The basics
An introduction to Metalabel
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Rayna Holmes
Changing your shipping address
Storing your shipping address allows for faster check out when logged in. To change your shipping address, find your user profile icon on the left side menu and go to the Settings tab.
From here you can update your user profile information, your Stripe account, managing the labels you follow, and update your stored shipping addresses. If you have already placed an order and need to update your shipping address, alert the creator by using the contact the label link in your order confirmation email.
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Rayna Holmes
Managing your account
Regardless of whether you are a creator or a collector, you have the ability to manage certain aspects of your account. You can do this by finding your user icon on the left side menu and heading to the Settings tab.
Here you can update your profile information, connect your Stripe account, manage who you follow, and edit stored shipping addresses. Note that you cannot change the email address associated with your account.
To stop receiving release list emails from a particular label, unfollow them from the Settings page, or from the label’s home page.
To delete your account, first unfollow all your labels so that you are removed from their release lists. Then write to us and we will delete your account from the database.
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Rayna Holmes
Metalabel community guidelines
Metalabel is building a new creative era alongside artists, creators, and collectors to release and support the world we want to see. We provide a platform where creative people can come together to release work, collaborate, and support one another, and where we can all be part of something bigger than just us on our own.
To maintain this space, we have community guidelines that set expectations for what it means to be part of Metalabel.
Core Values
We built Metalabel with a few key ideals in mind:
A creative space: We exist to celebrate and support creative expression across many mediums and forms. We’re not here to be another Amazon or shopping mall. We exist to support creative work.
Mutual support: We believe creative people are stronger together than alone. This support can come from peer creators, or from the collectors and wider scene that supports you. We don’t exclusively support people who are releasing together, but we strongly believe its positive effects.
Context is queen: Context is what creates value for a creative work. Who made it, why, and how are all reasons to care more deeply about somerthing. We provide space to celebrate the context just as much as the work itself if the artist desires.
Transparent economics: Too many artists are taken advantage of with opaque economics. We provide tools that allow artists and creative people to transparently budget, split, and create royalties from their work without the need of external structures.
The power of creativity: We never underestimate the power of creativity. Creativity changes minds, changes lives, changes the world. We operate from a place of deep respect for the creative forces that shape us.
Community guidelines
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Respect & support
- Treat all community members with respect
- Be responsive to collector communications
- Celebrate others' successes
- No harassment, hate speech, or discriminatory behavior
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Fair collaboration
- Be transparent about collaboration terms upfront
- Honor commitments to collaborators in a timely manner
- Credit contributors appropriately
- Use split agreements to ensure fair compensation
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Quality standards
- Take care in presenting your work
- Provide meaningful context and documentation
- Ensure quality in all deliverables to collectors
- Follow through on promised rewards
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Platform usage
- No spam or misleading promotions
- Don't manipulate platform metrics
- Keep private communications private
- Follow release guidelines
Release guidelines
Eligibility requirements
To release work on Metalabel, creators must:
- Complete their profile with accurate information
- Create a Stripe creator account
- Agree to community guidelines
- Promise to fulfill deliverables and rewards
- Have rights to the work they plan to release
Release requirements
Metalabel is a space dedicated to releasing and collecting creative work. We review the first release from any new creator to ensure their work amplifies and contributes to the spirit and purpose of our space.
Our release criteria:
- Creative releases that fit at least one of our creative categories.
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Creative releases that meet Metalabel’s standards, defined as:
- Clear and accurate descriptions
- Clear terms for collectors
- Releasing and supporting a creative piece of work
- Creative work you have the right release and sell
- Respectful of our creative ecosystem
Common reasons for decline:
- General business offerings or services rather than creative work (more below)
- Offers a prohibited or illegal item
- Contains hate speech or seeks to invoke violence against others
- Anything we feel may detract from the overall value of the platform and community (joke/parody content, unrealistic or excessively poor uses of our tool etc)
General business offerings or services
Metalabel exists to release creative work, not to become another Amazon or startup launchpad. While we celebrate creative entrepreneurs, we're not the right home for:
- Standard consumer products without a distinct creative vision or artistic purpose
- Generic services that could be found on Fiverr or Upwork
- Fundraising for conventional business operations
- B2B offerings or professional services disconnected from creative output
- Marketing campaigns masquerading as creative projects
Instead, we focus on releases that manifest a creative worldview, whether through art, music, writing, film, design, or other forms of cultural expression. The line can sometimes blur — we understand many creators run businesses — but the primary purpose of a Metalabel release should be creative expression.
Review process
The last step before a creator publishes their first release on Metalabel is to share it with us for review. During this time our team looks at each release with the criteria above in mind.
