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Maybe I'm a fanatic about these things but...

What's wrong with mp3's/oggs? The premise on which iTunes is based (that here is a method that allows you to download legally) is wrong; in fact, lots of musicians are putting mp3's out there for free. Look at dmusic.com , IUMA, irate radio and netlabels . Some of the stuff is eclectic, experimental, not mass market, but it's not that far off.

I stopped listening to commercial music 6 months ago (although I still donate to artists with tipjar links). For "open content" listeners like me, all this talk of proprietary locked content only encourages musicians to put their content in locked formats. That is bad for everyone.

Share the Music day ; sharethemusic weblog

I'm speaking only of creative content, but I believe the a voluntary compensation method (i.e., tipping) is the only model that will compensate creative artists (without worrying about the problems of piracy, drm, etc).

I've cited this here already several times, but I wrote an essay for sharethemusicday.com that describes why a voluntary compensation model would work.

I still can't understand why people are thinking about big music sites when there are perfectly good small sites. dmusic This is the best free download music site I've seen. Irate Radio , a music discovery program. gods of music music review site . sharethemusicday.com My essay on more ways to share music legally. Don't forget to tip your favorite musicians! Musician's Guide to Online Tipping

This is interesting analysis, and the idea of double moral hazard, insurance, etc is a good way of looking at the sociological problem.

Actually, though, the article's writer doesn't seem to be aware that having an album streamed entirely over the net is becoming more the norm with every passing day. With that capability, consumers can make the purchasing decision without assuming much risk.

The bigger problems seems to be that the consumer doesn't want to spend the time previewing so many songs. In other words, the "mental transaction costs" outweigh the supposed benefits of finding new stuff.

I'm not saying that clearchannel radio is a good way to introduce consumers to new music. But it is an example of how consumers can have exposure to music without needing to expend mental transactions.

There needs to be a painless way to learn about and listen to new music. One such, solution, iRATE radio continuously downloads mp3's and lets users choose which one to keep and adapts to user preferences (see my interview with the creator Anthony Jones ).

I've already written a substantial essay advocating a voluntary compensation model for music (see sharethemusicday . )
In addition to tipping, content aggregators like Universal can provide value by simplifying the task of managing music files, improving the download client and allowing users to create "share lists" that are easily accessible. I would gladly pay for that.

If a content aggregator company could create a download client that simplified file management, allowing sharing of music lists and user recommendations and allowed for a tip jar, then everybody would be interested. Musicians could pay a small fee for music hosting (and maybe fan support like forums, web hosting, etc). They would do it if tipping became perceived as a reliable revenue source. Users could pay for the download client (plus access to updates). This kind of service would make money, satisfy fans who want unlimited downloads and satisfy musicians who want tips.

This isn't exactly the same thing, but an essay of mine proposed a voluntary compensation model for artists.

The voucher proposal is much more radical. The problem lies in who makes the decision to fund individual artists. If it is a government board of some sort, then you have the problem of government entanglement (as well as the requisite backlash from know-nothing conservatives). Interestingly, this kind of idea might swing in Europe, which already provides public support for artists. But in USA, this sort of idea is inconceivable for political reasons (especially if these donations were to be a kind of tax writeoff).

If the grantor is the individual donor, then how does the individual decide the "most worthy" candidate for these types of awards? Often the taste of the wealthy donor just won't be sophisticated enough to ensure that the right kinds of talent is identified.

The alleged benefit behind such a proposal is to eliminate economic transactional costs and to encourage works to go into the public domain. But as far as I see, it doesn't identify or support talent any better than the status quo. Yes, it would be a little prestigious to say that you've won such a grant. But it really doesn't help solve the problem of making the artist's works visible to the reader/spectator/surfer.

As much as I hate the copyright system, I don't see it as really hurting artists from the standpoint of compensation. (Yes, it hurts the right of free expression, as well as allowing corporations to prevent redistribution of creative works. But these things don't really hurt the artist immediately). A large number of content is going towards being free or legally redistributable anyway. I don't see the increased amount of public artwork as being a really big win here.

Here's a better idea (and one in which I propose in my essay cited above). Every artist seeking donations should put a link to paypal or Amazon donation system. (Helpful info for artists: Given current fees structures, it appears that if the donation is less than $5, tipping through Amazon has the lowest transaction fees. Over $5, it's probably cheaper to tip through paypal).

Having a tipjar up is not really obtrusive, doesn't make the artist sound as if he/she's begging and allows the artist to receive an enormous percentage of the cut. But the plain fact is that an overwhelming majority of artistic people just never do so (except webloggers; a large number of webloggers have tipjars; go figure). This sort of plan is far simpler and more direct than some elaborate scheme like this. (And yes, it suffers from the problem of the patron with awful taste and deep pockets).

