About Us
Station.moe is an artist-centric music streaming platform which help artists more directly connect with their listeners and fans. Artists have more control over their own music by self-publishing and managing their media. Groups of artists (known as "bands" on our platform) can directly manage revenue splitting between members, guests, and other contributors such as IP holders and original song creators.
Our History
For 15 years, the team behind Station.moe has operated a separate internet radio station which has featured thousands of songs by independent artists, reaching millions of listeners in over 180 countries and all 7 continents. The radio station was founded with the intent of featuring fan-made works from independent artists with several goals:
- To properly credit artists at a time where other sources did not
- To help expand the reach of independent artists while respecting their ownership
- To raise awareness of the video game series the music originated from through music
- To support independent artists financially and provide resources for our listeners to do the same
Over time, we've talked to many different creators and have had the privilege of meeting several artists we play on the radio station face-to-face. We've received incredible support from artists and listeners alike for our role in bringing a niche set of music to an audience far beyond what many independent artists feel is possible by themselves.
Our Vision
In the era of digital distribution and streaming music, most music platforms and storefronts work with publishers, not artists. If an artist doesn't already have a publisher, choosing one can sometimes be an undesirable side-quest. As an example, we've talked with an artist group that spent about two years trying to find a publisher that met most of their conditions before any of their albums were available on streaming platforms.
There are many publishers to choose from these days, and there's definitely value in being able to push an album or single to potentially many platforms at once, but the artist must place faith in the publisher for everything, from distributing their music and crediting artists correctly to ensuring their revenue share is recorded and distributed as expected. Even relatively simple operations like updating artist information through a publisher could take several hours to show up on streaming platforms.
Station.moe Does Things Differently
We work directly with artists, not publishers.
Publishers are a financial and administrative middleman that artists may or may not feel they need, but which large music streaming platforms usually require. We want to make it simple for artists: if you've got music, we've got a place for you to make it avaialble for your fans.
We play music made by humans, not generated by AI Prompts.
It's hard to believe this even needs to be said, but creativity is a human trait which cannot be replaced by a machine, large language model, or AI algorithm. While this is a developing area, parts of the music industry have accepted the use of AI prompts in music generation, and some streaming platforms do not prohibit their use. For some, the motivation might be monetary, but we choose to showcase creativity without diminishing the quality or genuineness of our available library.
We believe lossless CD quality should be a standard feature.
The portability of music has evolved over time, from vinyls and 8-track tapes which weren't very portable, to cassette tapes and CDs which were more portable. Each medium had different physical qualities that affected the sound quality, but with digital audio on CDs, perfectly repeatable audio was made easily accessible. When music moved to streaming, services used compression to conserve bandwidth and hosting space, and lossless streaming was out of reach for both providers and listeners. In the current day, we believe lossless streaming should be a normal option for listeners with sufficient bandwidth. Plus, it more faithfully reproduces the artist's intended sound.
We write our own algorithms so we know how our own system works.
Many modern-day recommendation systems use large datasets and black box algorithms (where a programmer doesn't explicitly write the methods responsible for outputting the result) in an effort to get the most dialed-in, relevant, personalized results possible for each user. This can be effective, but we also find it a bit strange that with these types of systems, it's possible that nobody knows exactly how the end result is generated. Instead of giving a system a goal or objective and receiving a result, we write every query and line of code responsible for determining things like song and artist recommendations that more directly consider what listeners are looking for.
We believe that artists should be paid more.
Station.moe uses a marketplace model which sets aside a percentage of each listener's subscription for artists every month. At minimum, artists take 80% of a user's subscription after processing fees; we feel this is a fair distribution which will enable us to sustain the platform with a lean userbase to start and will enable us to grow as necessary.
We want to make band management easier.
We provide a singlular environment in which to invite band members, update public-facing artist names (which we call "personas"), and edit credits and metadata at the song and album level. We also breakdown earnings across songs, albums, and the band, with a built-in panel to manage the distribution of earnings across band members. Once distributed, verified artists will be able to manage their own payout schedules and other details. We do not impose minimums for payouts.
Why .moe?
The obvious answer is that common words with common TLDs like .com, .net, or .org are either not available or incredibly expensive, so we went with an off-beat TLD.
In our case, we feel that the .moe (pronounced "moh-eh") domain is a neat little callback to our roots; the idea of "moe" originates from Japan, and our radio station of 15 years plays fan-made music from a Japanese video game series. Generally, we think it's important for people to stay grounded, to remember where they came from, and to remain humble, especially if they find success. For this reason, we're proud to carry this reminder with us on our journey to helping other artists find more fans and more success.