Ideas for a Recording Industry Alternative? 497
icewalker asks: "There has been a lot of news (here, here, and here) lately about music, copy protection, and other related issues. What I find interesting is that there are literally thousands of free bands out there that are more than worthy of listening too. Free as in they have not sold their souls (not to mention music rights) away to the devils of the music industry. But how does one get to listen to these pioneers of music? The solution could be sites like mp3.com (until the mp3 royalties are forced). But what people want is a locals only site that streams, guess what, the music from free local bands only. Not just for your community but local bands from all over the US (and the world). We need a site that collects these bands and we need a streamer that plays them. No CARP royalty problems since these bands are unsigned and own the music themselves. Make it so that the artists can hopefully sell their own CD's or single songs from the same site. Anyway, mix and bake at multiple bit rates and you have a solution to the copy protected CD (I haven't bought one yet from an Indie Band). The big guys go down because they can't compete with free, better than great music on the web with a low cost distribution. So, where is this utopia? Oh! And dump the necessary registration required to listen (are you listening mp3.com?)."
one song at a time (Score:5, Interesting)
Who pays the bills? (Score:5, Interesting)
Do the artists have to sign some contract to help support the service provided to them?
Isn't this where the music industry started?
Anti PC campaigns (Score:3, Interesting)
Free Streaming Business Model (Score:2, Interesting)
Beyond that, as the site becomes more popular, replace it with streaming advertisements, advertisements on the site, and keep a minimal fee for the artists (consider it an investment fee - we'll play you, but there is no guarantee the listeners, or the DJs will like you).
Could this be the new radio?
SomeSongs (Score:2, Interesting)
Good stuff, cheap. Er, free. Click the "Top Songs" link on the right-hand side to see the songs that have the highest rating. Or any number of other options. It's a cool site, ad-free, for the love of music.
There are a bunch of other sites for finding interesting songs, if you have time to listen to a lot of stuff. They aren't "official", they're all amateur, but they're lovingly crafted with your entertainment in mind. There are links to a bunch of them on http://www.songfight.net
Maybe a slashdotter or two will find somebody new whose music speaks to them.
sounds nice, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the conventional wisdom that we hear so much and that we'd all like to believe--mainstream, big-label music sucks, and all the interesting stuff is being done by small, independent artists--but the fact is that it just isn't true. Independent artists tend to be extremely lo-fi, very unpolished, and more often than not, just plain unoriginal. You definitely can't dance to it. Yes, a lot of mainstream music is shit. But that doesn't mean that everything else is worth hearing. There is a small handful of independent artists who have created enough of a following to find success without losing their artistic integrity, but 99% of them are just the folks who couldn't cut it. The music just isn't there.
Fortunately, we do have big-label artists worth hearing. Eminem is always perceptive and interesting, and Tori Amos is dependably good. Most big music stores let you listen to CDs before you buy, so just head over to the New Releases and poke around until you find that happy medium: a big-name, mainstream musician that you like.
Re:Who pays the bills? (Score:3, Interesting)
"You grant us the non-exclusive right to sell your songs over the internet or on CDs at the rate of $X per song, of which you get Y%. This contract may be cancelled by either party at any time by giving 90 days notice."
Great idea, could you use Slash to do it? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you had the kind of preference tracking software that Amazon uses, (people who listen to this band often listen to that band too, suggest I listen to that band when I listen to this band) you could probably quickly weed the crummy from the cool.
You could host the servers in Sealand (see http://www.havenco.com/).
And I think there is a LOT more good independent music out there than people realize. I recently was turned onto MuchMusic by a friend of mine and heard no less than four cool bands I had never heard of before within the first hour of listening.
Evan !-)
the problem with mp3.com (Score:5, Interesting)
re New Music Distribution Process (Score:2, Interesting)
What is needed is a new distribution system that even a midly sucessful artist can create. Courtney Love cried out for VCs to step in and create it. So far no takers, but there is money to be made for the artist and for the distributor; and there is a lot to be gained from the consumer standpoint as well: lower prices and greater selection.
