# Artist Platform: Upload, Price Calculator and Fan-Funded Pressing A web platform where anyone who wants records made, from a bedroom artist to a label, can: 1. **Configure a record in a calculator** and get a transparent, itemised offer: what every line costs, which costs are per title and which per copy, how the price per copy falls with quantity, and when it ships. 2. **Upload the master and the artwork**, and have both checked before anyone pays for anything. 3. **Either order directly**, as any label would, **or launch a fan-funded campaign**: a page the artist shares with fans, who pre-order their copy. If enough fans commit before the deadline, the plant presses and ships each fan's copy. If not, every fan is refunded and nobody is left with a garage full of records. The calculator is for every customer. The campaign is the part that opens vinyl to artists who could never front the cost of a run. Both sit on top of what the plan already has: the stages and the three artist gates in [process flow](process-flow.md), the lead times in [production timeline](production-timeline.md), the order intake, client vault and customer portal in [digital factory](digital-factory.md), and the dropshipping already in the fulfillment step. Every figure on this page without a source is an estimate. **Demo.** The [artist ordering demo](artist-order.html) (test site `/demos/artist-order/`) walks this whole flow on one static page: configure a record, type the track list or drop the master files and artwork (read in the browser and never uploaded: format, sample rate, bit depth, sample peak and clipping, side length against the format, print resolution and colour space), approve gate 1, get the itemised offer with its price curve and lead time, then order directly or set up a campaign and run it to a funded or a missed end, with the production steps and the three gates after it. Its price list (version `demo-0.1`) splits the illustration rates below into lines; every split is an estimate and the page lists each rate with its basis. **Investor demo.** [Make a record](make-a-record.html) (test site `/demos/make-a-record/`) is the same flow as a customer would see it, built for presenting: a to-scale mock-up with a record that spins at the chosen speed, the checks in plain words, one price with the itemised lines folded under it, the fan campaign on a phone, the production timeline, and a **record passport** for one delivered copy (stamper, press, cycle time and side, per [traceability](traceability.md) and [quality automation](quality-automation.md)). An "Investor notes" switch adds the business case to each step, sourced from this page, the [revenue model](finance/revenue-model.md) and the [production timeline](production-timeline.md); a guided tour (`#tour` after the URL, `#notes` for the notes) walks the whole flow in about a minute. It uses the same price list and stage table as the detailed demo, so a rate change goes into both pages. **Step-by-step order tool.** [Order a record](order.html) (test site `/demos/order/`, October 2026, after the configurator at [mobineko.com/order](https://mobineko.com/order)) is the order flow as a plant's online order form: a rail of numbered steps (order type, size, discs, vinyl colour and effects, labels, inner sleeves, jacket and finish, extras, mastering and cutting, test pressings, shipping, track list, artwork, how to pay, review), each step's choices beside a large live picture of the record, and a running price and ship date. The review lists what is still missing before an order can be placed. It carries the same price list, so a rate change goes into all three pages. **Fan funding in the order tool** (user, 20 October 2026: the new tool offers fan funding too, so the investor deck's platform pictures come from one tool and one calculator). Step 15 "How to pay" chooses between paying the plant directly (the deposit, the rest before dispatch) and a fan-funded campaign with the same inputs and the same campaign maths as [make-a-record](make-a-record.html): the artist sets the fan price (default 1,200 THB) and the campaign length, the fans needed are the larger of break-even and the 100-copy minimum run, and the tool shows what the artist keeps at the goal and with more fans, after the payment fees (~3.5 %, to confirm with the provider), the one-off setup and the pressing. Step 16 becomes "Review & launch" and simulates the campaign's outcome. For the same record both pages give the same numbers (checked headless over 40 combinations, October 2026): the default record at 1,200 THB needs 100 fans (break-even 41) and keeps ~548 THB a copy; the Splatter 12" preset needs 100 