Monday 12 April 2010

Changes to indmill.com

We think we've just made Indmill even better. But we'd like to know what you think.

Firstly, we've put artists in charge of when they get paid. At the end of every month, as before, we provide a sales report on the month's takings. We now promise to do this within 15 days, leaving a delay to protect ourselves against card fraud and to allow funds to clear between our different currency accounts (previously it was 30 days). Artists are now able to choose when they want to get paid. We guarantee to transfer any money owing within 15 days of their request, which can be made via the 'Pay Me' tab on the artists' dashboard.

So this new system is no slower, just much more flexible. We'd like to assure artists (and customers who use their Indmill wallets) that they can leave their money with us month after month, safe in the knowledge that we have separate bank accounts for their money and ours. All sales revenue goes into one set of accounts in different currencies, from which we pay artists and charities and where we leave customers' wallet money. We transfer Indmill's share of the revenue - and no more - into a separate bank account before using it to pay bills. If we ever ran out of money in this account to pay our way (and we don't ever plan to), there will still be ringfenced cash left in the other account to pay all artists and refund all customers in credit.

In a second change, as we will be paying artists by hand from now, we've decided to indefinitely suspend our 24p/50c fee for paying artists. This fee used to cover what HSBC charged us for making BACS payments. Dropping those fees means an even better deal for artists, with no deductions from their 90% of revenue (excl VAT on EU sales). If we get to the stage where we once again have to automate our payroll, those fees may have to be reintroduced, but we'll do our best to avoid it.

The third change will affect our customers. Last year we added PayPal to the site as a payment option and it has proved so popular that we are dropping our old HSBC-run card processing facilty from the site. It wasn't an easy decision but it made sense. Since we signed up with them, HSBC have doubled our monthly fees. Those one in three Indmill customers who we know prefer using their cards will still be able to via PayPal without creating an account. Nobody should lose out.

PayPal will also make it easier for us to roll out Indmill for artists and customers around the world, just as soon as we can iron out a few technical and legal music licencing issues.

The above changes mean some alterations to the agreement all artists have signed with us. The new artists' agreement can be viewed here.

Indmill Team