Artist guide

How to set up your artist workspace, upload music, order cards, and read your fan numbers. No tech background required.

Where things live: dashboard at /artist on staging.slappcard.com, shop at /purchase (same catalog as /shop).

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How this connects

Your catalog, cards, and dashboard are one loop — not four separate products.

1. Catalog — In Music, you create releases and upload audio. Only published releases with audio attached are what fans can hear.
2. Mint scope — When you buy a pack, we mint a unique slap code for every card. New shop packs default to your whole artist library (every published track with audio). Some older or custom cards are scoped to a single release or single track — fans unlock exactly that.
3. Card — Each card prints a QR (and NFC on Boss Pack) plus a short slap code. Scan or tap opens /c/\{code\}.
4. Gate — The fan enters an email (or claims the card to their account). That email lands in your Fans tab.
5. Streams & emails — Plays count as streams on Overview and Analytics. Unlocks and the mailing list update automatically. You do not configure tracking.

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1. What Slappcard is

Slappcard is a physical NFC/QR card with your art on it. Fans tap it to their phone or scan the code and land on a private listen page — your music, downloads, and a player that fills the phone. There's no public storefront or algorithm; the only way in is a card or its unique link.

As an artist, that gets you:

• A real email list. Every email-gate unlock captures the fan's email into your dashboard — yours to export, not locked in a platform.
• Private hosting. Upload tracks once; they play through a card-only player with downloads included.
• Numbers that matter. Streams, unlocks, fan counts, in one place.
• Exclusivity by construction. Nothing is sitting on a public page to be scraped or algorithmically buried — it's gated behind the card.

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2. Getting started

2.1 Create your account

1. Go to staging.slappcard.com.
2. Tap the account icon (top-right) — that's sign in and sign up in one place.
3. Use your email and a password, or Google if you'd rather not remember another password.
4. You'll land on a short welcome screen: "How will you use Slappcard?" (/onboarding).

2.2 Tell us you're an artist

Choose Artist, then fill in:

• Display name — how we greet you in the app. We prefill this from your sign-up name when we can.
• Artist name — your stage name or project name. This is what fans see on the unlock and listen page.
• URL slug (optional) — a short handle for your artist stub, like my-project. The screen previews /a/\{slug\}. If that handle is taken, we'll suggest slug-2. If it matches an existing imported page, we'll tell you to ask the team for a claim link instead of creating a duplicate.

Hit Create workspace, and your artist workspace is created. You'll be dropped into your dashboard at /artist with a short setup list: upload a track, add a bio, order a pack.

If you chose Listen, you'll try the Intro Slappcard (when it's seeded on this deploy) so you can feel the unlock flow, then your library at /account.

2.3 Already have an account, or chose "Listen" first?

No problem — you can add an artist workspace any time:

1. Open your Library (/account) — the empty library shows Become an artist, and it's also under Profile & settings.
2. You can also create a workspace from /artist if you land there without one.
3. Enter your artist name (and optional slug) and hit Create artist.

Once your workspace exists, everything — releases, audio, pack orders, fan emails — attaches to it automatically.

2.4 Already on Slappcard from the old site?

If you had a page on the previous site, don't create a new workspace. The team will send you a one-time claim link (/claim/…). Sign in, confirm "Is this you?", and you'll land in /artist with your imported catalog and old /\{slug\} card URLs still working.

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3. Your dashboard

Your dashboard at /artist is your command center. The sidebar has two groups:

Workspace

Tab	What it does
Overview	Your workspace snapshot: key numbers, artist info, open orders, and a "Next up" list of suggested actions
Analytics	Streams, unlocks, tracks with audio, top tracks, and your account health
Artist page	Your name, bio, website, and contact info — saved for your private page
Music	Your releases and tracks — create, upload audio, publish
Fan preview	The same listen page fans see after unlock (skips the email gate)

Business

Tab	What it does
Orders	Your pack purchases, minting status, shipping, and a default-address form
Shipping	Your default mailing address for pack fulfillment
Fans	Every email collected through your cards, with CSV export
Shop packs	Shortcuts to the shop (/purchase) and tour packs (/tour-packs)

Two handy shortcuts:

• Preview as fan (top-right of the dashboard on larger screens, and on Overview) — opens Fan preview.
• Public stub (on Overview) — a simple placeholder at /a/{your-slug}. It is not a public music storefront. Your tracks stay card-gated.

If you ever see "No workspace yet", create one on that screen — or ask the Slappcard team and we'll send a claim link if you already had a page.

If a label has been given read-only access to your workspace, Overview shows a "Shared access" note. They can see metrics. They cannot edit your page, upload audio, or export fan emails.

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4. Managing your catalog

Your catalog lives in the Music tab. It's organized in two levels: releases (albums, singles, EPs) and tracks (the songs inside them).

