Entries Tagged 'Music' ↓

Insound, a online service that allows musicians to sell their albums and merchadise has started a new program called “Give more, Get more“. I quote from their site to explain what the program does -

Every time you buy an MP3 album from Insound (not EPs or singles), Insound will donate $.25 of our take to a touring band. We choose 6 lucky bands that we like, but you get to select the actual artist to earmark your quarter to. Furthermore, should you wish to “tip” additional funds to these great artists, you can add your own tip during checkout.

I found out about the program from a blog post at Idolator. As expected the comments there are raising questions about the central idea of tipping and also how Insound chose these random six bands? There are also nuances that Insound is now owned by Warner and how much can consumers trust them to support Indie musicians. I don’t particularly mind what they do with their quarter, after all it is their money.

On the other hand, what I find most interesting is that a service like Insound is using the idea of tipping to support musicians. Is this an implicit acknowledgement of the need for a patronage system for artists?

There we are - another effort to “sell” music goes under. CLIQ, a service that allows people to buy music that they are listening to on their digital radios. Thanks to The Register for pointing out the news.

The idea behind CLIQ is neat, you are listening to some piece of music on the digital radio, you like, you buy it. So why didn’t it work out? CLIQ blames it on the slow adoption of DAB or Digital radio as we call it. I think there is more to it.

It will be nice to see a Cliq like service for streaming radios on the web. Well, let’s see there already are a few, the oldest one being Magnatune, who keeps 50% cut off what you pay to buy a record.

We at Karmafan believe trying to sell music in such a way as it is profitable for the artists and all the other middlemen in between is a tad hard, if not outright passe.

Let music flow freely, there are numerous channels out there that don’t involve a middleman keeping a cut. Then let fans support the musicians - directly. That’s how the future will be.

David Sedaris talks in an interview how and why he used a tip jar at his book tour, raising $4000 from fans. Here is how David answers the question - You put a tip jar at your book-signing table?

Oh, yes. I would get there two to three hours early, and would sign books until 15 minutes before the reading. And I talk to everyone so I don’t sign that many books in two and a half hours. And then just before you start the reading part you go to the back of the room and you say I will sign your book right now for $5. And that’s how you really make your money because any one in their right mind, if they have a choice between paying $5 and waiting for four hours, would choose to pay $5.

Then once I started doing that, there was no stopping me. Because a lot of time at book stores there’s only one chair in the room and it’s behind the podium. I used to give it to a pregnant woman. I’d say if there’s anyone here who’s on crutches or pregnant, you can have this chair. But then I thought I’m giving away something I could be making money off of. So then I would say, for $20 dollars you can have this chair and be the first person to get your book signed after the reading.

…. It was like a Robin Hood thing. If I said to people, “Oh give me this money, and I’ll give it to charity,” they’re not going to give it to me. I tell people that I’ll spend it on crazy things on myself, and I do do that. But sometimes you go to a public-radio station and there’s an intern who is not getting paid, so you give them $100. Or you’re signing books and there’s someone who looks like they could use $50. So you say, you look like you could use $50, and you give them $50.

Read the full interview where David talks about the tip jar gimmick here on Newsweek (thanks to “Collection Developments” for pointing out the interview).

Now, if we translate this gimmick to the Internet and imagine an musician instead of an author. Where would you use the Karmafan tip jar? Next to where your music is available? Will you mention your Karmafan home page during a concert? On gig posters? On the back of CD covers? With the mp3s that you are making available on the Internet?

Time for a poll on our forum. The question is, “Where will you put your Karmafan home page address?“

Kevin Kelly had some very positive ideas about the value of 1000 True Fans, but today he posted a piece about what happens when you’re an artist who finds they don’t seem to have 1000 fans, as Chris Valenti discovered when he realised his dream and recorded an album?

Every independent music artist shares the same experience. They are excited to record their songs and receive their first 1,000 copies of their new CD. After selling some to their fans, giving out others to their family and friends, and sending out copies to various music industry and media people, they then share another experience every other artist has: What do you do with the other 800 CDs still sitting in your living room?

