Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Most Rated is a unique music discovery platform where any artist can contribute to our indie music catalogue. Every day, we create playlists categorised by country and genre and live stream them in full, allowing listeners to experience music in real-time, similar to a radio station.

When listeners rate a track, their feedback influences the playlist selection for the next day, ensuring that the most popular tracks rise to the top. This system allows listeners to directly shape the music we all hear. We also provide tools for artists to connect directly with listeners, helping indie artists to monetise their music and grow their fan base.

We think we’re unique on the web. We’re the only platform where playlists are entirely curated by listeners, free from traditional gatekeepers. By utilising open source technology to host our streams, we offer a truly independent and innovative music discovery experience.

Our commitment to supporting artists is what sets us apart. We use a 'user-centric' revenue model, directing listener subscription fees straight to the artists, which particularly benefits smaller and emerging talents. Additionally, we are developing tools to leverage our ratings data for direct listener engagement, enabling artists to connect with fans who love their music.

Our music is scheduled like a radio station, creating a shared listening experience where everyone hears the same tracks simultaneously. Unlike traditional radio, we have no DJs, no ads, and no talking—just pure music curated by our listeners. With a daily rotation of 350-450 tracks, we offer a much richer and more diverse listening experience compared to the 150 tracks typically played on commercial stations.

Yes, we offer a unique hybrid experience between a streamed playlist and Internet radio. Our platform fosters a shared listening environment where listeners cannot skip tracks, creating a communal experience. In the future, we plan to introduce features allowing subscribers to stream individual tracks, including options to save favourite tracks for offline listening.

If it is, it’s a never-ending party! We stream a mix of indie music 24/7 on a fixed schedule, so everyone hears the same music at the same time, fostering a sense of connection between listeners. Currently, these connections happen off-site on social media, but we are exploring ways to integrate this feature into our platform to make the shared listening experience even more like a listening party.

In a sense, yes. Most Rated could be seen as a daily mixtape of indie music, categorised by country or genre, where you can’t skip or fast-forward. Unlike a mixtape curated by an individual artist or DJ, our playlist is curated collectively by listeners.

In a way... When we listen to a jukebox in a public place, we collectively listen to a predefined selection of tracks, with individuals taking turns to select a song. With Most Rated, the selection is done automatically, combining random choices with weights based on listener ratings. Track selection becomes a collaboration between indie artists providing the material and listeners indirectly influencing the playlist through their ratings. It's like an asynchronous jukebox!

No. Artists are not in direct competition with each other. On the contrary, sharing your schedule time with listeners helps bring in an audience that will discover other artists on the stream, creating a creative synergy for everyone.

Yes! Click here to sign up

1. Create an account, ensuring you check the box indicating you are an artist.

2. Sign in with your new account.

3. Click the burger on the top right and visit your artist profile page.

4. Press the ‘Add a Track’ button.

5. Fill in the form. You’ll need to provide an audio file and a title. Optionally, you can include genres and cover artwork.

New tracks will automatically appear the following day. Check your profile page to see when your track is scheduled to play.

There is no vetting process. You don’t need to audition or pitch your tracks. Simply create a free account, and when you upload tracks, they will appear in the rotation from the following day.

Most Rated doesn’t perform any vetting or curation of tracks. However, we reserve the right to remove any track at any time for any reason, such as if it contravenes copyright or contains content that we feel is likely to cause harm or offence.

No. Currently uploads don’t appear to work on iPhones but we’ve tested extensively on other platforms and they work in any modern browser that supports HTML5.

No. As long as you own the rights to your music and/or have permission from the rights holders, you are free to contribute.

No. As long as you own the rights to your music and/or have permission from the rights holders, you are free to contribute. However, you are responsible for ensuring that you are not contravening any prior agreements with distributors. Please make sure you have read your previous agreements and our licence agreement.

Not yet – if you require this please contact us.

Yes, you can! Rating your own track is a good way to give it an initial boost. Just keep in mind that having the highest number of stars overall doesn’t lead to any prizes; the goal is to find new listeners. We won’t show you on your own listener leaderboard, so it’s perfectly fine to rate yourself!

No, there is no limit to how many tracks you can upload! However, to ensure fairness to all artists, there is a cap on how many tracks an artist can have in the schedule at any given time. If you have a large catalogue, it might take several days for all your tracks to appear, especially if the initially selected ones are popular with fans, as they will be chosen more often.