Our society has a big problem with compensating its creative people. I have seen oodles of talented people just suffering through abject poverty without reasonable hope of support. This is an interesting plan and well worth thinking about. But it requires far too much buyin from politicians. Tipjars are a much more obvious solution.

The main problem I see with the essay is that the writer uses the proposal as a way to mend the copyright problem. That for unsigned musicians and artists is a relatively minor issue. Proposals should be directed instead towards how to encourage individual artists to seek donations from web traffic and how to make it easier for Joe Average to find out about unknown artists. Take the problem of mp3's. A good 90-95% of mp3's out there are freely and legally available by artists you've never heard of. How does the average citizen learn about great works? The problem is not technology or even the law but the discovery process itself. What media outlets provide trustworthy insights about what music is worth listening to? As Tim O'Reilly observed, "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy."

If most of the downloaded music is RIAA music, then I say the sooner RIAA music is deleted, the better.

Music that cannot be shared is not worth listening to anyway. See my extensive essay share the music .

Well, I can't figure out why people are looking at pay services (except for backlists of singers).

Vivendi's mp3.com and iuma.com have hundreds of thousands of free mp3's. You can use iRATE radio to discovery all sorts of free legal mp3's.

You can find out about the best free mp3's at gods of music among other places.

My essay sharethemusicday.com gives more information about how to find out about legal mp3's and legal ways to share the music.

The big question is when vivendi will start charging money for mp3.com. If they do, then either singers will host their music elsewhere, or else cause vivendi to sell this music or music subscriptions at a reasonable price.

With the recent acquisition by NBC of Universal/Vivendi, my guess is that there will be more pressure for vivendi to squeeze money out of mp3.com

Well, it is probably correct that the problems of making money from content are similiar regardless of the type of content (talking about creative content here, not information or knowledge).

Nonetheless, there are unique aspects to each type of creative content. For example, music gains more value by repeated listening, while books or movies really only need to be read once (talking about fiction, not textbooks, etc).

(That is why, for example, I have suggested that a voluntary compensation model would seem to work well for music, although not necessarily for other mediums--see my essay sharethemusicday.com ).

I have pointed out some pitfalls of a compulsory licensing scheme . The main problems (beside the technical ones) are the political ones. If you thought the negotiations about Internet radio were bad, wait til you see this debate! Also, it seems to argue against individual initiative and hand too much power to a taxing authority.

Here's what I predict: content aggregation sites like mp3.com will build their own private p2p networks where subscribers can distribute mp3.com's exclusive content. Musicians pay $100 to put their content on mp3.com (that's the current deal), and make more money depending on the number of downloads, hits, eyeballs which mp3.com can measure. (Mp3.com could also charge for product placement, etc). That gives musicians a vested interest in encouraging fans to subscribe. It gives fans a vested interest in subscribing to get the latest content, recommendation systems, file management, etc. The assumption behind this idea is that the aggregator offers unlimited downloads for a fairly low price. It resembles live365's scheme for allowing subscribers to reward their Favorite radio station.

If vivendi can't offer a low price for this, then the tipjar model seems preferable. The question remains: why doesn't mp3.com offer this capability or even the ability to link to a tipjar?

To love the music, you must share the music.

Well, it is probably correct that the problems of making money from content are similiar regardless of the type of content (talking about creative content here, not information or knowledge).

Nonetheless, there are unique aspects to each type of creative content. For example, music gains more value by repeated listening, while books or movies really only need to be read once (talking about fiction, not textbooks, etc).

(That is why, for example, I have suggested that a voluntary compensation model would seem to work well for music, although not necessarily for other mediums--see my essay sharethemusicday.com ).

I have pointed out some pitfalls of a compulsory licensing scheme . The main problems (beside the technical ones) are the political ones. If you thought the negotiations about Internet radio were bad, wait til you see this debate! Also, it seems to argue against individual initiative and hand too much power to a taxing authority.

Here's what I predict: content aggregation sites like mp3.com will build their own private p2p networks where subscribers can distribute mp3.com's exclusive content. Musicians pay $100 to put their content on mp3.com (that's the current deal), and make more money depending on the number of downloads, hits, eyeballs which mp3.com can measure. (Mp3.com could also charge for product placement, etc). That gives musicians a vested interest in encouraging fans to subscribe. It gives fans a vested interest in subscribing to get the latest content, recommendation systems, file management, etc. The assumption behind this idea is that the aggregator offers unlimited downloads for a fairly low price. It resembles live365's scheme for allowing subscribers to reward their Favorite radio station.