It would not take too much money to set-up a great website where you can buy tracks for a dollar or two; it would take more money to provide indie bands with a recording studio and the experienced people for mastering, mixing, etc. but you could make money off the indie band recordings and you could rent studio time for other purposes.
The only trouble is getting enough artists to come your way. I'm sure if any of the VCs out there paid Courtney a call, we could very well be on our way to a new distribution system.
The major problem... (Score:2, Interesting)
Another issue that small bands face is the psycological effect of "what everyone's listening to". You take a particular song, and tell the average listener it's from a backyard/garage band. They won't like it near as much as if they hear it from a radio dj, promoting it as being from the "hottest new group". Same song, two different reactions.
confessions of a teenage punk (Score:2, Interesting)
Return of the DJ's (Score:5, Interesting)
What I would like to see is DJ's picking there own music, and gaining an audience because folks liked their choice in music.
For instance, I really like country story songs(don't laugh), but I have a hard time finding them. If there was a DJ was on between 11:00 - 2:00 who played these types of songs(old and brand new) I would be encouraged to listen or tape, otherwise I only listen to the radio in the car.
This would give small bands/singers a chance to be heard and people wouldn't have to work so hard to find them. Also the record companies would lose power(I think). It seems it would be a win-win for consumers, bands, and possibly radio stations. Which means it probably won't happen.
What do ya think?
New Media Licensing Ideas (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been working on an initiative to devise an alternative to the traditional means of promoting music and other media. It's been partially inspired by GNU and various other software licenses. The general point to it would be that I, as an artist, maintain the copyright and composer rights to the material while freely licensing the (re)packaging and (re)distribution to anyone who wishes to market and sell it. This license would have no restrictions, other than the fact that a company/individual could not claim legal rights over the work, or change its content in any perceptable way. It may sound rediculous, but I think something like this would have a number of benefits to the artist:
(1)The most difficult part of being an independent artist is promotion, and this could theoretically take care of itself
(2)You could still sell the work yourself, on your own terms, even if a major label had decided to run with it(not much to lose, since there are no contracts in this paradigm). You could always offer a lower price than those in, say, the Wherehouse, which would still net you more profit than the royalties afforded you in a RIAA contract.
Essentially this would allow an artist the increased potential to be marketed and recognized at a national or international level without giving up any of the rights and control over work. And all parties involved could still make a substantial amount of money.
You guys tell me what is? (Peoples is Peoples. Is singing, is dancing)
MP3.com will not be our saviour (Score:2, Interesting)
There have even been allegations [rezo.net] of MP3.com dropping popular artists on behalf of its parent company.
How do I find bands? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the problem of matching a band with an audience that likes their music is the key problem for internet music distribution to solve. If a band that 99% of the people on the net hate can reach the 1% of people that likes their music, they can still be a success. And this 1% of people will be very happy to finally find a band that they like.
So far my strategy for find music that I like is to find a local band that I like, then do a google search for any positive reviews for the band I already like... then I look and I see what else the reviewer recommends and go try their music out. This has let me find a few great bands that will probably never get played on the radio: (Breech [breech.net], OO-Soul [oosoul.com], and Powder [powdermusic.com]) This works, but it takes a long time to find new music.
I'd love to have a site where I can easily find more bands and buy their mp3's to download directly into my iTunes. And maybe even have their shows added to my iCal. (I wish my
Didn't napster try this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Listener directed web site (Score:1, Interesting)
The idea would be to allow anybody to become a DJ and create playlists. Listeners could then tune in to any playlist they wanted. Initially, I'm sure it would be pandemonium, but eventually, the field of listenable DJs would narrow. Listener ranking could help eliminate self-serving DJs that just want to promote their pet band or just pick crap. Possibly you could start rewarding the best DJs with funds from advertising to entice people to take the time to create great playlists.
