sedā.fm is where music finds its people.

An obligation to independence

We’re self-funded. No outside investors asking whether your listening habits could become a “revenue opportunity.” Your breakup playlist has been through enough.

That independence matters. It lets us protect our promises to fans and artists without an investor demanding we squeeze a little more out of them. No creepy data mining. No treating trust as something to cash in later.

We also enjoy being able to say, “Fuck Suno, and the stolen music it rode in on.” No investor sign-off. No twelve-slide presentation on whether “fuck” aligns with our quarterly objectives.

We feel an obligation to use that freedom. Follow a hunch. Try the weird idea. Build something worth giving a shit about. We answer to the people making music and the people showing up for it. And when we get something wrong, they’re the people we owe a fix.

Small tech

Big tech wants to own your attention, predict your behavior, and know why you were listening to breakup songs at 2 a.m.

We’re into small tech. A company you can talk to. People who give a shit. Software that helps you find a band, buy their record, and get on with your life.

We’d like to help someone sell out a show on a Tuesday. Apparently that’s an insufficiently ambitious plan for world domination. We’ll cope.

We don’t sell you

sedā is for human artists. People with something to say, questionable sleep schedules, and a hard drive full of “final_final_v7.” We don’t host AI-generated artists or music.

Your late-night listening habits do not need a sales team.

No ads on sedā. No selling your personal data. No using it to target you with advertising. We earn a platform fee on qualifying artist sales. There. The business model. You can put the conspiracy board away.

We also don’t sell or give artists’ music to companies like bitch-ass Suno to train or generate AI music. Artists decide how their work is shared and sold. Their music is not free raw material for AI companies.

We do need information to run accounts, process purchases, and keep the place working. We’ll explain what we collect and why. You should be able to discover a band without a mattress company discovering you.

Work isn’t war

Somewhere, someone is presenting a strategy to “dominate the music space.” Dude. It’s a record store with a comments section. Put the fucking sword down.

We want artists to make a living, fans to find something they love, and more people to have a reason to go to a show on a Tuesday. Nobody needs to be conquered for that to happen.

We’ll have opinions. Some will be loud. But you can call bullshit without treating everyone as an enemy. There’s room for other people to make good things. We’d probably like to hear them.

For the love. Also, servers cost money.

We have day jobs. We’re funding sedā ourselves because we love music and want this thing to exist. Unfortunately, our hosting provider has declined payment in enthusiasm and extremely good playlists.

So we take a platform fee on qualifying sales. It helps pay the bills, keep sedā independent, and give us room to build more cool shit without asking investors to fund it.

We don’t charge a subscription to use sedā. Monthly money can get comfortable. A little too comfortable. We’d rather keep having to earn our place by helping fans find music they love and artists get paid. If nothing sells, we earn no platform commission. That keeps us paying attention.

Each artist’s first $1,000 in qualifying sales is free of sedā’s platform fee. After that, it’s 8%. Payment-processing fees and applicable taxes are separate.

We want to keep this going. We also want a business model that keeps us useful.

We put it in the paperwork

sedā is a Delaware public benefit corporation. We’re from Los Angeles. Delaware just has the paperwork.

Here’s the public benefit written into our certificate of incorporation:

To advance a music ecosystem that serves the best interests of musicians, protecting them from exploitative practices and enabling them to retain control and ownership of their work, build equitable careers, and connect directly with fans.

In human: musicians should own their work, get a fair shot at making a living, and reach the people who love their music. Getting screwed shouldn’t be a rite of passage.

We’re a for-profit company, and we’re legally required to balance the company’s financial interests, the interests of people affected by the business, and that public benefit. So when we make decisions about fees, artist rights, or fan relationships, this purpose belongs in the room.

The fee helps keep sedā running. Our independence lets us choose how. This commitment gives us something concrete to answer for.

It doesn’t automatically make us the good guys. We still have to do the work. But we wanted our responsibilities to go deeper than a very moving About page.