fans (break-even 46) and keeps ~480 THB a copy. Indicative demo prices. **Mastering as a choice** (user, October 2026): the order tool lets the customer pick the mastering: none (the master is final and only prepared for the lathe), CNX vinyl mastering in-house per side, or full mastering by a partner studio at **60 USD a track** (team figure, about 1,980 THB). The example partner is [Brandenburg Mastering](https://www.brandenburgmastering.com) in Amsterdam, which quotes on request and publishes no price list (checked October 2026); it is not contracted. Partner mastering replaces the in-house line rather than adding to it, and keeps gate 2: the artist approves the master before cutting. ## Why it fits this plant - **The bottom of the Thai market is unserved.** The one Thai plant we have seen quotes a 150-unit minimum that is "rarely accepted because the cost is way too high", so runs under 300 are effectively unavailable ([revenue model](finance/revenue-model.md)). The reason is a per-title cost (imported stampers, outsourced cutting) that does not shrink with the run. In-house cutting and plating collapses it, which makes short runs viable for CNX in a way they are not for an importer of metalwork. Short runs need a channel; this is it. - **Fan funding removes the artist's risk.** What stops an indie artist ordering 200 records is not the price per copy, it is paying for all 200 up front without knowing whether they sell. A campaign turns that around: the fans pay first, the run is exactly as big as the demand. - **CNX owns the presses.** The known platforms of this kind are brokers over a network of other people's plants. A plant-owned platform controls its own price, schedule and quality, and keeps the margin on manufacturing instead of a commission. - **Transparency is already the brand.** The plan is built on traceability that customers can see. The same event log can tell a fan "cut on 12 March, plated, test pressing approved by the artist, pressing now, ships next week", automatically and truthfully. ## Who else does this, and the lesson | | Model | Notes | |---|---|---| | **Qrates** (Japan, global) | Crowdfunding plus pressing through partner plants, with a profit calculator for the artist | Its site carries a notice (October 2026) that the service is suspended "due to unforeseen financial difficulties"; artists report funded projects caught in the wind-down | | **Diggers Factory** (France) | Upload tracks and artwork, set a sales goal; if missed, the project is cancelled and everyone refunded, or the artist funds the rest; about 8 weeks of manufacturing after success (2023 description); also sells direct pressing paid up front | An on-demand network rather than a single plant | | **elasticStage** (UK) | Each record made when it is ordered, no minimum, no campaign | Its own on-demand production technology; a different answer to the same problem | **The Qrates lesson is the design rule for the money**: fan payments are held apart from the company's own money and are never working capital, so that if anything goes wrong, fans can be refunded and artists keep their projects. See "Payments" below. ## The calculator ### What the customer chooses | Choice | Options | |---|---| | Format | 12" LP, 10", 7"; single or double disc; 33⅓ or 45 rpm; 7" with a small or a large (dinked) centre hole | | Weight | 140 g, 180 g | | Colour | Black, solid colour, marbled or splatter (the semi-automatic line's speciality); for colour, whether the press is cleaned first | | Quantity | Free entry, with the price-per-copy curve shown live | | Labels | Paper labels pressed into the record: printed, or plain white or black (white labels for promos and DJ copies) | | Run-out inscription | The customer's catalogue number or text, scribed next to the run-out groove of every side (letters and numbers, up to 15) | | Inner sleeve | Paper, poly-lined | | Jacket | None (customer supplies), plain, printed single, printed gatefold; printed by the local packaging partner | | Extras | Insert, hype sticker, shrink wrap, numbered edition, download card, barcode sticker | | Audio source | Digital files, analog tape (transferred in-house), or a lacquer cut by the customer's studio (straight to plating; must arrive within days of cutting) | | Audio services | Customer supplies a vinyl-ready master, or CNX vinyl mastering per side, or full mastering by a partner studio per track | | Metal | Lacquer cutting and stampers (in-house; bridge stampers from Stamper Discs until the galvanics line exists) | | Test pressings | Number of copies for the artist | | Delivery | Bulk to one address, dropship to each buyer, or collect at the plant | ### Benchmark: Record Industry's calculator (October 2026) Record Industry (Haarlem, NL; host plant of Making Vinyl Europe 2026) runs a public calculator (https://www.recordindustry.com/calculator/, checked October 2026): seven steps (pre-production, vinyl, labels, inner sleeve, outer sleeve, extras, quote or order) with an itemised cost list beside the form that updates on every choice, an info box under each question, and a draft order that the plant confirms by hand before the pre-payment invoice. Prices are computed on its server. What it shows that this plan had not covered, and what the demos took from it: - **Taken into both demos:** audio arriving as tape or as a supplied lacquer (it charges 470 EUR for cutting plus stampers from a digital master, 570 from tape, 240 for plating a supplied lacquer), plain white or black labels, press cleaning before a colour run (60 EUR, with the warning that without it records can carry the previous colour), the dinked 7", download cards and barcode stickers, and a catalogue number scribed in the run-out (letters and numbers, up to 15). The new rates are estimates with its prices as the basis, listed in the detailed demo. - **Left out for now:** label print modes (CMYK, Pantone, one colour), board grades and finishes (kraft, Hansaboard, matt or gloss varnish, laminates), die-cut holes, spines other than 3 and 5 mm, booklets, foil numbering, sticker position, protective outer sleeves, BIO PVC and a recycled colour mix, and multi-address shipping. Each is a price-list line once the packaging partner and the compound suppliers quote. - **Commercial terms worth deciding for CNX:** a flat order set-up fee (60 EUR) and a small-run surcharge (60 EUR under 300, 40 under 500); 20 copies over the order invoiced to cover under- or over-production, credited if fewer are delivered; customers asked to accept about 2 % rejects; full pre-payment for new customers; minimum 200 copies. Its prices and lead times are recorded as a benchmark in the [revenue model](finance/revenue-model.md) and the [production timeline](production-timeline.md). ### What the customer gets back - **Every line itemised**, grouped into **per title** (mastering, cutting, stampers, test pressings, setup) and **per copy** (pressing, labels, sleeve, jacket, extras), with pass-through items such as the printed jacket marked as such. - **The price per copy against quantity** as a curve, so it is obvious why 100 copies cost more each than 500, and where the steps are. - **A lead time in weeks** from the quote table in [production timeline](production-timeline.md): counted from test-pressing approval, with the stages before it shown separately as "typically X weeks, subject to your approvals", exactly as that page says a quote should be made. - **An offer** with a validity date and the price-list version it was computed from. ### How it computes Price = sum of the per-title lines + quantity × sum of the per-copy lines, with quantity tiers where a supplier's price steps (jacket print runs). All rates come from **one versioned price list** in the factory application, and every offer records the version it used, so any old offer can be reproduced to the baht. That follows the append-only rule the factory application already applies to everything else. Transparency rules, so the word means something: - every line visible, no fees that appear later; - pass-through costs (the jacket) shown at what the partner charges plus a stated handling margin; - quoted in THB for Thai customers and in USD for export customers, the currency choice the [revenue model](finance/revenue-model.md) already recommends deciding early. ### Side length per format The audio check compares each side with the format's limit. Until the cutting engineer sets CNX's own figures, the demos use these (October 2026): | Format | Comfortable | At most | Songs a side, at most | |---|---|---|---| | 12", 33⅓ rpm | 18 min | 22 min | ~4.9 | | 12", 45 rpm | 12 min | 15 min | ~3.3 | | 10", 33⅓ rpm | 12 min | 15 min | ~3.3 | | 10", 45 rpm | 8 min | 12 min | ~2.6 | | 7", 33⅓ rpm | 5 min | 7 min | ~1.5 | | 7", 45 rpm | 4.5 min | 5 min | ~1.1 | **At most** and **songs** are the table the team supplied in October 2026, from recordplayerexpert.com ("How much can a vinyl record hold", https://recordplayerexpert.com/vinyl-record-capacity, checked October 2026), which counts songs at an average length of 4:32. **Comfortable** is the lower end of each range in the microcut.studio format guide (https://microcut.studio/guides/vinyl-format-guide-12-10-7/). The published cutting-room figures disagree with the at-most column in three places, so treat those as re-check points