The playlists could be easily distributed to multiple servers, allowing a sort of load balancing if need be.
Some system would need to be in place to ensure that copyright was not violated - probably tight controls on what music was made available on the server, and hence to the playlist authors. It would be nice to allow DJs to upload small clips though for words between the music.
Matt Gundry
My favorite (Score:2, Interesting)
Why not combine it with p2p? (Score:4, Interesting)
Planet P [planetp.cc] - Liberation through technology.
If a big5 label was a startup VC (Score:3, Interesting)
So, if your VC was like a record label
- The VC would own 99% of the stock of the company
- The VC would fill all the roles in the startup company, except for the actual product engineering (i.e. music writing/recording). The VC acts as CEO, VP of bizdev, VP of marketing and VP of sales.
- The VC determines at what price your 'product' sell, when and where, if ever.
- You can never get additional funding from any other investors for like, seven years.
- The VC has the right to call it quits at any time.
- You may no quit. Ever. If you do, consider a career change.
Hmm, don't like the conditions. Well, you can't just keep driving up Sand Hill Road. All the contracts are the same!
DZM.
Re:The agency problem (Score:3, Interesting)
But what about some colaborative filtering , P2P system? Imagine hooking it up with Gnutella so that you can not only download music, but add in your ratings.
Then groups of people with simlar taste find the good stuff they all like.
This sort of happens with your friends, and via USENET groups. I'm much more likely to listen to a recomendation of a fellow news group reader, than a commercial. Of course the stuff I listen to(jazz guitar for example) is hardly ever heard on the radio or MTV....
Cdbaby... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who pays the bills? (Score:3, Interesting)
winamp playlists (Score:4, Interesting)
An idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, realize that most artists make nearly nothing from recording; most of an artist's income comes from live performances and (possibly) merchandise. With album sales providing nearly no income, we may as well throw it out entirely.
Free music is all well and good, but it provides neither an easy way for consumers to find what they want/like easily, nor an avenue for popular bands to REALLY make it big - worldwide tours, packed auditoriums, and gaggles of screaming fans.
The RIAA needs replacing with a better system; something that allows artists to get widespread exposure and consumers to get informed advice on what to buy, without all the corruption, money, and indentured servitude. My idea is for a central repository of reviews and a seeding center for free music exchange, sort of a blog-cluster and Napster root server in one.
This system would rely on a set of independent reviewers. Artists send their tracks to them, hoping that the reviewer likes it. The reviewer writes about tracks that interest them. Consumers read the reviewer's column/blog, choosing which ones they agree with, taking recommendations from them, and buying stuff from the artists.
Crapflooding could be a concern, so a fee would probably be required both from the artists (say, X dollars per track reviewed, and Y (\X) dollars for distribution only) and from the consumers (Z dollars per month for unlimited access to all reviewers and tracks).
Reviewers could be corrupted, so their reputation (and thus their audience and market) would depend on their integrity, and a reviewer wouldn't be allowed to take money (or anything else) from anybody for a more favorable review.
All tracks submitted to the service would belong to the artist, but must be freely redistributable. The main value of this service is to help artists and consumers find each other; the downloading is secondary. Plus, word-of-mouth is valuable to artists; the more people that hear their tracks and like them, the more tickets they'll sell to their next show.
The artist owns his/her/their own work. They can package it however they want - they can sell CD's/DVDa's at their shows, they can sell sheet music/tabs, etc.
The barrier to entry is low, but not zero. Anybody who's serious can try their hand at professional music, but trolls will generally be sifted out through both the review process and the cost of repeatedly submitting garbage.
I hope this gets modded up - I'd like to see what people think.
-- Hamster
Bussiness model. (Score:2, Interesting)
You run the service non-profit, and give the $ to the artists. If you track downloads per user you could ask the user how to divide the money (all user's downloads, all artists, specific artists, whatever). This does assume this service will be a central distribution point, or at least reference-count all distributed media. maybe a flaw.