4.1 Creating a release

1. Go to Music in your dashboard.
2. In the "New release" box, enter the title.
3. Pick the kind: album, single, or ep.
4. Click Add release.

Your new release appears in the list right away. New releases are published automatically — but fans only hear tracks that have audio uploaded, so nothing shows up empty.

4.2 Adding tracks

1. Click the + on a release to open it.
2. In the "Add track" row, type the track title.
3. Optional: attach an audio file right there — you can also upload later.
4. Click Add track.

Accepted audio: mp3, wav, m4a, aac, flac, ogg, aiff (or any file the browser marks as audio).

4.3 Uploading audio

Each track has an Upload button (it says Replace if the track already has audio). Click it and pick your audio file.

• You'll see a "Needs audio" badge on tracks without a file, and "Audio ready" once a file is attached.
• To swap a file, just hit Replace and pick the new one.
• To take a file off a track (without deleting the track), use Clear audio.

The golden rule: fans only hear tracks that are both on a published release and have audio attached. A track can exist without audio for as long as you like — it just won't play until it's ready.

4.4 Setting track order

Tracks play in the order they appear in the list — the order you added them. Fan preview and unlock pages follow the same order.

Tip for getting the order right: add tracks in the order you want fans to hear them. Fine-grained reordering (drag-and-drop) is coming soon. Until then, if you need to switch two tracks, delete the one that's out of place and re-add it.

4.5 Publishing and unpublishing

Each release shows a published or draft badge. You control it with the Publish / Unpublish button:

• Published — the release is eligible to appear on fan unlock pages.
• Draft — the release is hidden from fans. You can keep working on it and publish later.

4.6 Cover art and player theme

Each release can have cover art (jpg / png / webp) via the cover field on that release. The listen page uses the release cover, then falls back to your workspace cover on Artist page.

Player theme on the same release is the look fans get — Colorful, Bright, Muted, Deep, or Dark. It tints the palette pulled from the cover. Fans cannot change it. Pick the mood that matches the record; Preview as fan to confirm.

Other release and track actions:

• Rename — retitle a release or track any time.
• Delete release — removes the release and all of its tracks. It asks you to confirm first, but there's no undo, so make sure you mean it.
• Delete (on a track) — removes a single track.

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5. Understanding card packs

Slappcard sells packs — bundles of 100 physical cards. All three packs come with the full digital setup: hosting, the private listen page, email capture, and your tracklist with downloads. They differ in the card itself.

Pack	Price	Cards	Shop slug	The card
QR Pack	$100	100	/product/slapp-pack-1-qr	Scan-ready plastic cards — the QR on the back opens your music
Metallic Pack	$125	100	/product/slapp-pack-1-metallic	Same QR power with a reflective, metallic face
Boss Pack	$150	100	/product/slapp-pack-2-boss	Premium cards with QR + NFC — fans can tap or scan

Every pack includes:

• 100 custom Slappcards with your design
• Live QR codes (your links are active within 24 hours of ordering)
• Hosted tracklist + listen/download page
• A branded artist page
• Email capture on every scan

You can order 1–5 packs at a time in a single order, and mix pack types in one basket. When you're building your order you also pick a colorway for the card face (OG Yellow, Slapp Yellow, Midnight, Hazard Red, Purple Rain, Lime Light, Off Rose), and you can design your card on the shop page.

Need a bigger tour run or a custom quote? Shop packs also links to Tour packs (/tour-packs) — that's a conversation with us, not a self-serve checkout.

Designing your card

On the shop (/purchase#design — /design and /design-lab send you here too), scroll to "Design your card". You can:

1. Choose landscape or portrait.
2. Pick a front layout — OG Slapp, Album Art, Boombox, OG Portrait, Sleeve Portrait, or Split Portrait.
3. Upload album artwork (jpg / png / webp) and optionally Generate design from art — we pull colors from the cover for the card face.
4. Fill in artist / brand name, project title, and tagline.
5. Pick a stock colorway or a custom background color.
6. Give the design a name, add an optional email, and Save design.

The back of the card is the fixed scan side. QR destination and slap code are assigned automatically when your batch is printed — you don't type those in.

We use your saved design when we prep the pack for print (CR80, 85.6 × 54 mm, like a credit card). The design is linked to this browser so our studio can review it.

Card artwork vs listen-page cover: the designer artwork is for the physical card. The photo fans see on the listen player is separate — upload it on Artist page (workspace cover) and on each release in Music.

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6. Purchasing packs

6.1 Checkout

1. Go to the shop (/purchase or /shop).
2. Pick your pack type, colorway, and quantity, then Add to basket.
3. Open your basket (/cart) and hit Checkout.