No, we welcome your ten minute long Prog masterpiece! However there is a reason why the 3:30 radio standard evolved; it tends to represent a good trade-off for most listeners. Also bear in mind that the selection algorithm will take the amount of airplay into consideration when calculating your playlist position, so longer tracks are at a slight disadvantage compared to shorter tracks with the same rating.

No! We welcome music from all genres and from all around the world. As long as you own the copyright to your song and can sign the licence agreement, you’re good to go.

For now, we’re disallowing covers to avoid potential copyright issues. Please only upload music that you have permission for, control the rights to, and are able to sign the licence agreement for.

For track uploads, we support popular web, consumer and professional media formats. Examples include WAV, AIFF, MP3, 3GP, AAC, AVI, FLV, MP4 and MPEG-2.

For track imagery, we support JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, AVIF, TIFF and SVG.

If there is a format that you’ve found does not work, please contact us.

Virtually no one leaves one-star ratings. In fact, 98% of ratings are 3 stars or above, with 80% being 5 stars. Our data also shows that rating scores tend to improve over time, indicating that our format encourages repeat listens and allows music to grow on our listeners. This contrasts with the modern trend of skipping tracks that don’t immediately resonate within the first ten seconds.

Yes, you can. On your profile, we display the most active listeners, measured by the total number of stars they’ve given and their average rating.

We’re working on ways for you to reach out to your active listeners by providing tools that trigger set engagements when they rate you. For example, we plan to offer prompts for listeners to follow you on social media, join your mailing list, buy your merchandise, and more. Watch this space!

Yes, we provide stats on a per-track basis that show how many times your track was played on Most Rated, broken down by playlist, and how that corresponds to the ratings you’ve received. You can see how the ratings change over time and cross-reference this with your promotional efforts on social media to gauge the impact of your promotion on ratings.

We currently don’t have a way to collect and cross-reference this data from our streaming software, but we are working on it and expect to provide this feature soon.

It’s easy to get started. Simply press the 'Listen Now' button located at the bottom of every screen. No downloads or sign-ups required – just start listening now! The music continues to play even as you navigate between pages, allowing you to enjoy your tunes while reading or exploring the site.

We update our schedules daily, and the playlist for the currently selected channel is visible at the bottom of every screen. Simply open the drawer, and you’ll see which tracks are scheduled, along with their corresponding times in your local timezone. Additionally, the player at the bottom displays the artist currently playing.

Yes! On each channel's homepage, you'll find a line-up of the top twenty artists based on their overall ratings from the last two weeks. Simply select a playlist from the menu at the top of the screen, and you'll discover who the Most Rated artists are in that category.

We’re preparing to launch specific streams based on genres, so you’ll soon be able to listen to the Most Rated UK reggae, Most Rated Polish jazz and Most Rated Welsh rap… the possibilities are endless!

No and this is by design! The playlist operates on a fixed schedule, similar to a radio station, to allow artists to promote their airtime and create an appointment for listeners. However, we are exploring the possibility of offering this feature to paid subscribers, which would generate revenue for artists.

Each channel’s playlist updates daily – so new ratings and tracks will start to influence from the following day.

We believe that the standard of music on Most Rated is broadcast quality. This is largely because the artists are extremely talented and set themselves a high bar; but because of the way our unique ratings system works we promote the Most Rated tracks ahead of others and this tends to favour more popular music.

Currently we support MP3 quality 128kps. In future if we see demand for it we are capable of streaming in higher quality / bandwidth.

Not yet, but it’s something cool we’d like to do for subscribers down the tracks. Stay tuned!

We do not have plans to develop a native app that would necessitate access via the App Store or Google Play Store. However, in most modern browsers, you can add our website to your home screen, effectively bookmarking it on your device for easy access

While we do not currently offer a dedicated SONOS app or service, we plan to introduce one in the future. Stay tuned for updates!

Fantastic! Simply click on the track image, and you'll be directed to the artist's profile, where you can find links to their social media accounts and explore more of their tracks.

When you visit an artist’s profile, or see them featured on the homepage, we display the next upcoming airtime in blue, shown in your local timezone. We also publish the schedules on a daily basis so you can see what’s scheduled for the entire day and plan accordingly.

When you rate a track, you’re giving valuable feedback to the artist who has shared their creation with you. Seeing their star count increase is really motivating for artists, making it an easy way to support them.

Rating a track also affects its likelihood of being selected for future playlists. Our selection algorithm weights tracks based on ratings data, so the more stars a track has, the more likely it is to appear—hence the term "Most Rated" tracks! By rating, you are collaboratively curating the playlist with hundreds of other listeners.