Artists are responsible for their own marketing. That's the way it should be anyway. I believe that any entity that's responsible for both marketing and distribution will end up looking exactly like a record company.
Building a interest group that gets radio stations to play music from this service seems more "clean" if the group isn't affiliated Mw/ the service itself.
United Artists v2
Washington Post (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why not combine it with p2p? (Score:5, Interesting)
A big fat thanks to record execs
Thank you for fighting the good fight against Internet MP3 file-swapping. Because of you, millions of kids will stop wasting time listening to new music and seeking out new bands. No more spreading the word to complete strangers about your artists. No more harmful exposure to thousands of bands via Internet radio either. With any luck they won't talk about music at all. You probably knew you'd make millions by embracing the technology. After all, the kids swapping were like ten times more likely to buy CD's, making your cause all the more admirable. It must have cost a bundle in future revenu, but don't worry - computers are just a fad anyway, and the Internet is just plain stupid. -Rolling Stone
Etree, Homegrown Music and the Grassroots scene (Score:3, Interesting)
Bands like Phish [phish.com], Dave Matthews Band [dmband.com] and John Mayer [johnmayer.com] (three rather different artists) have become very popular primarily because of tape trading and putting on a good live show which varies night to night.
Some sites of particular interest are Homegrown Music Network [homegrownmusic.net] and Jambase [jambase.com], the latter of which has a huge database of members interested in and willing to promote the bands it serves. Bands seeking to promote shows in certain cities pay Jambase to allow them access to all the members in certain zip codes, cities and states. These fans get promotional material to spread around their area, thus gaining more interest in the concert.
Another great site is archive.org's etree archive [archive.org] which has full concerts of lots of bands (from big names such as Dave Matthews to the unknowns like the Motet) in lossless SHN format.
Of course, the limitations of this scene is that it's basically all wrinkly old hippies noodling away on covers of Grateful Dead songs, but there are innovators such as the New Deal [thenewdeal.ca] and Disco Biscuits [discobiscuits.com], who play live, improvised trance/breakbeat house. Or Howie Day [howieday.com], a singer-songwriter playing Radiohead influenced songs using loops and samples to create a unique sound. OAR [ofarevolution.com] play (somewhat turgid) reggae-rock, and Illinois' Umphrey's McGee [umphreysmcgee.com] present us with an alternate universe of "What if Phish listened to Pink Floyd and Genesis rather than the Grateful Dead?". There's something for [mostly] everyone.
Re:BeSonic.com! (Score:2, Interesting)
Part of this development involved the auto-email system. We had created a number of test email accounts (rif_test1, rif_test2, rif_test3, etc...) to QA the call-back, account verifications, newsletters, and notifications. You would do this for any site.
Riffage went under, and within a few weeks, all these test email accounts were innundated with spam, and we removed the addresses from our mail server.
I don't know who's running BeSonic now. I haven't been there. Not interested. The people who ran riffage don't talk to me any more. If you want to hear local bands, go out to the clubs.
Don't even mention the word Utopia to me.
Re: Use Moderation (Score:3, Interesting)
A very possible solution of the problem of filtering out the 'dross' would be to use moderation techniques much like we do here on slashdot.
The "music distribution site" could allow users to post "reviews" and give point ratings to individual bands/songs. A fairly powerful mechanism for locating and suggesting music that you will probably like could be made by informing the site which bands you already know you like, and then you can be given "try this" selections based on bands that were given high ratings by users who also rated your selections high.
You could try new genres of music by first listening to the highest rated stuff, and then filtering with options like "I agree with this reviewer, what else does this same reviewer recommend?"
More powerful options would let you ignore ratings by reviewers that you disagree with - and/or even meta-moderate people's reviews.
It shouldn't be too difficult to build the system in such a way that shows the preferences of "the masses", but also lets you see the music preferences of "like minded" persons.
Eventually you could have associated with your profile a list of "music mentors" - users who's ratings you consider great, and who will act as your "peers" in suggesting new music.