for the cutting engineer: 10" at 33⅓ rpm (15 min here; microcut.studio up to 16, Diggers Factory 17), 10" at 45 rpm (12 min here; microcut.studio 11, Diggers Factory 10, so this table is the most generous) and 7" at 45 rpm (5 min here, as Diggers Factory; microcut.studio 6). Diggers Factory lists hard maxima of 22, 12, 17, 10, 6 and 5 minutes for the six formats (stricter on 12" at 45 rpm), and A to Z Media 14 to 18 minutes as ideal on a 12" LP. Loud or bass-heavy music needs shorter sides: Diggers Factory's dance-music figures are about 60 % of its standard ones (11:27 against 19:23 on a 12" LP), which the demo applies as a factor of 0.6. The engineer check, not this table, decides whether a side is cuttable. ### What it looks like with numbers An illustration of the **shape**, using the midpoints of the working assumptions in the revenue model: **38,000 THB per title** (mastering, cutting, stampers, test pressings; range 19,000 to 57,000), **132 THB per copy** for pressing, labels, inner sleeve and assembly (range 115 to 150), plus **~100 THB per copy for a printed jacket and shrink** at short run (estimate, until the packaging partner quotes). Black 12", 140 g: | Copies | Per-title share per copy | Per copy | Per copy, all in | Order total | |---|---|---|---|---| | 100 | 380 | 232 | **~612 THB** | ~61,200 THB | | 200 | 190 | 232 | **~422 THB** | ~84,400 THB | | 300 | 127 | 232 | **~359 THB** | ~107,600 THB | | 500 | 76 | 232 | **~308 THB** | ~154,000 THB | | 1,000 | 38 | 232 | **~270 THB** | ~270,000 THB | **Do not read the level off this table.** At these Western-benchmark rates the 300-copy price lands near 360 THB, while the Thai market pays 650 to 950 THB for 300 today. That is the very gap the revenue model flags as its biggest open question. The real price list is set after market validation ([roadmap](roadmap.md) item 1); the calculator only makes whatever prices are chosen legible. ## Artwork templates and files Decided for the demos (user, October 2026): the order tool offers a **spine choice** and **templates to download**, and accepts the files designers actually deliver, **PDF and Illustrator (AI)** as well as images. - **Spine.** Thin, 3 mm, holds one record in its inner sleeve; thick, 5 mm, holds two, or one with a thick insert or a poster. Plants publish templates for both, and for 7 or 9 mm on a gatefold (Mighty Media Discs: 12" sleeve 633 x 315 mm with a 3 mm spine, 635 x 315 mm with 5 mm; Implant: 5 mm for two records; RPM Records: gatefold with a 7 mm spine; XVinylX: 9 mm gatefold; all checked October 2026). A double album in a single jacket takes the 5 mm spine without asking. The thick spine is an extra line on the quote, an estimate until the packaging partner quotes: Quality Record Pressings (US) lists a generic wide-spine jacket at 0.90 USD against 0.55 for a standard one, and Kudos (UK) charges 137.50 GBP per order for an extra wide spine (price lists, checked October 2026). A 7" jacket keeps the 3 mm spine. - **Templates** follow the format, the jacket type and the spine chosen: the jacket spread (back, spine, front) with 3 mm bleed, a 5 mm safe area and the folds marked, a second page for the inside of a gatefold, and a label template with one page per side (centre hole, and the large hole of a dinked 7"). They are vector PDFs with trim and bleed boxes set, so they open in Illustrator, InDesign and Affinity. Until the packaging partner supplies its dielines the sizes come from the published templates above; 10" and 7" panels are the mock-up's sizes. - **Files accepted:** PDF (PDF/X-4 preferred), Illustrator files saved with PDF compatibility (an AI file without it is refused with instructions), and 300 dpi images. Plants ask for the same: Mobineko publishes PSD, AI and PDF templates, New Orleans Record Press takes print PDFs and refuses flattened images (checked October 2026). The preflight reads the page boxes, colour spaces and fonts from the file, checks the trim against the chosen spine (a spread made for a 5 mm spine is flagged on a 3 mm order), the bleed, CMYK against RGB, and whether fonts are embedded or outlined, and renders the front panel into the mock-up. ## Fan-funded campaigns ### Before the campaign goes live Nothing goes in front of fans that the plant cannot make: 1. **Upload**: master files (WAV/FLAC/AIFF) with checksums at both ends, resumable for album-size uploads, straight into the encrypted client vault (module 2 of the factory application). 