Structuring collaboration

How groups of creative people can co-release work together

• May 01, 2025 19:00

  Rayna Holmes

  

  How treasury works

  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.

  See more

  

• May 01, 2025 19:02

  Rayna Holmes

  

  User roles and access

  There are four roles on Metalabel: Label admin and Label contributor, and Release admin and Release contributor. In this guide, we’ll walk through the access specific to each role and how you might encounter each role type across the Metalabel universe.

  To align with our ethos of creativity in multiplayer mode, we employ the “generous locking” philosophy to the platform. This means areas that may not be actionable to a specific user role appear grayed-out or locked. This helps everyone become aware of the view-only information and communicate with other members of the label to adjust their role and access when necessary.

  

  * once they create a release, they will also gain Release Admin status and have all the same permissions for that specific release 
  † only for their designated release 
  ** labels, and all their subsequent releases, can only can only be deleted if they have no completed orders

  You can view your access type in the top left corner of the screen when selecting a label or release from the side panel. You can also see all creators a part of a label or release from the Label dashboard. 

   

  Roles

  Label admin

  A label admin has all-access control over the label, as well as all releases within it. They can:

  • Create, edit, and publish releases
  • Delete the label, and all subsequent releases, only if the releases have not received any orders
  • Set prices for releases and splits for the collective
  • Issue payouts to members of the label
  • View and manage orders and fulfillment
  • Invite other Label admins and contributors
  • See top level statistics for the label and the full catalog of releases
  • See financial and collector information as an automatic Release admin for every label release

  By default they are automatically added as a Release admin within the label. A label can have more than one admin, but not zero admins. If you created the label within Metalabel, you are automatically assigned an admin role.

  Label admin is a good role for people who: are a co-creator of the label and are sharing administrative work; need to see the finances of the label; are working on or supporting various releases by the label.

   

  Label contributor

  A label contributor is a user who can view all label activities but cannot make edits or execute financial operations on the platform. They can:

  • See top level statistics for the label and the full catalog of releases
  • Create releases as part of the label, which will automatically give them release admin status for that specific release (see more details below)

  Label contributor is a good role for people who: are a part of or support the label but do not manage any administrative work; are a part of the label and want to be able to manage specific releases.

   

  Release admin

  A Release admin has all-access control over a specific release. In order to create a release under an existing label, you need to:

  • be a label admin
  • be a label contributor
  • be invited by a label admin or contributor to be a release admin

  Release admins can do the following for the specified release:

  • Edit and publish the release
  • View price and split details
  • View and manage orders and fulfillment
  • Invite other Release admins and contributors, and toggle which appear under “created by” on the release page
  • Receive payouts as part of the split

  Financials for the release are managed by label admins, so Release admins cannot execute payouts and can only view, not edit, financial information.

  Release admin is a good role for people who: are creating a release via a label and may not be a part of the label management more broadly; will support fulfilling orders and other logistics even if they did not contribute to the release; receive payouts as part of the split.

   

  Release contributor

  A release contributor has read-only access to a specific release. This is handy to use for someone who is a contributor to your creative work and will be a part of your earning split, but does not need to participate in administrative tasks like fulfillment. Release contributors can:

  • Read-only details of a release before it is publicly released
  • Receive payouts as part of the split

  Release contributor is a good role for people who: are a part of the release and should receive payouts as part of the split.

   

  Changing someone’s access

  If you are a Label admin, you can toggle the access of others. If you are a Release admin, you can change access to a release itself (but remember label admin will always be able to see and edit release details even when they are not added as a contributor).

  First, select Members from the side navigation from your label page. Then select the person whose access you want to edit, and click Edit Member from the 3-dot-menu on the right. To remove them completely, select Remove Member. If you remove a member who is a part of the payout split, you will need to manually adjust the splits accordingly.

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• November 08, 2024 15:37

  Yancey

  

  We’re a group of friends starting a new label for our [writing/videos/music/art]. Any advice on how we do things?

  It’s good to set a few base-level agreements about how you’re going to work together from the beginning. 

  What kind of work are you going to put out?

  How will money work?

  How do you make decisions?

  We made a simple tool that can help you walk through this experience in the style of 8-bit tarot cards, because why not? Explore your values as a label.

  

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