We get back to most applicants quickly, and all within 24 hours except weekends.
We notify people via email if their project has been accepted or rejected. We retain the right to remove releases published after the initial review process that do not meet the criteria above.
Reporting
The spirit of these guidelines is to foster a thriving creative community while maintaining high standards. They should be interpreted in service of that goal.
If you encounter a release that you believe violates these guidelines, please report it to hello@metalabel.com.
Metalabel reviews reports on a case-by-case basis. Releases that do not meet our guidelines may be hidden from discovery, or—if illicit, harmful, illegal, or fraudulent—removed from the platform and made unavailable for purchase.
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Respect & support
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Rayna Holmes
Your user profile
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.
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Rayna Holmes
Accessing 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.
After checkout you will receive a downloadable collector card that you can share with friends or to social media.
If you have any questions about the status of physical collected releases, contact the label through the link in your order confirmation email.
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Rayna Holmes
Setting up your Stripe account
Our platform is built entirely using StripeConnect, a product offered by world leading payments platform Stripe. If you are selling releases or receiving money from creative collaboration on Metalabel, you are required to use Stripe and set up StripeConnect in order to withdraw the balance from Metalabel to your bank account.
We support a limited number of countries for now. It is important that your bank operates within these countries’ jurisdiction. If your country is not listed, write to us.
Current countries and regions supported:
United States, Canada, Mexico, Sweden, United Kingdom, Portugal, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Singapore, Denmark, Japan, Philippines, Australia, Hong Kong, India*, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Slovenia, Switzerland, Latvia, and Thailand.
*Stripe is currently available in India on an invite-only basis, with option to request an invite.
Setting up your Stripe account
To access, from the main navigation for your user profile, find the Settings section. Then go to the Stripe tab.
By default this is not set up. The set up is a one time process. First, select the country in which your bank resides. This is not necessarily the same as your current location, your permanent resident, or your mailing address. It is tied to the country in which your bank account belongs to.
Once you enter the country and hit Connect button, you will be taken to Stripe’s registration process. Follow a few simple steps there. If you already have a Stripe account set up from somewhere else you’d like to use for Metalabel, you can use it with us, or create a new one. Be sure to confirm your bank information is complete and correct before finishing.
One single StripeConnect set up works across all labels and releases on Metalabel. Once complete, you are taken back to your user profile page. It should reflect a correct and active Stripe account.
The Stripe Dashboard is separate from Metalabel and is a service offered by Stripe to give you a record of financial transactions processed. When clicked, the Dashboard opens in a new tab, often hidden behind the current tab.
The dashboard only contains the net amount, date, origin (Metalabel), and destination (your bank). It does not contain any other details related to the collaboration or splits or labels. Instead, this can be viewed either in the Label Dashboard Earnings section or in your personal Earnings section.
Money transfer from Metalabel to your bank account through StripeConnect is one way and final. We do not support reversion of charges or stop requests. Please make sure to check carefully before proceeding.
If you experience trouble setting up StripeConnect, write to us. We can guide you through troubleshooting steps.
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Rayna Holmes
Creating a label
Anyone with an account on Metalabel can create a label. There are three ways to do so: when creating your account, from the main navigation, and while creating a release.
If you started a label when you made your account but didn't finish, or if you're generally not sure where the best place is to start, follow the first set of instructions.
Starting or finishing a label during account setup
When logged out, click the Get Started button in the top right corner of the metalabel.com homepage. This will take you to a page with a Start Releasing button in the middle of your screen. Click this button to head to the account wizard.
If you haven't created an account before, after inputting your email the account wizard will help you set up your user profile and label. Once completed you'll arrive at your label homepage where you can start releasing or customize your label page further.
If you started this process before but didn't finish—let's say you created your user profile but closed the page before you could create your label—the account wizard will guide you through any remaining steps.
The account wizard will also show any invitations you may have from other creators to join existing labels. From here you can join an existing label you've been invited to, or continue through the flow to create a new label.
Starting a label from main navigation
Once logged in, your user profile icon will appear on the left side navigation. This is our main navigation. No matter where you are on Metalabel, when you click here you will see various tabs as well as the option to create a new release or label.
Starting a label while creating a release
You can also create a label directly from the Release Builder. All releases must be published under a label. To set this, head to the Details tab in the Release Builder.
All your labels will appear here. Not only can you choose from your existing labels, but you can create a new one as well if you'd like. Keep in mind not all label setting details are in the pop up modal and you’ll be required to enter more information before publishing a release. We advise you also visit the Label Setting page (accessible from the main navigation) to ensure you’ve created a robust label page.