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As a long-time producer on Beatstars and someone who genuinely wants the platform to keep winning.
A major issue producers keep bringing up is checkout friction after the payment changes: the 12% marketplace fee, VAT/tax shock at checkout which diminished our EU Buyers as a whole, PayPal limitations, loss of Stripe, international card declines, and buyers abandoning carts. Going on 3 YEARS, we have told and begged Beatstars as a community to please bring more payment options after the significant drops in sales and you guys IGNORED US FOR 3 YEARS!
If the 12% marketplace fee is not changing, then Beatstars should at least focus on reducing the damage it causes to conversions IMMEDIATLY
Here are practical fixes that can help for sure...
Bring Stripe back for single-producer, non-collab sales. (Stripe Connect) Or make a Ledger wallet for collab sales to be split.
Keep PayPal or BeatStars Pay as a escrow wallet of some type for complicated collab/multi-producer carts if needed.
Crypto
Split Pay Options
Add more global processors/payment options like Adyen, Checkout.com, dLocal, Airwallex, Payoneer, Wise, or direct bank payout options. Add something, not everybody can use paypal.
Consider a capped fee or flat fee for higher-tier licenses and exclusives instead of 12% scaling forever. Makes no sense to charge a 12% scaling fee for different licenses for the same beat. Don't care about our concerns about that at all.
Give producers abandoned cart and payment failure data by country/payment method.
Beatstars should treat checkout and global payment access as a TOP PRIORITY, not just a support issue. Producers built this marketplace, and we need the platform to make it easier for buyers worldwide to actually purchase our work. People feed their families off this platform and the blatant neglect for our issues is upsetting.
Respectfully, The “ We are working on it. No roadmap” copy and paste response we have been receiving for 3 YEARS is getting old. After this much time feels like the producers MAIN problem is not actually prioritized. Producers are bringing traffic, uploading catalogs, paying subscriptions, promoting BeatStars, and losing sales when buyers can’t complete checkout or not buy at all because of the suprise taxes and fees added.
We are not asking for empty promises. We are asking for transparency, a clear commitment that our problems are actuallyis being treated as a serious business issue.
