue to submit your digital single sales to be included in calculations for Market Share, Trend Reports, and various other report types available on Music Connect. Your sales data remains valuable for assessing your overall performance and understanding your market presence.
Fan Packs
Billboard recently announced they will be bringing back a limited version of merchandise bundling – named “Fan Packs” – with very specific guidelines.
The rule states: “For the avoidance of doubt, album sales within merchandise fan packs sold to consumers on third-party storefronts will not be chart eligible.” The third-party storefronts to which they’re referring include platforms like Amazon, Bandcamp, Bands in Town, Instagram, and Facebook.
While Single is not by definition a third-party storefront, they have included us in the list of vendors not able to report these sales. (NOTE: all other sales – digital releases, standalone vinyl, box sets, etc. – remain unchanged. This only applies to Fan Packs.)
We’re confident Luminate and Billboard’s intention was not to disadvantage or add more barriers for the artists using their own storefronts to sell music directly to fans. That said, with any new change there are impacts that require additional consideration.
We’re continuing to push Billboard to recognize the importance of Shopify as a means for you to sell your music directly to fans – and Single as a component of your tech stack that enables you to do so. Single is not a storefront or sales platform. Single is software. If you agree and want to voice your concern, we suggest contacting your Luminate/Billboard contact directly or send an email to music.merchantservices@luminatedata.com.
In the meantime, we apologize that we cannot report your sales of Fan Packs, however, will continue to report all other sales as we have been doing for you all along.
