KDaVine

I see a lot of love, confusion and frustration about our announcement yesterday at @BeatStars. We could have done a much better job explaining the impact of everything that’s going on and I sincerely apologize for that. But here is a break down of some of the important changes and why. 1. Marketplace plan is now Starter plan and is only $19.99/year vs $89 and now includes Publishing producer royalty collection and Seeds by Lemonaide. It still includes unlimited uploads of tracks, sound kits and services. 2. Pro Page is now called Professional and the price hasn’t changed. But now includes access to free ProKits from top members, 5% discount on all Promote campaigns, $50 in Promote credits, 3 monthly Beat ID credits and 250 credits for Lemonaide. We are adding much bigger perks to Pro this year. Can’t wait to show you guys. 3. We’ve removed Stripe and added a much more enhanced version of PayPal. We removed Stripe because they have not been able to handle the millions of collab sales. This blocks producers from being paid and buyers are being blocked from purchasing. The new PayPal integration we added includes payment methods like Venmo, Pay Later and on website Credit Card purchases that handles collab sale splits. We have plans to unveil an alternative global payment system this year that will unlock sales even more. 4. We’ve added a 12% buyer service fee only on the Marketplace to basically cover the millions of dollars in annual storage, delivery and discovery costs that the buyers have been enjoying for free for 15 years. Other marketplaces are charging the sellers up to 20% of transactions. This fee helps us keep the lights on and allows us to further expand on marketing, engineering and support. BeatStars unfortunately has reached a point financially where we will not be able to serve and operate to the best of our ability without making this change. We know how hard this change is for everyone including us but with the current economic climate it is a change we are forced to do in order for the company to survive and grow. We are currently working on new revenue generating offerings for producers that will help make this burden lighter for artists soon and will drive more sales. 5. Pro Page and Blaze players do not include a buyer service fee on transactions. 6. BeatStars has also been covering the sales tax for our sellers and buyers on transactions and have paid millions of dollars on behalf of our community to global tax authorities. Because we’ve always paid 100% of sales to sellers (and still do) this has also created a massive burden on our company that will not be sustainable for us to operate. All in all yesterday was a really bitter sweet day for me because I know how frustrating it was for our creators to learn about these changes. But it was also the beginning of a new era at BeatStars that allows our company to go even harder for the community and provide even greater support. We may not see the positive impact of these changes immediately but I promise you our mission to empower creators worldwide has not wavered. If anything this moment will make the company and community stronger and will allow us to create even more disruptive opportunities for you. I’m sorry we failed at communicating everything clearly and I’m sorry you are dealing with bad product quality and support. I own that completely, and I am addressing all of this internally and have a game plan to come out better. But these are the growing pains of every company our size and we couldn’t be more thankful that we have a community that supports us through our challenging moments and our glorious ones. I promise you we are going to address all of our biggest obstacles and to continue making BeatStars a home where you all can build successful businesses for yourselves for many years to come. I love you all and I will not stop pushing forward even when the world is trying to stop us. Now it’s time for us to level up for you!

A producer named Jamison just walked up to me at the airport just to say “thank you”. He said “thank you for building a platform where we can all get paid for our music.” This was a beautiful gift to start my day. I thank God every day I get to serve good people like Jamison ❤️