How Orphea pays artists (and what we're still building)

When a fan listens, likes, or supports your track on Orphea, here's the financial flow that triggers (or will trigger) :

1. Streaming royalties — every payable play generates 0.003€ that accrues on your Orphea balance.
2. D2F tips (in progress) — fan sends X€ via Stripe Connect, Orphea takes the Trust Trade commission you set (10% to 80%), the rest lands instantly on your connected account.
3. Merch & exclusives (roadmap) — direct sales with the same split mechanism.
4. Payouts — when your balance crosses 5€, you trigger a transfer to your bank account in 1-2 days.

We want to be direct: some of these flows are in production today, others are still being built. This post details what works, what's coming, and what we deliberately deferred.

Rate: 0.003€ per payable play. Which means :

• 1,000 plays ≈ 3€
• 10,000 plays ≈ 30€
• 100,000 plays ≈ 300€

For comparison: Spotify pays around 0.003€/play too, Tidal 0.012€, Apple Music 0.008€. We're deliberately aligned with Spotify so we don't bleed our acquisition runway. This rate goes up the moment D2F revenue covers a meaningful share of fixed costs — that's our commitment, not a slogan.

A play is "payable" if it exceeds 30 seconds OR 25% of the track's duration. Industry standards (RIAA / IFPI). For tracks longer than 2 min, the 30s threshold almost always wins.

This income accrues on your /artist/revenue dashboard and pays out at request time (see below).

On /artist/revenue, at the top, there's a slider. You pick how much Orphea takes from your D2F revenue (tips, merch when live, exclusives when live).

• Min 10% — anti-zero-cost floor. Below that we lose money per transaction.
• Default 50% — baseline visibility (multiplier 1.0×).
• Max 80% — "Patron" tier for those who want to actively fund Orphea and boost their visibility (1.6×).

The trick we avoided: the commission affects your visibility in search and discovery. Higher share to Orphea = higher rank. Lower share = lower rank. Self-regulation — no price floor, no market policing.

30-day cooldown on decreases only (anti-gaming like "drop to 10% during my drop, raise back after"). Increases are instant.

Full details in the dedicated post: Trust Trade: artists decide what Orphea takes.

To receive tips, you connect your Stripe Express account from /artist/revenue (click "Connect Stripe"). 5 minutes, KYC included, handled directly by Stripe.

Once connected :

1. Fan clicks "Tip" on your track.
2. Orphea creates a payment_intent with application_fee_amount = amount × your_bps / 10000 — read live at transaction time, not cached.
3. Stripe transfers the artist share to your connected account, retains the Orphea commission on the platform account.
4. Stripe takes its own fees (1.4% EU / 2.9% intl) before our split — same as everywhere.

Refunds: Stripe automatically reverses the application_fee proportionally. Disputes / chargebacks: charged to Orphea, not you. You never lose money retroactively from a disputing fan.

Minimum threshold: 5€. Once reached, click "Request payout" on your dashboard.

Stripe Connect transfers to your bank account in :

• 1-2 business days in France (Stripe Instant Payout is free for Express).
• 2-7 days in other EU countries.
• 3-7 days US/UK/Canada.

Orphea fee on the payout: 0€. Stripe fee: ~0.25€ per transfer (negligible but we surface it for honesty). No annual threshold, no inactivity fee, no closing fee if you leave.

Honest list as of May 4, 2026 :

• 🟡 "Tip this artist" button on the track page — fan UI lands within 2 weeks. Stripe backend ready, DB pipeline ready, slider live; missing the public UI component and the associated PostHog tracking.
• 🟡 Merch via Stripe — roadmap Q3 2026. In backlog. If you want one now, we can route to Bandcamp meanwhile (link from your artist page).
• 🟡 Paywalled exclusives — Q4 2026. We want to nail tips first, add complexity after.
• 🔴 Multi-artist splits (features) — not yet. A track = one artist_id in DB today. For features, contact support, manual handling until then.
• 🔴 Stripe Connect in some countries — Morocco, Tunisia, DRC, and much of sub-Saharan Africa aren't covered by Stripe in 2026. If that's you, contact us, manual payouts (Wise / direct transfer) until Stripe expands.

If any of these blockers affects you directly, write to support@orphea.app with subject "Payment WIP". We track each case and prioritize by request volume.

Most platforms communicate their payment model as if it were frozen and complete. Orphea does the opposite: we publicly list what works, what's coming, what's broken. It's a deliberate stance.

Reason 1: you make a decision (joining Orphea, raising your commission, importing your catalog) knowing the truth. Not discovering 6 months in that exclusives don't exist.

Reason 2: if we cheat on this page, we cheat everywhere. And we cheat nowhere — that's the opposite of what we're building with Proof-of-Human and Trust Trade.

This page is updated on every product merge that touches payments. Last update: May 4, 2026.