Entries from February 2008 ↓

The Register doesn’t think much of the idea of paying filesharers for distributing music, but filesharers are contributing a valuable resource to artists. Bandwidth costs money, and people who share music are giving artists a slice of their upload speed. Now, it does seem a bit odd as an idea, but sometimes a person who decides to continue to seed is doing so because they’re a real fan of the artist, and they’re making it possible for others to gain access to the music. This doesn’t help much in the current system - where piracy means less sales - but for artists who embrace the ideals of Karmafan it means that their work is being distributed for free. So maybe it’s not such a crazy idea that filesharers will eventually get something back for sharing the things they like.

Music execs claim that we need them to separate the wheat from the chaff:

Ted Mico, the head of digital strategy at Interscope, defended the majors by saying that “anyone who has spent an hour or a day listening to demos understands the labels’ place in the food chain”; that is, labels provide both filtering and then marketing of music. Without their help, promising artists would be lost in a sea of noise and would be almost impossible for music lovers to discover. [from Ars Technica]

It’s nice to know the labels are there to make sure that we only get to listen to the very best music…

WIRED had a piece (via AP) on the end of the writers’ strike the other day. An interesting thing about this particular strike was that it was unlikely that the writers actually stopped writing:

I, at least, have been writing almost every day in the exact same way I was - not necessarily on the studio projects I was paid to write, but I’ve been working on my own stuff all along. - Phil Johnston

Writers and other artists will tend to create even when there’s not necessarily a pay-off. They don’t do it just for the money, although it’s nice to get something back when you’ve made something people enjoy.

There are millions of artists out there creating right now who may never get any great return for their work. But the net makes it so much more likely that they can reach people who would enjoy what they have created, and that those fans might want to show their appreciation. We’re only in the very early stages of this interaction, but it will be interesting to see how artists and their fans find new ways to entertain and support each other.

We have released our widget as a Wordpress plugin. A sample is shown on the main page of this blog - just there on the right

The plugin has all the regular features from the widget

1. anonymous one time payments using PayPal or SMS
2. Login to support from your Karmafan account
3. List of fans who have most recently supported the blogger or artist

All you need to do is install the plugin in your wp-content/plugins folder and provide your email address or Karmafan username (if you are already registered) to get the Karmafan widget on your blog.

If you are a new user the plugin auto-magically signs you up and sends you your Karmafan password via email.

Of course the Ajax widget still works for blogger as it did earlier. All you have to do is add a site to your Karmafan account, copy some codes we give you into blogger under Settings -> Template -> Edit HTML section.

US copyright judges began hearing arguments last week in a case over just how small a slice can be given to the people who actually create music. Incredibly, the music industry wants to pay less to artists:

New-media players as Yahoo, Apple and Napster and major record labels agree with one another and want the royalty they pay to the publishers and songwriters to be lowered.

The companies that distribute digitally are pushing to pass on to the artist and publisher about 4% of the cost of a digital download, while the traditional labels are being generous in that they’re willing to give 8%. The publisher and artist then have to split this again, usually 50-50.

When it comes to streaming music, some contend that nothing at all should be paid to the creator. Fast internet connections (and the potential for wirelessly connected mobile devices in the near future which stream all their music) mean that streaming is no longer reserved for tinny internet radio. So it could be possible for a company to only stream music, make money on advertising and pay nothing to the creator of the songs.

On the other side, the National Music Publishers Association is asking for “12.5 cents per song for CDs and 15 cents for digital recordings”, which the other two sides claim will “impose a royalty that kills the proverbial goose and deprives songwriters and publishers of their golden egg”.

Seems to me that the smartest thing for musicians to do is simply turn their backs on the whole thing and do it themselves. It’s no longer that difficult to record and distribute. It might be easier to just sit back and let others take care of the business side of making music, but then it just stands to reason that they’ll take advantage of that. In fact, it’s worth rereading an old article on just how badly labels sometimes like to treat artists: The Problem With Music by Steve Albini

It’s always encouraging to see artists throwing off the shackles of CDs and traditional distribution, and Benn Jordan (The Flashbulb) has chosen to distribute via methods usually seen as the territory of piracy. You can get his latest album here, for instance:

The Pirate Bay

Included with the files is a request that fans donate online:

Who knows if my little business plan here will work to fund new releases, but even failure is better than the crappy label/distributor/retailer system musicians have suffered from for over 50 years.

Check out http://www.alphabasic.com and http://www.theflashbulb.net/