A couple of things to know:

• You need an artist workspace to check out — packs are tied to your artist profile. If you don't have one yet, the shop and cart will point you to create it first (/account).
• Your basket is saved on this device, so you can come back to it later.
• Checkout happens on Stripe's secure payment page (credit/debit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc.). Your order is locked to the signed-in account email, so it shows up under Orders in your dashboard automatically.
• If online checkout isn't available on a given deploy, the cart offers a consultation instead — we can still take the order by hand.

6.2 Shipping address

Your default shipping address lives under Shipping (/artist/shipping) and also under Orders → Default shipping. Save it once and it automatically pre-fills at checkout every time you order. If you're moving or playing shows, update it there so your cards always arrive at the right place.

You can also edit the same address from your Library profile (/account) once a workspace is linked.

6.3 What happens after you pay (fulfillment)

Here's the journey of an order, which you can watch in real time under Orders:

1. Payment — Stripe confirms your charge. The confirmation page (/checkout/success) says "Thank you" once minting is done, or "Order received" while we confirm payment.
2. Codes minted — we generate a unique slap code for every card in your pack. Each code is the key that unlocks your music.
3. QR assets — a QR image is generated for each code (this is what's printed on your cards).
4. Needs assets / ready to print — if tracklist, artwork, or design is still missing, the order may sit on needs assets until we have what we need to print.
5. In production — your cards get printed with your design.
6. Shipped — cards leave for your shipping address, with tracking when available.

Open any order to see its status, the ship-to address, how many cards were minted (and how many are claimed vs. unclaimed), and a timeline of events. When your cards ship, you'll see the carrier and tracking number right in the order detail.

Statuses you'll see include Paid · minting cards, Paid · codes ready, Paid · needs assets, Paid · ready to print, Paid · in production, and Shipped.

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7. What fans see

The card

Each card carries:

• A QR code (and on Boss Pack, an NFC chip too — tap or scan, both work).
• A short slap code printed under the QR on the white edge — this is the card's unique code (like hL66uYyqEKyafB). It's the same code as in the link https://staging.slappcard.com/c/hL66uYyqEKyafB.

The unlock

1. Fan taps the card to their phone or scans the QR — it opens /c/\{code\}.
2. They see your artist name and "Enter email to listen", plus a quick bot check.
3. They enter their email and hit Unlock — done.

If new unlocks are paused for your workspace (see abuse ratio below), the gate says so. Existing fans keep their access.

The listen player (what they hear)

After unlock, fans land in a full-phone listen page — rebuilt to fill an iPhone viewport, not a long scrolling site.

You control:

• Artist name and workspace cover (Artist page)
• Which published tracks with audio they hear (Music)
• Track titles, order, release covers, and player theme (Music)
• Card face art and color (shop designer — that's the physical card)

Automatic (you don't configure these):

• Palette — if a cover is on the release or workspace, the page pulls colors from it and applies your chosen mood.
• EQ backdrop — while a track plays, a motion/EQ layer follows the audio. It's part of the player, not a setting.
• Player chrome — play / pause, previous / next, volume, scrub bar, lock-screen / headphone controls, and (on Chromium) a pop-out mini player. Download buttons follow the card's stream/download setting.

The player shows your artist name, the cover, now playing, and the tracklist. Plays, completions, skips, and downloads land on Analytics. Their email is already in your Fans tab.

Bio, website, and second contact are saved on Artist page. The live unlock page focuses on the listen player — it does not currently show bio, links, or comments on that chrome. Preview as fan matches that listen page.

Fan comments can be toggled on Artist page ("moderation coming soon"). Comments are not shown on the live listen page yet. Leave the toggle off unless the team has asked you to turn it on.

Coming back

• Keep listening — the browser remembers the unlock for this card, so they can return without re-entering their email. They can tap Lock to clear that session.
• Library — claimed cards (account-claim) live in the fan's Library (/account) on every device. A "save this email-gate unlock to my account" button is not currently on the live listen page (coming soon).

Other card types

• Account-claim cards ask fans to sign in and Claim the card instead of entering an email. Claimed cards live permanently in their library.
• Legacy cards (from before the current system) can open a download-only experience. Newer cards use the stream + download player.
• Some cards are scoped to a single release or single track — fans unlock exactly that, not your whole catalog. Shop packs default to your full published library.

The golden rule: your music stays private

There is no public storefront. /a/\{slug\} is a stub, not a catalog. Your tracks are never listed on a page anyone can browse to. The only way in is a physical card (or its unique link) — that's what makes each card feel special.

Try it yourself

Use Preview as fan (/artist/preview) any time. That view skips the email gate and opens the same listen player fans get after unlock — cover, theme, tracklist, stream and download. Plays in preview are not counted as fan streams. A real card still has the email (or claim) gate in front.