This seems like the ideal solution to me...
King Crimson? (Score:4, Interesting)
Without the big label, you wouldn't heard of these guys.
But back then, the labels were a little more open to experiment with their acts. Nowadays, the artists tend to be polished and corporate. The acts don't seem to *grow*. They're hip this year and then they disappear.
Maybe that's the problem. It seems back then, an artist didn't have to go platinum every time they put out a record. Today, poor old Brittany's 2nd album didn't do as well as the first (how could it?), and now she's washed up before she's old enough to drink.
Personally, I blame MTV, but I don't think most people know what that means anymore.
Re:Why not combine it with p2p? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've had just this very idea. It goes like this:
The FCC actually allows low-powered FM broadcasts for amateur radio stations. Why not create a streaming standard that would allow P2P leveraging? For example, if I had a radio stream and an open standard for broadcasting that stream, complete with time-synchronization, then it wouldn't be too difficult to allow thousands of amateur-radio broadcasters to blanket an area, or an entire country, with that broadcast.
But wait - there's more...
Because a song only needs to be downloaded once and stored, there is no need for massive bandwidth once some good variety has been witnessed by a paticular broadcaster. At that point, the broadcast node only needs to worry about anticipating new music (obvious a continuous process) but perhaps a CD or DVD based distribution could be accomodated for those with slow connections (or broadband providers that don't like this on their network).
So there you have it. Obviously, the 'distribution' is a bit crippled but this would be ideal for a low-budget station. Perhaps there could be a standard bootable CD ISO available for a day's rotation... That hardware in the closet is starting to look better and better, eh?
Re:Where's the stream? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm with you. It seems that this type of site would have major bandwith costs. How would they recover such costs... let's review:
I'll take this to mean 'free' as in will allow their music to be distributed for free.
Easy: Ogg Vorbis
Does this seem contradictory to anyone else? Only want local bands, but want all bands? I guess I can see something like an Amazon.com system. If you like this band, you might also like... but then we get into the expense issue again.
Onced again, Ogg Vorbis
In this, I might see a solution, that solution being charging some sort of a percent of sales. It would then be in the sites interest to promote the most selling bands in the most selling areas. But isn't this a variant of the RIAA group?
I have a problem with this... the music isn't free! It costs in terms of time, bandwith, advertising, and a whole host of other issues. It -might- be free to then end user to download, but it is definitely not free.
Ok, allowing some one to browse a site with no reg. I'm in, that's easy enough to do.
there's one possible solution (Score:3, Interesting)
*they need help from linux coders to help make this happen on open source os.
GoodSongOrNot.com? (Score:3, Interesting)
Track songs based on ratings and sales. Your agent is the market - if a buncha people are buying a song, (or at least listening through the whole thing and rating it well) it must be good.
That's the real inefficiency in the record company - they invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in developing "talent", then see if the market agrees. Problem is the market rarely agrees, so the few successes have to support the numerous failures. You pay $18 for a good CD because of the 100's of crappy CDs sitting next to it that no one is buying.
And yes, I did just fork over my $9 to GoDaddy for the domain name.
P2P plus listener review system (Score:2, Interesting)
And maybe you could search based on the "sounds like" field; so if you like, say, They Might Be Giants, you search on that and find bands that have been tagged as sounding like TMBG. Then you read the reviews to gauge quality.
reducing industry cost - increasing artist returns (Score:3, Interesting)
Musicians/talent is a dime a dozen...
The music industry spends alot of money on promotion of bands that have yet to prove themselves. This results in less return for artist unless they hit it really big. The money lost has to come from somewhere.
There may be alot of "just can't cut it" talent but as someone who grew up helping band, watching many come and go as breakup and get together happens, not to mention open jam sessions and night club curcuit bands, there is those times when the right combination of talent, equiptment,
Sooo To reduce record industry cost and lost to failures, while increasing returns to artist that do generate worthwhile returns, instead of subsidizing the failures....
