Entries Tagged 'Music' ↓

There are a few services out there that let you distribute your works for free. Not just that they seem to imply that they’ll generate enough revenue so that a part of that revenue will be enough to sustain creative efforts of artists.

I want to address two such services, one is Tunesquare and the other is a very popular streaming audio site - last.fm. First,. I’ll explain what these two are services provide to the artist and then will talk about our model of encouraging fans to make a payment straight to the artist.

TuneSquare say they will distribute your music for free. The only thing they do is show ads on the website as fans are waiting for the download of music they’d like to listen to again and again. That is an excellent idea as such. What makes it even better is that they say they will share the ad revenue generated from the pages hosting your music. All well and good and we know creative people will appreciate any income to sustain their creative efforts.

Last.fm has had a recent tie up with CBS, an old school recording and distribution company. The tie up between the two says you can listen to any music from CBS’ collection for free - up to three times. If you like the music, well you should go buy the CD - giving 90% or more of your money to CBS for their excellent service of bringing you the music (sarcasm intended). Again last.fm and CBS say the costs of allowing fans to listen to your music will be covered by - you guessed it - advertising.

I guess both the efforts (TuneSquare and last.fm/CBS) hope advertising will generate enough revenue from ads to sustain the livelihood of artists. So what are fans expected to do - click on Viagra ads hoping 10-40% of the 20 cents generated by each click will reach the artist?

We at Karmafan believe fans should step forward and give something back straight to the artist. A dollar from a thousand fans can help the artist pay for that art work, the costs of producing and distributing their works, even make a living.

Stop clicking on useless ads selling you Viagra, give something back to the artist.

Violinist Tasmin Little embraces the idea of giving away music with this three step challenge:

Step 1: Listen to my spoken introduction and download my CD.
Step 2: Take some time to listen and get to know these pieces. Then write to me and tell me what you like (or don’t like) about each piece.
Step 3: Go to a concert, buy a CD or write and tell me what barriers still remain to prevent you from wanting to do either!

The download page is really well-presented and the music is available in lots of different formats. Her introductory PDF explains the principles behind the release and gives a huge amount of background info.

The recordings are excellent. It’s inspiring to see an artist take a leap of faith like this. I’m sure it will lead to more fans who want to attend concerts and either buy her CD or just give something back!

Check out The Naked Violin here.

Techcrunch has an interesting post about Trent Reznor’s comment on the idea of a music tax. Reznor was discussing the recent Saul Williams experiment. He produced The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust by Williams and they decided to make the album available for download either for free or for $5. The $5 version was higher quality but only 18.3% of fans were willing to pay.

The CNET interview with Reznor covers how he feels about this, and promises an interview with Saul Williams next week to hear his side of the story, but the mention of a music tax was the focus of the Techcrunch article:

“I think if there was an ISP tax of some sort, we can say to the consumer, “All music is now available and able to be downloaded and put in your car and put in your iPod and put up your a– if you want, and it’s $5 on your cable bill or ISP bill.” [Reznor interview at news.com]

Michael Arrington argues very convincingly this would stifle innovation in the music industry, but that it seems likely that such a tax will be a “last stand” for the music industry as it tries to find a way to survive in the digital age.

Check out the post - and the comments from readers - at Techcrunch.

Interesting discussion now online from WIRED magazine. Yorke comments that letting fans choose how much to pay for In Rainbows “released us from something. It wasn’t nihilistic, implying that the music’s not worth anything at all. It was the total opposite. And people took it as it was meant. Maybe that’s just people having a little faith in what we’re doing.”

He also mentions that “we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net.”

Some very good points today from theseminal.com about how artists and fans both benefit from new distribution models:

“The pay-what-you-want model works better for fans and artists alike. Just about the only player it doesn’t work for is record labels. But they’ve been working against the interests of artists and fans for so long now, they can hardly expect any sympathy. Their business model will be supplanted by one that not only cuts out the middle-man but delivers a better and more fairly priced product as well.”

Phantom FM ended their news today with a report on Karmafan. They recorded an interview with Dave and used Karma Police as a backing track. I guess Radiohead really has brought the whole idea of trusting your fans into the mainstream. Listen to the MP3.

We were mentioned in Jim Carroll’s column in the Ticket today:

Sounds like he really gets the idea:

Instant Karma for new bands

David Barton and Kulpreet Singh believe that every struggling new band out there needs a Karmafan or two.

That’s the name of the new service from the Dublin-based duo aimed at bands interested in seeing if Radiohead’s tip-jar approach to getting fans to pay for music might also work for them.

Karmafan’s free-to-use service allows people to make voluntary payments to bands if they like their music.

Fans can set up accounts with the service, top it up with a credit card or Paypal payment, and then spread the love among acts they like, provided the band in question are sporting a Karmafan button on their website, MySpace or blog.

Barton and Singh won’t take a cent from these micro-payments, believing that the idea of tips also applies to them.

“If an artist believes that Karmafan has helped them, then they can give something back.”

More information from www.karmafan.com

Karmafan was mentioned in today’s Irish Daily Mail.

“MUSICAL KARMA
Radiohead let their fans choose what to pay for their latest album. But can any artist do the same? Dublin-based website Karmafan has now made it easy for fans to give something back. Musicians can accept voluntary payments even by text message, and what’s more — it’s free to use. Find out more at www.karmafan.com”

We’ve had a busy couple of weeks, with a number of artists signing up each day, from established musicians with a long history of performing around the world, to independent musicians just starting out.

Carlos de Nicaragua “has been a songsmith, poet, musician, political activist for justice and equal rights most of his 50 years”. He was one of the first to feel a “Positive Vibration” about Karmafan and to really understand what we’re trying to do.

Eoin Dillon, one of the founder members of Kíla, loved the idea of as many people as possible being able to hear his music.

Jalebi were also very positive about Karmafan and wrote to say “thank you and congratulate Karmafan.com for offering a much needed service to artists, musicians and all other creative individuals who have talents and services that people around the world appreciate and would like to support”

Francesco Amico was one of the first musicians to get involved, and has been very encouraging. He’s based in Dublin and is a member of the “The Young Composers Collective” (YCC), a non-profit organisation of composers whose mission is to promote new music in Ireland.

Greg Gobel is another member who joined Karmafan at an early stage. Greg plays his “homebrewed acousto-funk” in Madrid and organises open mic sessions for local musicians.

Dave Flynn really gets the idea: “If you don’t want to buy the CD but like the music then why not consider donating something to Dave via karmafan. Karmafan let’s you donate any amount to Dave, even 10 cents, every little helps you know!”

Others are at the beginning of their careers, such as Catriona. She’s 14 but has a great voice and, as “the granddaughter of legendary Latin recording artist, Alberto Vazquez”, she also has a strong family connection to making great music.

Would love to write something about each artist but there’s plenty of work to do. We’ll definitely make time to mention in more detail the artists who have signed up, but for now will just post a quick list in no particular order of some of the more recent members.

Michael Riversong
Carlo Capocasa
soo p and the outsider
Mike Borgia
soliloquise
URR Records

Karmafan was mentioned in the Irish Mail on Sunday in their review of In Rainbows - the idea of karma really took hold and was repeated throughout the piece, from the headline:

“Thom leaves good karma up to you…”

through to “Radiohead are trusting in karma”.

The reference to Karmafan was a good summary of the idea in a few lines:

“Irish site Karmafan.com may help. Artists can submit work to the site and fans can pay a stipend or one-off fee in admiration and patronage of the work”

It’s not exactly how Karmafan works, but it’s close enough and they did understand that it’s all about patronage.