A label treasury establishes a dedicated bucket of funds that the label can use at its discretion. This is an optional, built-in feature to make it easy for anyone to use.
By allocating a portion of earnings from a release towards the Label Treasury, you can build up funds to use for future projects. Think of this like a savings account for your label, without having to make one officially. Here’s a helpful visual.
When you have funds set aside for label use, you can use these funds later to commission work by other creators or reimburse costs collaborators are paying for out-of-pocket. Or, if you made something collectively and you’re unsure how to split earnings right this minute, you can always allocate 100% sales proceeds to the Treasury and pay out to your collaborators later.
Label treasuries can only be managed by Label admin users. Learn more about user roles and access.
Label admins can payout treasury funds to any label member or release collaborator, who can then transfer to their personal bank accounts via Stripe. Right now you can only add funds to a label treasury from a split on a release. This means you cannot add money to a treasury directly from a personal or business bank account (yet).
Let’s look closer at how it works.
Setting up your Label Treasury
To view your label treasury, click on your label icon and head to the Earnings tab from the main navigation on the left. If you are a Label Admin, you will see a Treasury balance section.
From here Label Admins will see the treasury balance, payout funds from the treasury, and treasury payment history, in addition to other earnings data from releases by the label.
The treasury balance will start at $0, and can grow by adding the label treasury to the split on releases moving forward.
Label treasury payouts
Let’s say your label FKMM is working with a new collaborator, Molly. We agree to support Molly with $1,000 to print a new limited edition zine that she will release with the label next month. Molly is ready to print the zine and has already started building her release with FKMM on Metalabel, she just needs the funds in her personal bank account to pay the printer she chose. We can payout treasury funds on the Earnings tab to give them to Molly.
Molly has already started working on the release, which means she has been invited to Metalabel as a Release Admin and has linked her Stripe account in order to receive funds.
To transfer $1,000 to Molly, click payout in the treasury section of the FKMM Earnings tab. You will first be prompted to verify your account again for security purposes, and then will see a module where you can select Molly as the recipient.
Treasury payouts can only be to label members or the labels release admin and contributors.
After you confirm, Molly and all label members will receive an automated email confirming the payout. A record of the payout will also appear in the treasury payout history which is visible to all Label admins.
While with regular splits there is a $5 minimum on funds paid out or withdrawn, there is no minimum amount for treasury payments. This means a label admin could payout $1 to John, and John would be able to withdraw this $1 to his personal bank account.
Using Treasury Funds
Now, Molly will see the $1,000 in her personal Earnings tab on Metalabel, and can withdraw payout those funds to her personal bank account through Stripe once they have been processed. It will take up to 4 business days for money to appear in your bank account.
Read on to learn about how to withdraw funds from Metalabel.