Your user profile is your personal space. Everyone on Metalabel who creates an account, whether to create a release or when collecting one, has a user profile. You cannot change the email associated with your user profile.
Here is a quick way to understand how user profiles, labels, and releases are organized.
Punk Panda creates an account. They have one user profile.
They can then create a label controlled by the user profile to release solo creative work.
They can also create as many other labels as they wish—including one that is collaboratively controlled with their collaborators' user profiles—and produce releases under those labels. This system enables creators to have flexibility in various collaboration modalities.
Metalabel is an open access platform, meaning all users can create a release or a label at any time. That means even if you created an account to collect something, you will automatically see tools for releasing.
Here's what else you can do with your user page:
- Have a public page where all created and collected releases are visible to the public
- Customize this page by setting a custom URL, adding a bio, linking personal websites, and uploading a profile picture
- Access your entire collection, download files, and check shipping dates via the Collected tab
- Save up to 5 shipping addresses for quicker checkout when collecting physical releases
- Link your Stripe account for smoother checkout. All transactions on Metalabel are processed via Stripe
Want to start releasing? it's easy. Head to our article on the Release Builder for a step-by-step guide.
Customizing Your Name
There are lots of ways you can customize your names on Metalabel. Let's use our Punk Panda example.
For your user profile, you can set your name and user handle, which will become your user profile URL where the releases you are a part of and releases you have collected will be visible to the public (metalabel.com/userhandle). You can change this at any time by clicking on your user page icon on the left side menu and heading to the Settings tab.
With a label, you can set a label name and a label subdomain. Remember, a subdomain is the label’s URL (subdomain.metalabel.com). If you don't customize this, it will automatically be a string of letters and numbers, which isn't ideal. You can customize your label name and subdomain any time by clicking on your label icon on the left side menu and heading to the Settings tab.
Your user handle and label subdomain must be unique. If punkpanda is our user handle, we cannot also use punkpanda as our label subdomain.
If you are a solo creator, we recommend setting your user profile handle to a name you're comfortable collecting releases under, and creating a label with your artist name for publishing releases.
To have our releases published under the name Punk Panda, we would change our user handle to something like pandapanda. This frees up Punk Panda to be used as our label name and subdomain.
Your Collection
The act of collecting anything on Metalabel is a personal act. Meaning, your collection belongs to you personally, not the label(s) you may be a part of.
Collecting creative work is simple. Once you collect, an order confirmation email is sent to you. If you created an account during checkout, your release will also appear in the Collected tab when you click your user profile icon on the left.
If you used guest check out, you can use the same email to create a user profile later at any time and all releases collected under that email will appear in the Collected tab. You cannot migrate your collection from one user page to another.
Collected item(s) appear in the Collected tab in your user profile menu. This is a public page that anyone can view.
Creators are responsible for fulfilling all orders. If the item is digital, it is usually available for download immediately following purchase confirmation. You can access all your digital downloads in this Collected tab any time. If the item is physical, the creators will process and relay shipping details when order processing is in motion.
Collection number and editions
Collecting creative work on Metalabel means more than commercial transaction. It’s an act of appreciation sent to the folks behind the creative work you support. We celebrate the uniqueness of your ownership by sharing with you your collector number and edition number.
A collector number tells you how many people have collected the same work for the same edition prior to you. If you are collector #1 it means you are the first supporter of that limited availability creative work. Yay. In the example here, Thaniya is collector #40 for the first edition of The Creative Independent’s publication On dealing with creative anxiety print edition.
Working across labels and releases
To toggle between your user profile and any labels you are a part of, use the sidebar on the left. The user profile and label tabs include a lot of similar information but group them differently. Let’s dive in.
- The Releases tab from your User Profile will include every release where you are an Admin or a Contributor, regardless of the label. The label will be noted at the top of the release card. From the Label Profile, this will only reflect releases that are released via that specific label.
- Collected on the User Profile will reflect any releases you have collected for free or via purchase on the Metalabel platform. Here you can keep track of your collection of physical and/or digital items. From the Label Profile, this is replaced with a Collectors tab, where based on your user access you can view all Collectors who have supported the label.
- The Earnings tab on the User Profile reflects income you have earned from the releases you are a part of, while on the Label Profile it reflects income the release itself has received. If you are a part of the Split for this release, the percentage of funds you earn from this release will appear on your User Profile.
While user profiles, labels, and releases are all distinct parts of Metalabel, they are deeply intertwined. There are two distinct ways that you can customize how you want these areas to be related.
Releasing Under Labels
When building a release you have the ability to publish them under any label where they are an Admin or Contributor by toggling the Release Details options in the Release Builder. In this example, the user is a part of only one label called Rude Movements, so it is the only option that appears in this dropdown menu.
Release Contributors
When creating a release, you can add contributors to give credit and recognition to the people who contributed to the release. These contributors have unique access permissions, and can also be a part of the profit Split and receive earnings. Learn more about user roles and access.