tonify-sims

*🇬🇧 English

English translation of RESULTS.ru.md; the Russian original is the source of truth, numbers are identical.

Results v0.2

World validation (target → obtained)

87% <1000 streams → 87.0% ✓ · 2.6% of rightsholders >$1000/yr → 2.6% ✓ · top 0.28% ~50% of streams → 44.5% ✓ the bottom 90% hold 0.9% of the market (Jensen: “bottom tiers ~2%” — same order of magnitude) · Gini 0.97

Two numbers that were not in the research

1. Status quo = 0.42 donations per superfan per year. Inverse problem: the measured SoundCloud 29% superfan share of revenue is reproduced in this world at 0.42 donations/superfan/yr. Today’s “direct economy” is one donation every 2.4 years.

2. The direct till breaks even at ≈ 1 donation per year. Tonify’s direct till («касса» in the Russian original — the direct-payment economy) overtakes the independent pool («котёл» — the streaming royalty pool; $4.43/1K) once a devoted fan donates more often than ~once a year. Everything the product must do economically comes down to one dial: push 0.42 → above 1.0. Each further step (2 → 4 → 8) halves the minimum audience.

Minimum viable audience (MVA, $100/mo)

Pool, signed: 188,590 listeners · Pool, independent: 12,771 Direct till at the status-quo 0.42/yr: 30,782 (honestly: worse than the independent pool!) Direct till at 2/yr: 6,407 · at 4/yr: 3,204 · at 8/yr: 1,602

Fraud

Injecting F% of bot streams siphons F/(1+F) of everyone’s money out of the pool; in the direct economy the honest players’ loss = 0: a bot cannot donate with other people’s money. At a 30% injection the pool loses 23% — the direct rail 0%.

Payout threshold logistics ($13 minimum)

Signed pocket: 94.3% of artists wait longer than a year for their first payout, 89.9% — longer than 10 years. Matches the manifesto’s example (an artist at $0.10/mo → 130 months) — now as a distribution.

Honest limitations (for the reviewer)

1) No full bipartite user×artist graph — user-centric is not modeled separately (spec for v0.3). 2) The donation shape lognormal($5, σ=0.8) is an assumption; the shape is from Bandcamp/Twitch, not measured for music. 3) The superfan share is fixed at 1.7% — no sensitivity sweep over it (v0.3). 4) “Donations/superfan/yr” is the axis of the still-open “Object 3”: the simulation names the parameter, the MVP measures it.

v0.3 — after the red team (see CRITIC.md)

§1. Breakeven became an honest range

0.38 … 1.25 … 6.31 donations/superfan/yr (18 combinations: plays 8–21 × ticket $3.1–6.9 × superfans 0.6–1.7%). The 0.42 figure from v0.2 is RETRACTED (category error, CRITIC §1).

§2. Rate-k benchmarks for the paying fan (answering the Twitch question)

Here k is the rate of payments per superfan per year («кеф» in the Russian original).

Twitch: k = 12+/yr structurally — the subscription is recurring, a paying fan pays monthly on autopilot, plus bits/donations on top. Streamer income = donations + subscriptions + bits; Gini 0.57 across the top 10k (α=−2.13), ~0.93 extrapolated to the platform [vault: vol0123456789-2].
Tencent social: k » 12 — gifter ARPPU of ¥175/mo at the peak vs ¥8.5 for the subscription (a 20.6× multiplier; 6.4× after the regulatory crackdown) [vault: TME 4Q21/4Q24]. The ceiling is the state, not demand.
Patreon: k = 12 (monthly patronage), ~25M paid vs ~100M free subscriptions.
Our breakeven: median 1.25. Against the Twitch rate that is ~10:1 of headroom: for the direct till to beat the pool, a devoted fan only has to pay ten times less often than a Twitch subscriber pays. A recurring artist subscription closes the breakeven structurally (12 > 6.31 even in the worst corner of the range).

§3. Cash layer: where the dollar goes (fig4_rails.png), Tonify fee 5%

TON: 94.9¢ to the artist · 5.0¢ Tonify · 0.1¢ rail Stars desktop: 91.7¢ · 4.8¢ · 3.5¢ Stars mobile: 64.1¢ · 3.4¢ · 32.5¢ (Apple+spread) Takeaway: the TON rail is not only cheaper for the fan — it earns Tonify 1.5× more on a mobile donation than Stars does (5.0¢ vs 3.4¢ per dollar).

§4. Milestone truth: $300K MRR on the 5% fee alone does NOT add up

1M MAU × 1.7% superfans × 4 donations × $6.9 × 5% = $1,955 MRR. The gap is 150×. Configurations where $300K does add up (solver):

5M MAU × 5% paying × k = 12 (artist subscriptions) × $6 × blended take 20% = $300K ✓
10M MAU × 4% × k = 12 × $5 × take 15% = $300K ✓ Implication for the deck: the milestone is reachable only with (a) recurring artist subscriptions, (b) a blended take of 15–20% (drops/marketplace/premium on top of the 5% on donations), (c) 5–10M MAU, — or the milestone must be recomputed. A lone 5% fee on donations is $2–12K MRR per 1M MAU.

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