Entries from July 2008 ↓

David Rose who writes for KnowTheMusicBiz builds another case for allowing music fans to download MP3s for free. He says -

In a very unscientific test, I selected 10 of my favourite albums that have been released in the last year or so. I then checked the websites of those 10 bands* to see if they had a MP3 download store. Surprisingly only three (Big Head Todd, Kings of Leon and Matthew Ryan) had any MP3’s available for download at all. A quick check of the websites from several popular independent artists in my area found none of them had MP3 downloads available. Unfortunately several of the local artists didn’t even have their own website.

He goes on to point services like Musicane, Indie911 and easybe that allow musicians to ’sell’ their music from within other sites like MySpace.

What we find even more strange that not many musicians on MySpace use the free download facility available on MySpace. Why not let your fans get your music? They will only appreciate it more and spread the word about you to your friends, maybe even share it with their friends thanks to the numerous ways to share it straight from their music players (via a PC of course).

Interesting this week David’s post is the second one to talk about giving away music, digital audio insider called for a debate on how it is best for musicians to give away their music. Amongst the comments on the digital audio insider blog two stand out,

Someone from universal indie records says -

I’d rather give the music away to create that fanbase in the hope that down the line they’d be willing to purchase something.

The way we see things is of course how Colie Brice captures it so well by saying

“Inspiring patronage is the only hope.. Whether giving away free files or playing live..”.

Jordan Grodecki writing for Digital Music Future tells us about the success Coldplay are having with releasing their music online.

Coldplay, who released their album for free streaming on a variety of website, including their myspace, are having some serious success with sales. HMV and other retailers are stating shock at the sheer number of pre-orders, and downloads for the single on iTunes have topped 800,000, a phenominal amount I’m sure you’ll agree!

Jordan go on to say -

What does this tell us? The internet is an effective promotion tool, even when used to stream the entire album! I wish more record companies would get that into their skulls!

I guess that says it all. Jordan, thanks for putting it so nicely.

macleans.ca has a report about honour system for payments working out wonders for a bakery. Here’s a snippet from the story.

John Bergen, a former potter, has two bakeries, both of them built inside old gas stations, both of them running on the honour system. Customers serve themselves then decide how much they owe with nothing but their own conscience to enforce payment. Last year, the bakeries — one in Preston, Ont., the other in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont. — grossed $1.2 million in combined sales.

“You want a coffee?” says Bergen, explaining how the set-up works. “You serve yourself. You want a bagel? You grab a bagel. You want the bagel toasted? You go over to the little bagel cutter. You put the bagel in the toaster. You put your own cream cheese on.” A blackboard lists the prices. A coffee is $1.50. A bagel is 75 cents. Customers take what they want, then do the math in their head. To simplify arithmetic, all prices are rounded to the nearest quarter and the tax is included. “Right in front is a fare box that we got from a streetcar. You throw your money in the cash box and walk out.”There are no cash registers. There’s no tip jar. They don’t have Interac and they don’t take credit cards. “It really attracts A types,” says Bergen. Customers can be in and out in one minute without ever interacting with staff, he says.

So if such an honour system can work for bakery, what stops us from making it work for musicians, writers and artists?

Last.fm announced their revenue sharing program that allows unsigned artists to get a share of last.fm’s ad revenue. There has been a lot of discussion on blogosphere about it, here are two of the differing schools of thought.

The first says, its a ground breaking program that will help a lot of unsigned artists to get some cash to continue their work.

Since providing unsigned artists with the option to join the Artist Royalty Program in January, over 450,000 tracks have been uploaded to Last.fm and offered for free-on-demand streaming.

The second opinion was voiced on the register where it was reported that artists and some of the indie labels are complaining about the lack of transparency about the revenue shares.

Last.fm doesn’t pay most independents, and where it does, you’d need a microscope to see the royalties.

We think that indie musicians should use an excellent service like Last.fm independent of whether Last.fm’s revenue share gives them a decent amount of money or not. After all, the exposure that Last.fm can bring to an independent artists is almost as big as that on MySpace, if not more.

The biggest pro in favour of using Last.fm is that an artist’s music can be ‘accidentally’ discovered by listeners. And that is a big boon for artists working on increasing their exposure. This discovery mechanism though can be found on a lot of other services like Pandora (US only), and Imeem.

The revenue from Last.fm, if good, is then just an icing on the cake. And with last.fm taking the lead, I am sure other services will have to provide some means of revenue sharing too.

What we’d love to see though is these services providing a way for fans to ‘give something back’ to the artists. We are sure the day is not far though.

Norine Braun raised $4,280 from fans to continue her work on her album. Now that is so cool. We just hope such fan fund raisers could be more organised. Of course, Karmafan is an attempt to help artists organise these fund raisers as well.

Norine used the idea of pre sale signed CDs and selling pre-releases. I’d like to talk about another idea for such a fund raiser.

Imagine a gig where musicians play some new music and ask for support to help take the record into studio. The patron could be implicitly promised a freely available download when the recording is complete.

To make such a scenario a reality we at Karmafan built the idea of sending money to artists via SMS text messages. So you are at a gig, you like the music and send an SMS sending money to the artist. You know that when the recording is complete you can download it for free anyway.

We think such a solution is not far from being adopted, and we are providing a very useful tool for musicians to make this a reality. We are patiently waiting for musicians to come forward and try our suggested solution. If you are a musician and want to talk more about these ideas, do contact us, or leave a comment here.

Thanks to Victor from Four Stones for pointing out the story about Norine. It surely inspired this blog entry.