The Dual-Pool
Royalty Engine.
How streaming royalties are computed when the pools turn on. Until then, every dollar earned on NRH comes from SUPPORTER subscriptions and merch, both paid direct via Stripe Connect.
Pool funding status
Pool A is funded from day one: 10% of every SUPPORTER subscription flows in, plus 20% of every artist platform tier sub. Pool C activates with our ad partners. Both pools distribute monthly, pro-rata to qualifying streams.
Pool A: Subscription-Funded
Pool A funds itself from three sources: 10% of every SUPPORTER subscription, 20% of every artist platform tier subscription, and (when live) 88% of premium fan listening subscriptions. All of it distributes monthly, pro-rata across qualifying premium streams. Each artist's payout from their pro-rata share is then filtered by their plan's artist share — INDIE 75%, PRO 85%, STUDIO 95%. Bot traffic and stream-farm activity are excluded by the fraud scorer before settlement.
Pool C: Ad-Funded
Funded by ad-partner revenue on free-tier listening. 88% of ad revenue flows into the pool and distributes pro-rata across qualifying free-tier streams. Same per-tier artist share rate applies (INDIE 75%, PRO 85%, STUDIO 95%) and the same fraud-exclusion logic. Currently pending: pool activates as ad partners come online.
The 88% figure equals one minus the platform fee. The platform fee is set in platform_config.platform_fee_percent and currently defaults to 12%. Any future change to the fee will be published here before it takes effect on the next settlement cycle.
Institutional Integrity.
Settlement runs as a single Postgres transaction. Pool credits either land atomically or roll back together.
Atomic Settlement
The monthly settlement engine credits artist, fan, and label balances through a single batch_credit_balances RPC. If any credit fails, the entire run rolls back — no orphan entries, no partial payouts.
Bulk Aggregation
Stream aggregation runs in a single Postgres RPC instead of per-artist round-trips, so settlement scales with the number of active artists without quadratic blowup.
Immutable Records
Settlement writes are gated by a (month, year) unique constraint on monthly_pools, so a month cannot be double-settled — re-running the cron is a no-op once the row exists.
The SUPPORTER
Multiplier.
Once the pools fund, your gross streaming earnings are multiplied by your active SUPPORTER count tier. More SUPPORTERs → larger multiplier on the same streams.
1.0x
Baseline
Default multiplier for every active artist.
1.1x
100+ SUPPORTERs
First multiplier tier unlocks at 100 active SUPPORTERs.
1.2x
500+ SUPPORTERs
Mid tier rewards artists with a committed paying base.
1.5x
2,000+ SUPPORTERs
Maximum multiplier — applied once you cross 2,000 active SUPPORTERs.
Verified Integrity.
The settlement engine runs as a single atomic Postgres transaction on a monthly cadence. Your share of each pool is credited to your NRH balance, with full per-stream and per-pool breakdowns in your Studio Earnings tab. Withdraw to your Stripe Connect account on demand once your balance clears the $50 minimum — SUPPORTER subscriptions still arrive direct in real time and don't require this step.