Sway: the whole performer business, connected

Sway is an operating system for independent performers. It gives an artist one public home, a live audience room, direct fan support, a private working Catalog, and a release-and-distribution workflow—without taking control of the performance or the creator’s work.

The product in four connected parts

How Sway works for an audience member

1. Join the correct room. Scan the performer’s Sway QR code or open their room link. A download is not required to use the web experience.
2. Choose what you want to do. Send a music or custom request, leave a direct tip, or boost an already-approved request higher in the crowd signal.
3. Review the amount and authorize payment. Sway does not treat a button tap as payment success. The screen waits for backend and payment-provider confirmation.
4. Follow the outcome. A private receipt shows whether your request, tip, or boost is pending, approved, denied, fulfilled, captured, released, or refunded.

How Sway works for a performer

1. Create one Sway account. Any account can join rooms. Activating Pro Mode adds the performer workspace and public identity to that same account.
2. Build your public presence. Set your handle, name, roles, location, biography, featured media, booking details, social accounts, and prioritized links. When you go live, the same page can route fans into your active room.
3. Start and share a room. Configure the room, minimum support amount, request source, and operating mode; then share the durable QR or link.
4. Run the crowd, not a second job. Pause or resume requests, manually review them, use open-call behavior, or use crowd autopilot for moderated requests. Approve, deny, order, fulfill, report, or remove items while Sway keeps payment state tied to the action.
5. Close with a real recap. Ending a room shuts requests, resolves outstanding holds, calculates captured totals from durable records, and keeps the completed session in room history.

From a master file to a release

1. Add the work to Catalog. Sway preserves the original, its checksum, versions, project ownership, and access permissions. Catalog files stay private unless the owner explicitly shares or exposes them for requests.
2. Work with the right people. Connect collaborators, grant only the permissions they need, exchange files, comment at timecodes, request changes, record approvals, and revoke access.
3. Build and order the release tracks. Start with one verified master, add another verified master for each additional track, and edit or reorder the track list. Add artwork, release and recording titles, artist identity, UPC, per-track ISRCs, explicit flags, languages, label, copyright lines, dates, territories, and recording credits. A single must keep one track; EP and album readiness requires at least two. Track structure locks when rights review starts so sealed evidence cannot silently drift.
4. Clear the rights that apply. Every release readiness check requires independently verified master control, composition control, artwork control, and distribution authorization. Samples, third-party beats, cover songs, performer consent, and AI disclosure are conditional evidence: creators must document them when the facts of the recording require them, but they are not universal requirements for every release.
5. Prepare for delivery. A rights-cleared release becomes ready for a contracted delivery provider. When that integration is active, each destination will keep its own queued, submitted, accepted, live, correction, failure, or takedown state so “published” means provider-confirmed—not merely submitted.

Replacing an existing distributor

Sway’s catalog-transfer design is built around continuity, not a blind re-upload. It will snapshot the source catalog; map artist identities, UPCs, ISRCs, exact metadata, artwork, assets, rights, and destination IDs; stage replacement deliveries; verify overlap and store matching; and only permit an old-provider takedown after every expected release and recording has immutable continuity evidence. A mismatch, rights problem, Content ID conflict, or failed track link must stop the cutover. This cutover is not enabled until provider execution and production continuity proof exist.

Where the publishing product stands

Available in the product: durable original masters, projects, private collaborator connections, immutable file sharing and review, editable ordered multi-recording release drafts built from one verified master per track, artwork, identifiers, territories, per-track credits, sealed rights declarations, independent rights review, readiness checks, public artist profiles, and eligible public release pages.

Still required for the complete DistroKid replacement: a contracted DSP delivery provider, provider callbacks and corrections, store takedowns, royalty-statement ingestion and reconciliation, collaborator split agreements, tax/KYC and payouts, true destination pre-saves, and production-proven catalog transfer. Until those systems exist, Sway keeps delivery and cutover fail-closed.

Money, ownership, and control

What Sway is not

• It is not a jukebox and does not take over the performer’s creative decisions.
• It is not a guarantee that a paid request will be performed.
• It is not a public dump of private Catalog files.
• It is not a claim on creator copyrights.
• It is not a “submitted means live” distributor or a “deployed means working” product.

Start where you are

Fans can join a room immediately. Creators can use the same account as a fan, then activate Pro Mode when they are ready to build a profile, run rooms, manage Catalog, and publish.