Welcome to Wildstream
Wildstream is our independent streaming hub, where we are hosting a new music and audio community. By creating this streaming vessel, we hope to nourish sustainability, integrity and intimacy within the relationship between musicians and listeners, and to help bring the wild heart back into the sharing of music.
When you dive into Wildstream you will be able to easily access: more than 40 albums featuring over 400 tracks of music and songs that we have written, recorded and performed during 40 years; audio books and stories, both already released and newly recorded for this hub; our archive of live concert recordings exclusive to this audio community; new series of podcast conversations recorded in our studios, at our kitchen table or by the roundhouse fire. In the months to come these will include sessions about flutes, drums, wild land, ancient language, sacred ancestors and tales from our lives as travelling musicians. There will be more to follow as we weave new offerings and unique ingredients from our work into this flowing river of sound.
Along with Seventh Wave, our independent music label and Braided River, our small book publishing house, Wildstream is our third strand of watery magic!
DIP INTO into Wildstream without subscribing, have a look around and listen to 7 free tracks. DIVE INTO our music community by subscribing through the Wildstream website or the iOS (iPhone) app store for £7 monthly or £77 annually (one month free). You have the option to pay directly with US$ or euros. ANDROID phones can currently only enter via the website – your app will arrive soon!
When signing up through the website (rather than an app store), your subscription contribution is shared only between us and Insidr Music. Once subscribed through the website, you can listen via the site, add a shortcut to your home screen, or freely access our music community through your relevant app store.
There are some Wildstream features still to arrive: creating your own playlist, timer (so you can listen when falling asleep) and the chat room where you will be able to see notifications and community messages from us. Wildstream is settling into its flow – please email us if you have any questions.
This is an act of rebellion…
Here is the political bit! Nigel started his music career in 1985 and Carolyn began hers in 1992. We were so fortunate to be starting out as musicians at a time when we could turn up at a festival, gig or other event and sell enough cassette tapes to cover our rent and support our creative life. We don’t lament the demise of cassettes (the CD format was revolutionary in terms of sound quality and professional presentation!) but having a tangible way to share our work meant that over the years we were able to build our own music label while still fiercely maintaining our independence. It is not so simple for musicians starting out now. Spotify and other streaming giants operate on the same principles as the wider music industry – financial abundance for the thin top layer and very little for the rest of the music community. Many young musicians barely conceive of being able to sustain a living from their creative work…
We stayed out of the streaming culture, uncertain how we could participate yet still retain the integrity of our music in terms of financial viability and real independence. Inevitably, technology sped past us and we remained sitting on the riverbank, waiting for a moment, a connection, a possibility for sustainable change. We found it this year with Insidr Music, a new direct-to-fan subscription streaming platform (who pay their musicians 4,000% more than Spotify). They agreed to build us a bespoke streaming app which could host our own independent music and audio hub, nested within the branches of their project but exclusive to our vision and our subscribing community. So here we are. Having at last stepped into the flowing water, we are dancing with this wild stream and sharing our deep archive of music in expansive new ways. We hope that other independent musicians may find this model useful in bringing freedom and value to their work.
With thanks to Dan Ryland and Kima Otung at Insidr Music
If you are a therapist, small independent shop, healing centre, community hub or other place where our music might be played in public…
You are welcome to stream our music in a public place. We were members of PRS (Performing Rights Society) for over 30 years. This organisation was originally set up to help musicians gather in royalty payments when their music was played in public. They used to work on very egalitarian lines, sharing any surplus royalty funds equally between all their members. Over time they transformed into a different entity, working with their affiliated agency PPL to put undue pressure on small businesses, healing centres, community festivals and other places working with humble budgets, to pay increasingly high licenses while reducing payments to many of their independent musicians. Some small festivals have closed due to heavy PRS licensing. While we know that PRS have been applying licenses to small businesses playing our music or to festivals where we have performed, our royalty payments over the last 15 years have been…0%
To regain full control over our music, we left PRS/PPL last year and they no longer have any right to collect on our behalf. This means that if you wish to subscribe to our streaming hub and play our music in a public context you can do so without paying for a license. This does not mean that our music is not copyrighted – it simply means that we, the copyright holders, are very happy for you to play our work when you are a member of our music and audio community. This does not apply when you are playing music created by other musicians – you may still need to pay for a license if they are registered with PRS. Please do get in touch with us if you have any questions or need our support in any dealings with PRS.