One thing to keep healthy: your fan-to-card ratio

We watch the ratio of fan emails to cards issued. It's how we keep cards special and stop link-sharing abuse. If unlocks ever look way out of line with the cards you've printed, your dashboard will show a warning on the abuse ratio stat (ok / warned / cutoff) and new unlocks may pause — existing fans keep their access. Practically: hand out cards to real fans, don't post your card link in public channels, and you'll never have to think about it. The team can always review and unlock your account if something looks off — just reach out (Section 10).

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8. Viewing your analytics

Your numbers live in Overview and Analytics. Everything updates automatically — no setup.

Number	Where	What it means
Plays / streams	Overview, Analytics	Plays in the window you pick (14 / 30 / 90 days on Analytics). Unique listeners sit under Plays
Completion	Analytics	Share of plays that reached the end of a track
Downloads	Analytics	Track downloads and full-album downloads
Scans / unlocks	Analytics	Landings on /c/… vs emails entered
Unique fans	Overview, Analytics	Distinct emails collected; Analytics also shows 7-day and 30-day new fans
Cards	Overview, Analytics	Issued vs active vs unclaimed
Revenue	Analytics	Paid pack orders for this workspace
Top tracks	Overview, Analytics	Most-played songs
Abuse ratio	Overview	The email-to-card health number (Section 7) — you want this to stay ok

Analytics charts are counts only — no raw emails. Conversion is a funnel: scans → email unlocks → plays → completes → downloads. Legacy Wix aggregates can overlay as “before launch” when we imported them.

Your full mailing list is in the Fans tab: every email, the card code that unlocked it, and the date. Hit Export CSV to download the whole list (email,card,createdAt) and use it anywhere (email tools, label outreach, your newsletter).

Quick ideas once you have numbers:

• Compare unlocks vs. streams — if unlocks are high but streams are low, fans may not be hitting play; track titles and a cover (ask the team) help the player feel like your record.
• Use top tracks to know what to lead with next time.
• Export your fan emails after a show and send a thank-you note — the people who scan your cards are your realest fans.

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9. Managing your profile

Your profile is the face of your private page. Edit it in the Artist page tab (/artist/page):

Field	Notes
Field	Notes
-------	-------
Cover image	Workspace fallback art for the listen player when a release has no cover of its own
Artist name	The name fans see on the unlock and listen page (2–80 characters)
Short bio	One or two lines (up to 800 characters) — stored on your private page
Website	Your site or link (up to 200 characters)
Second contact	Instagram handle, phone, or an extra email (up to 120 characters)
Fan comments	A toggle to let fans comment — moderation coming soon, and comments are not on the live listen page yet. Off by default

Hit Save page. Set per-release covers and player theme on Music. Use Fan preview to hear the listen page as fans will.

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10. Getting help

Three ways to reach us:

1. Card support (for you or your fans)

The Support page (/support) handles anything card-related:

• Card won't open or scan
• Lost or damaged card (remint or replacement code)
• Wrong music or artist on an unlock
• Claim / account help
• Anything else

The form asks for your slap code — you can scan the QR from your card right on the page, type the short code, or paste a full /c/… link. A photo of the card is optional but helps if the code is damaged.

2. Free consultation

Anywhere on the site, look for Free consultation / Contact — it opens a short form ("Let's get you set up"):

1. Your name, email, and (optional) phone.
2. A message about your project — pack size, show date, custom artwork, whatever you're planning.
3. Send request, and we follow up by email, usually within one business day.

Prefer to just pick a time? If a booking link is configured, you'll see book a time on Cal.com right there. Otherwise we'll email you — no booking link required.

3. Email us directly

slapcardz@gmail.com — for anything: white-glove setup, custom packs, cover art, affiliate questions, or just to talk about your next drop.

If a paid order doesn't show up, the checkout page also points to support@slappcard.com and /support.

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Quick reference

You want to…	Go to
Manage releases, tracks, orders, fans	/artist
Analytics	/artist/analytics
Edit name, bio, links	/artist/page
Upload music	/artist/music
Preview name / bio / tracklist	/artist/preview
Pack orders and fulfillment	/artist/orders
Default shipping address	/artist/shipping
Fan emails + CSV export	/artist/fans
Restock shortcuts	/artist/shop
Order packs	/purchase or /shop
See one pack	/product/slapp-pack-1-qr, /product/slapp-pack-1-metallic, /product/slapp-pack-2-boss
Design your card	/purchase#design (/design and /design-lab redirect here)
Tour / custom quote	/tour-packs
Basket and checkout	/cart
After you pay	/checkout/success
Your library (claimed cards, become an artist)	/account
First-time welcome	/onboarding
Card support	/support
How fans unlock a card	/c/\{code\}
Public artist stub (not a storefront)	/a/\{slug\}
Book a consultation or reach the team	Consultation form on the site, or slapcardz@gmail.com