Find out more at 800cdsthemovie.com or watch the trailer on YouTube.

Why are musicians so fixated on the idea of producing a CD that they’re willing to invest that much money in plastic they then have to sell, when all they need to do is record their work and release it over the Internet?

The Guardian had an article in their G2 section today about how Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of WIRED, is convinced that free is the only way to go:

On the web, the marginal costs of manufacturing and distribution are zero, or close to it. This means that you can now experiment with giving away one thing to sell something else much more than you could in the pre-internet era. The traditional model is of giving 1% of goods away as samples in order to sell 99% of the product; on the web, you can give 99% away as free samples to sell 1%.

When it comes to music, the idea is that a band can gain popularity by giving music away, which creates new fans who will then tell their friends, buy merchandise or attend concerts.

Anderson’s last book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, argued that it’s possible to thrive by appealing to niche markets. His next will argue that the future of economics is inevitably free:

In every industry where the product can be made into a digital file, somebody is, or is going to be, offering you that product for free because the marginal cost of doing so online is heading towards zero. Divorce papers? Free. Books? Music? Free.

He doesn’t see this as negative. Things have changed, as they always have. Money will continue to flow, but now the barriers to being heard and noticed are so much lower, and that has to be a positive environment for creativity.

Check out the full article by Stuart Jeffries at guardian.co.uk.

After releasing a new track - Echoplex - on Facebook yesterday, Trent Reznor made a lot of people very happy today when he made the new NiN album available for free download. High-quality formats such as FLAC, M4A and WAVE are being distributed by torrent.

Reznor announced the release of the slip by thanking his fans: “thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one’s on me”. And of course “all files are 100% DRM-free”. I wonder how soon it will be before that statement will seem anachronistic. It’s still hard to believe that people are paying for files with DRM.

The whole download process is efficient and painless. They’ve really been paying attention to how they and others have done this before, learning from mistakes and making it as easy as possible for their fans to start listening.

Oh, and the album is great, too

It’s as though Reznor and NiN are providing a blueprint for how it should be done…

We’re delighted to welcome progressive independent label Fly Agaric! to Karmafan. Fly Agaric! has been producing really great music since 1996 and had 97,000 downloads in 2007.

Proudly independent, Fly Agaric! has embraced the idea of patronage for labels and artists who choose to remain diverse and have made many tracks available free online - check out KU and Alhambra on their catalogue and please make sure to support them using Karmafan!

Kevin Kelly has given some good answers to comments on his 1000 True Fans piece.

Ars Technica has a short article about how some indie labels are choosing to do their own distribution rather than use iTunes, which means that “Steve Jobs doesn’t get his pound of flesh”. And they point out that things aren’t as bad as the major labels might want you to think:

While the declining major label revenues might generate headlines that sound like the good ship Music is about to be boarded and sunk by P2P-wielding pirates, the larger story is that there’s more music than ever in the world, and more ways to get it in the hands of listeners. That should be music to any fan’s ears.

But they admit that it’s not that easy to run your own store, as with “the increased revenue per sale comes responsibility for the infrastructure, for keeping the site up, for dealing with payment issues (not to mention the upfront cost of building the store)”.

Seems like just another reason for more artists to make full use of existing distribution systems (just do what Trent Reznor has been known to do and upload the album straight to P2P networks) and trust that fans who love their work will support them. Maybe include a text file with the tracks suggesting that they can support you if they like the music. The fans get the music faster and easier, while the artist/label doesn’t have to invest in servers and online payment systems.

That was the model we envisaged when we started Karmafan. Artists could simply focus on their work while alternative distribution models get the music to the fans and the Karmafan widget or profile allows those fans who really like the work to give something back.

If you take control of the situation and decide to take advantage of how easy it is to get your albums out there - like Lamont and a lot of other bands who recognise an opportunity - then you could well see a surprising return both in voluntary payments and increased popularity - which leads to gigs and concerts. Make music because you love it. Make lots of it. Let people hear it. Trust your fans.

Seth’s blog has an amusing piece on “how many record execs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”.