2. **Automatic audio checks**, reported to the artist within minutes: format, sample rate and bit depth, clipping and true peak, **side length against the chosen format**, and low-frequency phase problems that make a groove hard to cut. 3. **Automatic artwork preflight**: label and jacket files against the templates (size, centre hole and safe area for the pressed-in label, bleed, resolution, colour space), with a rendered mock-up of the jacket and the vinyl colour; templates and accepted files in [Artwork templates and files](#artwork-templates-and-files). 4. **Engineer check**: a cutting engineer confirms side length and level are cuttable. On a Sillitoe lathe this is a number from the software's virtual groove (disk capacity in percent) without a test cut; see [vendor landscape](suppliers/vendor-landscape.md). 5. **Rights**: the artist confirms they own or have licensed the recordings and the compositions (covers need a mechanical licence), and an automatic audio fingerprint check (open tools such as Chromaprint/AcoustID) catches obvious bootlegs before a person looks. 6. **Gate 1, master plan approved**, recorded as the event the [process flow](process-flow.md) already defines, plus the approved artwork proof that packaging QC later checks print against. ### The campaign page - Artwork mock-up, story, track list, **short audio previews** (a few seconds to a minute per track at reduced quality, rendered by the plant from the master; the full master never leaves the vault, which matters because pre-release audio is a leak target per [facility security](facility-security.md)) - Price per copy, shipping by destination, goal, progress, deadline, **estimated ship month** (campaign close plus the quoted lead time), and what happens if the goal is missed - Sharing built for where the fans are: a link, a QR code for gigs and merch tables, and **LINE** alongside the international networks; Thai and English - Duration chosen by the artist, **14 to 45 days** (estimate) ### The goal The artist sets only the fan price; the goal, the number of fans needed, follows from it (decided October 2026). It is the larger of two numbers: - **the plant's minimum campaign run**, set by setup and stamper economics on the semi-automatic line (**100 copies** as a planning figure, to be decided), and - **the artist's break-even**: the copies at which the fan price covers the per-title costs, the per-copy costs and the payment fees. Both demos show it in fans and as the pre-order amount (fans × fan price); the investor demo also says from which fan price the 100-copy minimum is enough (about 640 THB in the illustration; below it the break-even sets the goal). With the illustration above and a fan price of 1,200 THB (an example, not a recommendation) and payment fees of about 3.5%: break-even is 38,000 / (1,200 − 42 − 232) ≈ **41 copies**, so the goal is the 100-copy minimum. At 100 copies the artist keeps about **546 THB a copy**, at 300 about **799 THB**, because the per-title cost spreads. The calculator shows the artist this before launch, for any price they type in. Shipping is charged to the fan separately at checkout, at cost. VAT is not in this example. With CNX as seller of record (open decision 1), a 1,200 THB fan price includes about 79 THB of VAT (7/107), which comes out of the artist's margin; the demo can show the numbers with and without it. Over-subscription is good news: the run is pressed at the final number plus the artist's own copies and the spares the reject allowance already covers. An artist can cap a campaign for a limited, numbered edition. ### Payments The decision that matters most, and the one Qrates got wrong. | | A. Charge at pledge, refund on failure | B. Save card, charge at success | |---|---|---| | How | Fan pays when pledging; money held in a ring-fenced account; automatic refund if the goal is missed | Card stored by the payment provider; charged only when the campaign succeeds | | Thai fit | Works with **PromptPay QR**, cards and wallets, which is how Thai fans pay | Cards only; excludes PromptPay | | Risk | CNX holds fan money for the campaign's length: must be ring-fenced and legally clean | Some charges fail at the end, so a campaign that "succeeded" can come up short | | Note | Refund paths differ by payment method; confirm each with the provider | A card authorisation cannot simply be held: Opn (Omise) allows an authorise-and-capture pause of up to 7 days, far short of a campaign | **Recommended: A**, with three rules. Fan money sits in a **separate account** and is never used for operations until the campaign succeeds. **CNX is the seller of record** to the fan (CNX makes and sells the record, the artist licenses the music and receives the margin), which keeps VAT, consumer protection and refunds in one place. And before the first campaign, **a Thai legal opinion** on whether holding