Upsample with Carson Tworow & Will Chernoff
May 29, 2026 · 59 min · 11 segments
The future of getting paid for our songs rests on blockchain vs. bureaucracy, as Will reports back on Australian musician Jo Loewenthal's 19-part "deep forensic investigation" of global publishing. We…
Will ChernoffHost
Carson TworowHost
... kinda taken a while to play out anyways, but it's the launch of Subvert, which did finally happen.
They announced a launch for their platform within the last month or so, and we talked about Subvert back last year, probably before you recommended Geese, before Chaotic Good-
So we gotta talk about the launch of Subvert now, even though from my perspective it probably still doesn't come with a lot of stuff to talk about.
I signed up around the time we talked about it, 'cause I thought the co-op model was interesting, and I thought it was, you know, for reasons we discussed, probably important to have some alternative to Bandcamp out there in the market for kind of the more, like, independent and experimental, uh, music.
And so, yeah, I've just been following along, getting their emails as they got closer to launch.
Um, they went from kind of this very early access closed beta, I think they probably even just called it an alpha, where, uh, a very limited number of users were able to sign in and set up a profile.
And then when I was allowed to sign in, um, was the sort of, like, artist beta.
Um, still limited, so that was just you could log in, you could set up a page, upload your tracks if you wanted, um, and then see the other profiles that were created.
Um, and then now we're in kind of a more general availability launch where the public can sign up and become a, a supporter, check out music on there.
Um, they say on their kinda launch page they have 20,439 artists, 2,929 labels, and 2,569 supporters across 120 countries.
The specificity of those numbers suggests to me that that number is, like, a live, uh, counter that's updating as people are signing up.
Um, the artist to supporters disparity is, uh, striking, right? We've got a lot of artists who are excited about a Bandcamp alternative, and only about 2,000 people, uh, who are not artists who have signed up to, like, check out the platform.
Which, uh, you would need those numbers to invert eventually, um, where [laughs] or the ratios to invert where you've got much more supporters than artists, um, for that to be feasible.
... kinda taken a while to play out anyways, but it's the launch of Subvert, which did finally happen.
They announced a launch for their platform within the last month or so, and we talked about Subvert back last year, probably before you recommended Geese, before Chaotic Good-
So we gotta talk about the launch of Subvert now, even though from my perspective it probably still doesn't come with a lot of stuff to talk about.
I signed up around the time we talked about it, 'cause I thought the co-op model was interesting, and I thought it was, you know, for reasons we discussed, probably important to have some alternative to Bandcamp out there in the market for kind of the more, like, independent and experimental, uh, music.
And so, yeah, I've just been following along, getting their emails as they got closer to launch.
Um, they went from kind of this very early access closed beta, I think they probably even just called it an alpha, where, uh, a very limited number of users were able to sign in and set up a profile.
And then when I was allowed to sign in, um, was the sort of, like, artist beta.
Um, still limited, so that was just you could log in, you could set up a page, upload your tracks if you wanted, um, and then see the other profiles that were created.
Um, and then now we're in kind of a more general availability launch where the public can sign up and become a, a supporter, check out music on there.
Um, they say on their kinda launch page they have 20,439 artists, 2,929 labels, and 2,569 supporters across 120 countries.
The specificity of those numbers suggests to me that that number is, like, a live, uh, counter that's updating as people are signing up.
Um, the artist to supporters disparity is, uh, striking, right? We've got a lot of artists who are excited about a Bandcamp alternative, and only about 2,000 people, uh, who are not artists who have signed up to, like, check out the platform.
Which, uh, you would need those numbers to invert eventually, um, where [laughs] or the ratios to invert where you've got much more supporters than artists, um, for that to be feasible.
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