A Fluence Success Story: Michael-David Bushman

We’re working relentlessly at Fluence to help creators get feedback and exposure from industry experts and professional curators. In the words of Aaron Levie, our approach has been to build for “the way the world *should* work instead of optimizing for how the world *does* work.” It’s a massive challenge to bring a new model to life, but when the system performs as intended, the results can be very meaningful to our mission at Fluence.

On December 13th, Michael-David Bushman, a musician from the Yakama Indian Reservation in Southern Washington, submitted three music tracks from his Soundcloud and targeted four experts and curators in Fluence. Given the varying rates charged by the people for their time and attention, the total potential spend for Michael-David was $57.85, which is based on the length of his submitted media. In Fluence, creators only pay for the time their selected people spend listening or watching their media and nothing more. In this case, Michael-David actually spent $51.19 (or 89%) of his potential max spend since his selected curators chose to listen to his submissions almost completely. Ikey Owens and Paul Heck were two people who went beyond giving feedback and organically shared it on their own public networks. Ikey Owens posted one track on twitter:

Paul Heck shared Michael-David’s two other tracks on Facebook, and he also provided an engaging level of feedback and set of follow-on questions. Paul posted this feedback on Fluence when auditioning Michael-David’s, When Colors Bleed:

Dude – I’m feeling this track, listening to it over and over. Is this your thing? Or do you work with vocalist? I love the shift at 1:10 — Do you think, structurally the first part of the song is a bit long before this shift happens? As it is – it seems A-B-A-B in structure, do you want to develop it more, musically? Add a bridge or something? As I tell everyone, I’m a song guy – I like hooks and choruses. I love the B part to this song – and would want to hear more development there, maybe it’s a pre-chorus that leads into a hook…..I don’t know — I’m not sure how you are hearing it….. Where do you see your music fitting in – as in, in the world of music?

It motivated Michael-David to reach out and connect with us so he could answer Paul’s questions. Michael-David sent us this as part of his message:

I am really enjoying Fluence! I’m from a very small town and it’s great having an outlet to hear feedback about ones music from professionals – it’s a privileged opportunity.

In that moment, all our effort felt worthwhile. Fluence was able to build a bridge between a creator in a remote area and people in New York and LA, who gave useful feedback and shared authentically on their own networks. The full model worked as intended where a creator and curator benefited in a fair and organic way. We are inspired and committed to connect the creators of the world wherever they are to those who can give them feedback and exposure.

With this goal, we have continued to expand the network on Fluence to include experts in Film MakingMusic LicensingA&R, Journalism, PR & Branding, Music & Film Production, Audio Mastering, Radio Production, Music Writing, Venture Capital, and more. You can share your creations here to start receiving feedback and exposure for your art and media.  We have much more planned for you in 2014 and are excited to keep building a better way.

Happy Holidays from The Fluence Team!

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