What would you own if your platform disappeared?

Here is a test worth putting to every company that holds part of your work: what happens to you if it disappears?

Platforms close, get acquired, change their terms and raise their prices. None of that is unusual. What matters is what you are left holding when it happens. For some owners the answer is everything. For others it is a login page that no longer works.

Five questions to ask any platform

1. Can I export everything, at full quality? Not previews, not compressed streaming copies: the originals you uploaded, at the resolution you uploaded them. Ask how an export works, how long it takes for your whole catalog and whether there is a fee.

2. Does the metadata come with it? Titles, credits, dates, tags, rights and the way your work is organized are often worth as much as the files. An export that hands you a folder of numbered files has handed you a cataloging project. Ask for the metadata in a format another system can read.

3. Who owns the customer relationship? If fans buy from you or subscribe through the platform, whose customers are they? Can you see their names and email addresses? Can you take that list with you? Many platforms give you a dashboard of your audience and keep the audience.

4. Who sets the price and the terms? If the platform decides what your work sells for, who can access it and how, you are a supplier to its business, not the owner of your own.

5. What does leaving cost? Fees, notice periods, exclusivity clauses, time. The higher the cost of leaving, the less your decision to stay is really a decision.

Gatekeepers and infrastructure

Some platforms make money by sitting between you and your audience, and they grow more valuable as you depend on them more. If one of them disappears, you lose the audience along with it.

That is not a flaw in the model. It is the model.

Infrastructure works the other way. Its job is to carry your catalog, your storefront and your customer relationships while leaving all of them in your hands. If it disappears, you should lose a vendor, not a business.

Our answer

We put this test to ourselves. If Starchive disappears, you still own the catalog, the brand, the pricing, the customer list and the community. You’d need a new place to meet your audience, and that is all you’d need to find. We don’t take those things in the first place, so there is nothing to hold hostage.