Finally, we use this data to calculate how to split your subscription contribution between artists. This way, you reward only the artists you like, not just those who are doing best overall.

You can rate each track once per day, so tune in every day to boost your favourite music!

We display a daily chart of the top twenty trending tracks. These are tracks whose ratings are growing the fastest—not necessarily those with the highest overall number of stars. To maintain a position in the chart, a track needs to keep receiving an increasing number of ratings each day. For example, if you gain 5 stars today, 10 tomorrow, and 20 the next day, your popularity is growing, and you are ‘trending’. However, if your track consistently gets 100 stars every day, while that’s great, it’s not showing growth beyond 100 each day, so it wouldn’t necessarily be as ‘HOT’ as tracks that are growing. This system allows new bands and listeners to influence the chart, preventing early starters from dominating.

We display a gig poster-style line-up of the top twenty artists in each channel, based on the total overall ratings from all their tracks over the last fortnight. This line-up evolves and changes slowly on a daily basis. Keep rating tracks to boost these artists for everyone to see!

We show a leaderboard on each artist’s profile of the listeners who have given the highest ratings to that artist. Since listeners need to be present and actively listening to the stream when rating, this indicates strong engagement and genuine feedback. We believe that the total number of stars given is a clearer indication of which listeners are enjoying your music than metrics like the total number of streams.

While having more stars does boost a track, the boost needs to be sustained by multiple users to have a lasting effect. Therefore, one person rating a track daily isn’t going to make a disproportionate difference when many listeners are rating. We monitor ratings and accounts to ensure they are not automated, so you can trust that the number of stars reflects genuine listener popularity.

Additionally, we use a ‘user-centric’ model for revenue allocation. Each subscriber’s subscription revenue is allocated only to the artists they have rated. This means that even if you rate a track, it won’t affect someone else’s revenue allocation. As a result, there isn’t any incentive to automate ratings other than to boost your position on the line-up.

It’s okay to not enjoy a track on its first listen. Our data shows that when users don’t rate a track five stars, 72% of the time they subsequently rate it higher, indicating that music often 'grows' on our listeners. If you rate a track one or two stars, your rating won’t be shown to artists, so there’s no risk of offending anyone. Remember, you can only upvote and there is no downvote. While the average rating is a factor in the algorithm, rating a track one star still contributes to its overall total.

• HOT: This badge indicates one of the top twenty trending tracks today, meaning it’s among the fastest growing in popularity on the site. It’s buzzy!

• NEW: A track is marked as new if it hasn’t been rated yet or if it’s less than a week old on the site.

• RARE: A rare track hasn’t been selected for the playlist in over a fortnight. This might be because the artist has other more popular tracks or because it has already received some airtime and has been de-prioritised by the algorithm. Don’t miss the chance to listen and rate—rare tracks are likely to become hot if you rate them!

• GOLD: This badge is for one of our all-time most rated tracks. It’s proven popular with listeners over time, making it a real hit! Don’t miss the chance to listen and rate to keep it in the hall of fame!

An account is necessary to participate fully in the platform, allowing you to rate tracks and connect with artists and other listeners.

Yes! It’s quick and easy just follow this link

Currently, you’ll need to contact us to reset or change your password. We know it’s not ideal, but as a lean start-up, we’ve prioritised the music-related parts of the project. We’re working on a way to let you do this yourself in the future.

Visit your listener profile, where you’ll see a placeholder avatar of headphones and your first initial next to your name. Click the headphones and browse for a file to use as your avatar.

Your profile is private and we don’t share any personal contact details, even with artists. We show artists your account first name and avatar when you rate one of their tracks three stars or above. We use this data point to begin to identify when a connection between a listener and artist begins – with liking the music – and will help provide ways for the artist to engage you in future through the platform.

We don’t sell or share any personal contact details, even with artists. Your privacy is important to us and we are committed to protecting your data.

While much of the data we collect is not personally identifiable, if you provide your real first name we will surface this on the platform. For example we show artists your first name if you rate one of their tracks a three or more. If you upload a personally identifiable avatar, combined with your first name you may become identifiable. Therefore please consider how comfortable you are sharing your real first name and likeness before entering this information into your profile. We never surface or share your e-mail address and don’t collect your last name.

Please read our privacy policy

Please contact us and we’ll be able to assist.

