Every platform between a musician and their audience takes something. Most are upfront about it, and most of the numbers are bigger than people realize. Here they are, with sources, next to ours.
Published rates, from each company's own pricing page, checked in August 2026. Payment processing is charged on top of most of these, and we've listed it separately because nobody escapes it, including us.
| Platform | What they take | Artist keeps | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bandcamp Digital music sales | 15% revenue share, dropping to 10% after $5,000 in sales. Processing fees are separate, typically 4 to 6%. | ≈80 to 85% | bandcamp.help |
| Patreon Fan subscriptions | 10% of income on the current plan, plus payment processing, payout, and currency conversion fees. | under 90% | patreon.com/pricing |
| Eventbrite Ticketed shows | 3.7% + $1.79 service fee per ticket, plus 2.9% payment processing per order. | varies by price | eventbrite.com |
| Spotify Streaming | No published per-stream rate. In Spotify's own words, it "does not pay artist royalties according to a per-play or per-stream rate." Payouts are a share of a pool, split further with labels and distributors. | unknowable in advance | spotify.com |
| ARND Tips at live shows | Nothing. Tips go straight from the fan to the artist's own CashApp, Venmo, or PayPal. We never touch the money. | 100% | today, in the app |
A note on that last row, because it matters: taking nothing is easy when the money never passes through you. That's the point. We built tipping as a handoff, not a rail, so there is nothing to skim and nothing to wait for.
The percentage everyone quotes is only half the story. Fixed per-transaction fees are what quietly eat small amounts, and tips are small amounts.
The fan opens your CashApp, Venmo, or PayPal and sends it to you. Person to person. Nothing in between.
2.9% + 30¢ is the standard online card rate. That fixed 30¢ is why small tips suffer most, before any platform takes its share.
When tipping moves in-app, the fan covers the card fee plus a flat few cents (capped at 25¢, shown before they send), and the artist still receives the whole $10. We never take a percentage of a tip.
Card rate from Stripe's published Canadian pricing (2.9% + CA$0.30). Numbers rounded to the cent.
This isn't generosity, it's arithmetic. ARND is a map, a database, and a small app. There is no A&R department, no warehouse, no ad sales team, no office. The whole thing runs on infrastructure that costs about as much per month as a couple of coffees, and it's built by a very small team on purpose.
Platforms with big cuts usually have big companies attached. When the company is small and the software is cheap to run, the cut can be small too. So we designed the economics from the artist's side first, and then checked whether the business could live on what was left. It can.
The commitment, in plain terms: tips will always carry the smallest fee we charge on anything. A tip is a gift from someone who watched you play. Taking a big slice of a gift is not a business model we want.
We're honest that free forever isn't a plan. When ARND starts handling money directly, so that tipping works without leaving the app, and so ticketing and venue bookings can exist, here's the model we've already written into the code:
None of these are charged today. Every one of them will be announced here, on this page, before it ever comes into effect. If that changes, this page changes first.
Processing fees are set by the payment networks, not by us. Their own published rates: Stripe (2.9% + 30¢ online), Cash App, Venmo, and Apple's App Store terms. Whatever rail a tip rides, we show you its real cost rather than bury it.
We're onboarding Toronto musicians now, before the app opens. Free, about two minutes, and you can claim your handle while it's still yours to take.