We have the internet to help artist and groups establish their success or failure prior to record industry signings.
If you hit a high enough level of success and popularity on the internet then as an artist or group you would have a bit more barganing power with the competition to sign you.... Like sports?
While on the record industry side, this prequalification for success will reduce cost of loses.
And we who listen... we get to hear alot of
Get out of the house! (Score:3, Interesting)
Aimee Mann interview at motherjones.com (Score:2, Interesting)
She's also established her own label, United Musicians [unitedmusicians.com] which "is founded on the principle that every artist should be able to retain copyright ownership of the work he or she has created and that this ownership is the basis for artistic strength and true independence. United Musicians Artists have their own labels under the United Musicians banner and retain all rights of ownership to their work. By uniting and sharing resources, United Musicians Artists have a stronger organizational base from which to build and flourish in their independence."
Also in the interview, she says that "I don't believe in asking people to spend $15 on something they've never heard before. That's just unreasonable. And radio's so difficult in this country that that's not really an option." (Her latest album is streamed in its entirety from her website.)
My band(s) (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing which has really struck me with the (hopefully) emminent demise of the recording industry, as we know it, will be the return to local, community based live venues for musical groups. The playing field has begun to level itself, and I don't think there needs to be a necessary effort to control it. In fact it's the control that huge conglomerates have attempted to gain that has crushed the industry in the first place.
As a band we plan to dive head-first into the free music scene. Seeing as though we are first and foremost a live band, our recordings are nowhere near as exciting as a live performance. But when push comes to shove, if you want to carry around some bellyrash [no-ip.com] in your portable mp3 player, you are more than welcome to without our express written consent.
One way in which the recording industry has everyone trapped is no different that the consistent
eye no eye maid sum gram are miss steaks,
infrastructure badly needed (Score:2, Interesting)
Further, I think this music distribution over the internet could be made into a combination of P2P and central website.
Let's say we set up a licensing-promotional system where composer/artist uploads a song to a website to distribute and promote. Let's say the website serves many music artists. For the promotion of the music, the people who keep up the website get half of the sales, and the artist gets the other half. Someone downloads the music and pays money for the priviledge of using the music. That's promotion, if other people hear it. I think it would be beneficial if the downloader could also post their newly downloaded music on their own personal website on the condition that they charge the very same price they themselves paid and that half of any revenue would go back to the artist. For promoting the artist, the downloader-now-promoter gets to keep half. Each person downloading from him would be able to offer the same song on their own website and get half revenue for promotion, while giving the other half back to the original artist. (yes, it is a bit of a ponzi scheme, but it would put the artist at the top of the "food chain" where they belong, and encourage more people to write music.)
Furthermore, say each song accumulated a rating of +s or -s according to whether the downloader felt they enjoyed listening to it. Let's say also that each rating was attached to the name of a website so that downloaders would be able to see what sites plussed or minused the songs. It would be an quick way to find websites to check for new songs you might like or to see what sites have taste in music that oppose your own.
I've Been Workin on This Idea..... (Score:2, Interesting)
there were a GNU or Open Music license so you could copyright music say for free distribution but commercial uses still had to pay.Well maybe even a strict GNU and its all free,whatever.
then what if people would donate server space and bandwidth so mp3s,oggs,whatever could be distributed like linux.I know we got P2P but really setting up a GNUmp3.com so you could get Band promo shots and bios would really be the way to start to stick it to the industry.Problematically though mirrors would grow to be huge.Larger than linux mirrors,because,well bands prolly wouldnt take down any songs and it would grow like a music store that copied and sold albums on the spot.Perhaps html serverspace with links to bands songs on their own server or links to grab it from P2P or both.
Imagine that, non profit internet radio stations suddenly can give the industry the finger and go about bringing in a new era of music.
I hope someone reads this.I really want some feedback,ideas and maybe some motivated people to help organize this.