Bodies & roles
The board and the workers do not run Subvert alone. The cooperative draws on its broader membership for several other roles, each filled through its own selection process. These bodies handle work that benefits from being separated from the board and management: distributing ownership, moderating content, reviewing applications, and stewarding the forum.
All of these roles are compensated for the time members spend serving in them.
The Ownership Assembly
The Ownership Assembly is a deliberative body responsible for determining how patronage is weighted each quarter. Patronage is the cooperative's measure of how members contribute to and engage with Subvert: making music, releasing music, buying music, supporting artists, doing the work of running the co-op. The cooperative tracks patronage and issues Ownership Points to members based on it. Ownership Points represent each member's proportional stake in the cooperative.
The Assembly's job is to decide which kinds of patronage activity should count for how much in any given quarter.
Each quarter, twelve members are randomly selected from the full membership by sortition: three from each of the four classes. Any active member in good standing is eligible. Members may serve more than once. Cooperative management facilitates the sortition process and notifies selected members in advance.
Sortition was chosen deliberately. It resists capture by the same voices over time and gives every active member a genuine chance to shape how ownership is distributed.
The Cooperative Moderation Panel
The Cooperative Moderation Panel reviews flagged content under the AI Policy and the Community Standards Policy. The Panel is composed of members drawn from across the membership classes, selected by Worker Members.
Members whose content is flagged have the right to be heard by the Panel and the right to appeal a determination.
The Panel is not a court. It is a peer body operating in the spirit of cooperative principles, with the goal of protecting the integrity of the platform without policing artists' creative processes.
Co-op Curators
Co-op Curators review applications from artists and labels seeking to join the cooperative. Curators are recruited from the membership, are compensated for their time, and operate strictly using the published Co-op Acceptance Criteria.
Curators do not consider personal taste, judgment of artistic merit, or the size of an applicant's audience. The job is to confirm that an applicant is a working music artist or active label whose work is suitable for the platform, and that the work is consistent with our AI Policy.
Forum Moderators
The Subvert Forum has its own moderators, separate from the Cooperative Moderation Panel. Forum Moderators handle the day-to-day work of keeping community conversations productive, on-topic, and aligned with our Community Standards. They are members themselves, compensated for their time.
The Board Observer
In addition to the elected board, our investment terms include a non-voting Board Observer seat. The Observer can attend board meetings but cannot vote on board matters or direct the cooperative's decisions. The current Observer is John Garry, representing the Garry Elevator Fund.