Collecting creative work

There are three main ways to access your downloaded release after collecting.

The collect page

After checkout or free collects, you will automatically be taken to your collector page. Here you can download your unique collector card and download any digital files a part of the release.

Depending on your browser, it may take a moment for this page to load and for your downloaded items to be ready. Look for a green toast notification confirming your download has begun. If you don’t see a green notification or a red error message, your download has not started and you should wait a few more moments.

If after some time your download still has not begun, write to us.

The order confirmation email

The other main way to access digital release files is from your order confirmation email. Click on the “view order details” button. This will take you to the same collect page mentioned above, even if you do not have a Metalabel account.

Your collection

The third way to access your collection is directly on metalabel.com. Login to your account or create one with the email you used for your collect. Look for your user profile icon on the left side menu and head to the Collection tab. Here you will find all collected releases. Click through a release to go back to the collect page.

If you have questions about the status of an order, use the “contact the label” link in your order confirmation page. Read more about collecting on Metalabel.

For most releases, a creator’s initial set of collectors will come from the audience they’ve built up over time. Collectors are the people who like to deeply understand the context of things they enjoy. They like details, the connections between things, who played with who on what. They are looking to support creators they love, creative work they care about, and releases that give them the opportunity to feel special or seen.

Metalabel offers various tools that echo techniques we’ve seen work well:

• Limited edition releases, time-bound releases, and other forms of intentionally scarce output is one way to develop loyalty among your collectors.
• Ability to bundle physical and digital media. A release that offers a unique combination of both physical and digital media may also create a unique collector experience
• An option to share free collectable releases. This can introduce collectors to your work and help develop a list of people who are interested to read, listen, or otherwise engage and might purchase something in the future
• Pay what you want options. This gives creators the ability to release something for free or a set price, but also allow collectors to input their own price as long as it’s higher than the minimum designated by the creator.
• Co-releasing. Collaborations between creators with different audiences is a great way for people to mutually benefit and share in promotion tasks.

Learn more about these features in the Release Builder, or read tips for setting price and quantity.

For more recommendations we collaborated with our community of artists and creators to build this open “Promotional Principles for Creative People” that you can explore to go even deeper.

Stayed tuned for scheduled releases and other features in the future.

Managing Communication

Collectors will always receive an order confirmation email from Metalabel. We also provide them with contact information for each label’s Help Contact for any questions. Beyond this, its up to you as the creator to determine how you want to communicate with your Collectors.

To view all collectors, visit the Collectors tab under your release or label. While the Orders tab groups collectors by release, the Collectors tab provides a profile specific view. Here, you can see your total number of Collectors across releases, your most collected release, and Collectors who have spent the most on your releases.

To export your Collector list to a newsletter or another database, select the Download CSV button on the right. You can filter who appears in the CSV file by toggling the dropdown options.

To get a sense of what a Collector has ordered, select the numerical button in the Collected column. Clicking on any of these releases will take you to the Orders tab for shipping and other details.

Collaborations between creators with different audiences is a great way for two people to mutually benefit one another.

Releasing work on a very consistent cadence builds understanding and awareness.

Experiment with release windows and limited edition strategies to make your release pop.