pre-order money for a third party's project needs anything beyond that, for example under the Bank of Thailand's payment-service rules. Card data never touches CNX servers: the provider's hosted payment page or fields keep it out of scope. ### When the campaign succeeds The campaign becomes a production order and runs the normal chain: vinyl mastering if ordered and **gate 2** (master approved by the artist), cutting (only now, because a lacquer has to be plated within one to three days), stampers, test pressings and **gate 3** (artist approves the test pressing; a photo or short video of it to the fans is cheap marketing), the run, packaging, and **dropshipping one parcel per fan** with tracking, which is fulfillment step 9 as already planned. Fans follow it on the campaign page, fed from the order's records in ERPNext and the plant's event log: the progress is the plant's own record, not a status someone remembers to update. If a stage slips, the estimated ship month moves and every fan is told. An optional **"test pressing first"** campaign does mastering, cutting and test pressings before launch, so fans hear and see the real record. The artist pays the per-title services up front for it; it suits artists with an audience but no track record. ### When it does not succeed Automatic refunds to every fan, or, if the artist chooses, the artist pays the shortfall and the run goes ahead at the minimum (the Diggers Factory option). The artist's uploaded master and artwork stay in the vault for a second attempt. ### After the first run: repress on demand Once a title exists, its father and mother sit in the archive (a mother gives about ten stamper sets, and a worn one is replaced from the father without a new cut) and a repress takes **1.5 to 2.5 weeks** of plant time ([production timeline](production-timeline.md)). The campaign page can reopen as "pre-order the repress, pressed when 100 more are in", which turns one release into a recurring one. This is the part a plant with in-house plating can offer and a broker cannot. The planned catalogue company can use the same pre-order as the market test for its titles, on the same terms as any label ([own catalogue](catalogue-intelligence.md)). ## For labels and regular customers The same calculator and upload path, with an account: - negotiated rates as a customer-specific price-list version; - direct orders with a deposit instead of a campaign; - the three gates approved in the customer portal ([digital factory](digital-factory.md), modules 1 to 3 and 10); - bulk delivery, dropshipping, or both; - standby pressing (proposal, October 2026): a flexible date scheduled into idle press time at a lower price, on the same terms for every customer, the related catalogue company included ([own catalogue](catalogue-intelligence.md#arms-length-between-the-two-companies)). ## How it is built Same stack and same rules as the factory application in [digital factory](digital-factory.md): Rust (axum, SQLx, minijinja, HTMX) on PostgreSQL, in the `cnx-factory` repository, packaged as a flake, deployed by the clan. The platform extends modules 1 (orders and releases), 2 (audio intake and the client vault), 3 (the gates) and 10 (customer portal) with a price list and calculator, campaigns, pledges, payments and per-fan shipments. **Where the public side runs.** The digital factory plan accepts that a WAN outage at the plant stops the customer portal. That is acceptable for a label checking an order, not for a campaign page in the hour an artist posts it, or for payment-provider webhooks. Proposal: - the **public process** (calculator, campaign pages, checkout, payment webhooks, upload staging) runs on a fleet machine with a public address, `web01` or a sibling declared in the clan the same way, with its own small PostgreSQL for campaigns and pledges; - the **plant core stays the authority** for everything with a production identity: when a campaign succeeds it becomes an order on `vinyl-core`, and from then on the fan-facing progress is read through the plant, as the portal is. Design decision 7 ("the portal is a view, not a copy") still holds for production data; campaigns and pledges are new data that start life in public; - **uploads** land encrypted in a staging area on the public machine, are pulled over the mesh into the client vault, checksum-verified on both sides, and deleted from staging; **previews** are rendered on the plant and published outwards, so a full master never rests outside the vault. No SaaS beyond the payment provider (Opn/Omise, 2C2P or a bank gateway, to be chosen), in line with the plan's standing rule that every plant service runs on the NixOS