In a user-centric subscription model, artist remuneration is calculated individually for each subscriber. This means that only the artists you've rated will receive income from your subscription, and the amount they receive is directly proportional to the number of stars you gave them that month. For instance, if you pledge £10 a month and rate only one artist, that artist would receive £10. However, if you rate one artist 10 stars and a second artist 20 stars, the first artist would receive £3.33 and the second artist £6.67. If you rated five artists with one hundred stars each, they would each receive £2 (all illustrations subject to our fees).

This differs from most mainstream platforms where all streaming activity is pooled globally and an artist’s remuneration is calculated from everyone’s overall preferences. This tends to favour bigger artists / major labels less than independents.

According to the Music Gateway royalties calculator, for most mainstream streaming platforms, you’d need approximately 30,000 streams to receive £100, depending on the platform. In contrast, under our model, if just ten individuals pledged ten pounds a month and rated you exclusively, you’d receive the same amount. However, in practice, listeners will likely rate several artists each month. So suppose a listener rates twenty artists a month equally and pledges £10, that works out at 50p per band. Therefore, to reach £100, you’d need 200 listeners. For some artists, this is an easier ask; but more importantly, these 200 listeners are liking your music and are people you can target with your music, merch, and concerts.

The amount artists are paid depends on you! On your listener page, you’ll find a slider that allows you to select how much you’d like to contribute to supporting indie music each month and how that amount would be allocated among the artists you’ve liked. This updates in real time, so as the month progresses, you’ll see what proportion of your revenue goes directly to the artists you’ve rated.

You can decide how much you would like to pledge. We are accepting between £5 and £50 a month.

We take a 10% commission from the subscription revenue to cover the costs of the technical infrastructure running the platform. Additionally, we deduct payment processing fees, which vary depending on the card used and the amount pledged.

Currently, subscribing represents patronage towards supporting indie artists and our indie streaming platform. In the future, we aim to offer subscribers a range of features, including:

• Personalised streams: Listen to your favourite tracks.

• Offline access: Take the music with you.

• On-demand: Listen to any track you want, when you want. At present, we're building our future plans based on the assumption that there is demand for what we’re creating. By pledging today, you’re making a no-commitment pledge to support us until we reach a critical mass and can begin charging and distributing to artists.

We offer a monthly billing cycle with no commitment to roll on. You can cancel anytime, and you’ll continue to receive the subscription benefits until the end of the billing cycle.

Absolutely! You can adjust the pledged amount up or down from your listener profile at any time, which will take effect at the start of the next billing cycle.

We can cater for collaborations between artists by creating separate artist accounts that are joinly owned, provided each collaborator has a Most Rated account. In this way we can accurately apportion which stars were for individual artists versus collaborations.

If you have collaborated with an artist not on the platform, you are responsible for seeking permission from them to upload the track and to collect revenue on their behalf. We are not responsible for allocating money between band members or between songwriters / producers.

That’s great! Please contact the artist directly. We are not a label and we don’t manage artists directly. We are a music discovery platform that helps listeners discover artists. Once you’ve found them, start the conversation directly with them.

Please contact us and we’ll be able to help.

Currently, the project is being bootstrapped by its founder. We are building a business model based on listener subscriptions, from which we will take a fee. We are not planning to introduce ads into the stream, so it’s free to listen and free for artists to upload their music.

1. Free promotion – We stream indie music 24/7 to our listeners and promote the Most Rated music, giving artists continuous exposure.

2. Revenue – We ask listeners to pledge a fixed amount every month, which is distributed to artists based on how many ratings each subscriber gave them.

3. Connection – We’re building tools to help artists target the listeners who are rating them, fostering meaningful connections with fans who are more likely to buy from artists, attend shows, and spread the word.

We don’t pay artists per stream or per play on the schedule. Instead, we’re building a model where artists share their music with us on a royalty-free license. We ask listeners to subscribe and apportion this revenue to the artists they personally rated. We believe this approach is fairer for both listeners and artists and has the potential to generate more revenue than the industry-standard per-stream rates, which are often minuscule.

No. Payola is the practice of accepting money to boost one artist over another on radio or playlist selections. On Most Rated, artists can’t pay to be boosted or featured, so there is no Payola. An artist’s prominence on the site is directly related to listener ratings, which are free. We will never allow money to influence opportunities for artists on Most Rated.

Most Rated currently 100% owned by Dan Garland.

You can reach us at mostrated@dangarland.co.uk, @mostrated on X or @mostratedmusic on Instagram