Karmafan.com - Patronage for the Internet era

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/

David Byrne looks at the different ways artists can deal with a world in which “recording costs have declined to almost zero” and “manufacturing and distribution costs are approaching zero”.

The most relevant section for the artist who wants to let fans choose to give voluntary payments concerns the DIY model:

Finally, at the far end of the scale, is the self-distribution model, where the music is self-produced, self-written, self-played, and self-marketed. CDs are sold at gigs and through a Web site. Promotion is a MySpace page. The band buys or leases a server to handle download sales. Within the limits of what they can afford, the artists have complete creative control. In practice, especially for emerging artists, that can mean freedom without resources — a pretty abstract sort of independence. For those who plan to take their material on the road and play it live, the financial constraints cut even deeper. Backup orchestras, massive video screens and sets, and weird high tech lights don’t come cheap.

Radiohead adopted this DIY model to sell In Rainbows online — and then went a step further by letting fans name their own price for the download. They weren’t the first to do this — Issa (formerly known as Jane Siberry) pioneered the pay-what-you-will model a few years ago — but Radiohead’s move was much higher profile. It may be less risky for them, but it’s a clear sign of real changes afoot. As one of Radiohead’s managers, Bryce Edge, told me, “The industry reacted like the end was nigh. They’ve devalued music, giving it away for nothing.’ Which wasn’t true: We asked people to value it, which is very different semantics to me.”

The article ends with some very inspiring words:

For existing and emerging artists — who read about the music business going down the drain — this is actually a great time, full of options and possibilities. The future of music as a career is wide open.

Here it is - QTrax, an application that lets fans download music for free. Rumours have it that some of the top labels have signed up for the service, though some labels have come forward and denied their association with QTrax.

QTrax says it provides

1. Free peer to peer downloads for fans
2. They insert ads between songs so fans end up downloading ads into their iPods (urgh)
3. Revenue for labels comes from the ads
4. Revenue for artists? The same old less than five per cent of the revenue for the label.

So there, labels are being forced to think of allowing peer to peer downloads for fans, for free. Good for the artists who are tied to labels, but what about independent artists? Can they distribute their music on peer to peer networks such that their fans have access to the works for free?

We at Karmafan want to encourage free availability of arts by independent artists. This is one sure way that fans will “give something back” if they like the artist’s works. We are also convinced that some artists want to give away their music, especially in the wake of Radiohead’s “In Rainbows.” The question is can we provide a service to such artists so they can distribute their works to fans for free? Would be nice to see hands up from artists who would appreciate such a service. Maybe you can help us define such a service with your suggestions and comments.

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.

TorrentFreak mentions an incredibly relevant speech by Paulo Coelho (author of best-selling The Alchemist).

Coelho understood the potential of getting his books to more people and took the brilliant step of pirating his own books.

It makes perfect sense if you consider that one of the biggest obstacles facing artists of all kinds is actually getting the attention of potential fans. If people never hear your music or read your books then you never have a chance to be noticed or appreciated. You have to reach them first.