fleet. **ERPNext** (decided October 2026: the plant runs ERPNext as its only system of record, and what we build are tools and interfaces on it; [digital factory](digital-factory.md#erpnext-the-plants-erp)). The platform keeps no business records of its own. For the platform that means: - the **price list** behind the calculator is an ERPNext price list (the demos' `R` list is its prototype), synced out to the public process, so the calculator and the invoice never disagree; - an artist or label account is linked to one ERPNext **customer**; a direct order becomes a **sales order** when it is confirmed; - a **campaign** is a custom Campaign document in ERPNext from launch; each pledge is posted as an advance **payment entry** into the ring-fenced account as it arrives, with the fan as a customer; when the campaign succeeds it becomes a sales order the advances are allocated to, and fan shipments become delivery notes; the refunds of a missed campaign are posted as payment entries too. The public process holds sessions and a cache of what it shows, nothing else; - every posting goes through the plant's integration layer and its outbox over the mesh; the public side never talks to ERPNext directly. **Personal data.** Fans' names and addresses are personal data under PDPA, with CNX as controller as the seller of record. An artist gets fan contact details only where the fan ticked a consent box; that list is worth a lot to an artist, and consent is what makes it legal to hand over. ## The calculator is also a research instrument Every configuration anyone builds, anonymously logged, is a data point on what people actually want to order: run size, colour, weight, packaging, how many walk away at which price. The revenue model's open **run-size** question ([roadmap](roadmap.md) item 1) is exactly that distribution. So the calculator should go public **long before the plant exists**, with indicative prices and a "tell me when it opens" list, and no payments. ## Phasing | Roadmap phase | Platform step | |---|---| | 0 to 1, validate | Public calculator with indicative prices and an interest list; configuration logging feeds market validation | | 3, build | Direct orders, uploads, automatic checks and gates, as part of factory application v1 | | 4, launch | Campaigns go live **after** the first paying releases have shipped and lead times have been measured. No fan money is taken against a plant that has not yet delivered | | 5, expand | Repress pre-orders, numbered editions, international shipping at scale, cassette and CD formats from the business plan's scope | ## Rough cost (estimate) | Item | THB | USD | |---|---|---| | Public side on top of the factory application: calculator, campaigns, payments, uploads and previews, preflight, fan accounts | 1.3M – 3.0M | 40k – 90k | | Hosting | on the existing fleet | negligible | | Payment fees | per transaction, inside the fan price | about 3 to 4% on cards, less on PromptPay (to be confirmed with the provider) | Not yet in the roll-up in [total investment](finance/total-investment.md); listed there as added scope. ## Risks - **Most crowdfunding campaigns fail**, and each failed one still costs CNX checking and setup time. A small non-refundable setup fee, credited against the order if the campaign succeeds, is one answer; decide it before launch. - **Lumpy demand.** Campaigns end on dates nobody controls. The scheduler in the factory application should see live campaigns, weighted by how close they are to their goal, and cap how many can close in the same week. - **Fans are not labels.** They expect a perfect record and a date. Clear wording on what vinyl sounds like, the artist's test-pressing approval, and honest ship months carry most of this. - **Rights.** Someone will upload music that is not theirs. Warranty, fingerprint check, a human look, and a takedown route. - **Money.** Covered by the payment rules above; the legal opinion comes before the first campaign, not after. ## Open decisions 1. **Seller of record**: CNX (recommended) or the artist. 2. **Payment model**: charge-and-refund into a ring-fenced account (recommended) or save-card-and-charge; legal opinion either way. 3. **Fee model**: margin inside the published price list only (recommended, it is what "transparent" means) or a separate platform commission. 4. **Minimum campaign run**: 100 copies as the planning figure. 5. **Public price list**: fully public rates, or public list prices with account-specific rates for labels. 6. **Hosting split**: public process on a fleet machine as proposed, or everything on the plant core at launch volumes. 7. **Name**: under CNX Vinyl, Poy Records, or its own brand.