If vivendi can't offer a low price for this, then the tipjar model seems preferable. The question remains: why doesn't mp3.com offer this capability or even the ability to link to a tipjar?

To love the music, you must share the music.

I wrote an essay about the subject at sharethemusicday .

The big problem I see with the online sites is not the legal issues but the usability. mp3.com and other free mp3 downloads use a web browser to serve music. Bad! We need a more sophisticated client, like p2p or bit torrent (or like the audiogalaxy satellite). I can't remember if winamp is good at managing mp3 downloads.

I advocate a voluntary compensation method as the only credible way to compensate artists (and I fault commercial music webhosts for not allowing musicians to include tipjars). I would rather donate money to artists after having the opportunity to listen to all them. (When the Courts ruled against Verizon last March, I vowed to stop listening to commercial music altogether). Instead music webhosts feed the musicians' illusions that labels are still searching for talent to sign. Do you know musicians pay $100 a year to put their music on mp3.com?

But I would happily pay $10 a month to a music hosting site that provides an easier interface for managing downloads and files. Looks like none of the music hosts have really tried that yet. (Musicmatch--which is more of a pc application-- is probably the best of the bunch for that, and even they aren't that good).

I'm surprised that mp3.com isn't using bit torrent to distribute the bandwidth load. Mp3.com should create a private p2p2 network using authentication to share all files in the mp3.com universe.

I covered these issues in my essay sharethemusicday.com . In it I advocate a voluntary compensation model

Here's what I wrote:

Compulsory licenses seems to be the "cleanest" solution, and it appears to have implemented in Canada with moderate success, but the approach has fundamental problems. First, it seems rather easy to game the system to make some songs appear more popular in popularity statistics. It seems to offer a lot of advantages to incumbents at the expense of emerging artists. Second, frequency of sharing may not correlate well with user's perception of value (although it may turn out to correlate well with what would have been actual sales figures). Regardless of whether we love the Spice Girls, their files are going to be shared more often than that of Simulacra. Second, a flat fee imposes a cap on potential profits and creates a reason for music businesses to seek "tax increases" on a regular basis. This is more of a "user fee" than a tax, but still establishing a "just rate" would probably result in prolonged battles in public. Just look for example at the ugly negotiations that Internet radio had with the music industry. Third, it's unclear how to measure user statistics when mp3's can be played or downloaded in many different contexts. Should we measure radio plays? What about music scraping applications? What about IRC? What about Internet radio (which plays to multiple listeners)? What about venues in which multiple people are listening? What about foreign listeners? What about car radio? What about PC makers who include freebies like a DVD with free music? I fear that any measuring system will lock us into one specific method of sharing, and it will reveal the folly of trying to micromanage an economy.

This is a good idea as long as you can solve the problem of authentication.

I prefer donating through musiclink , a nonprofit service that 100% of the money to an artist after a $20 threshhold is reached.

It is really amazing how few of the artists are soliciting through paypal or amazon or musiclink on their websites. Are musicians just stupid? I think they always want to hold out for the possibility about signing with a major label later on.

I wrote an essay about a voluntary payment system at
sharethemusicday.com

For me, the problem is not one of technology but of taste. When a p2p sharer launches a tirade against the music industry, and then uses p2p to find tracks by bands from the major labels, I fault this sharer not for illegality but unoriginality of taste. It is like buying a nice expensive $10,000 plasma wide-screen HDTV and using it to watch "Porky's 2" or episodes of Gilligan's Island. If the future involves people using anonymous freenet to swap mp3's by RIAA artists, doesn't this mean that the RIAA has still won?

I wrote an essay about this at www.sharethemusicday.com

This is an ingenious solution, but it presumes that all the parties involved will want to cooperate on standards and information. And that information can be freely exchanged between consumers and businesses and content owners and musicians.

First, I doubt musicians or labels will be happy will this arrangement. It will assure listeners that they are "paying for music" when in fact all you are doing is distributing the proceeds from an arbitary tax. Maybe they aren't as greedy as the RIAA, but they will be suspicious of anybody who says that playlists should determine royalties.

Second, it awards amounts on the basis of plays and not likes. Everyone may have downloaded and listened to Britney Spears, but maybe very few like it. I would much prefer a system that allows users to award shares to their favorite artists (although if they like the music, they may play the song more often). Also, there would probably be ways to game the system. Ex: a person could pawn his/her mp3 as by Eminem on a p2p network, when in fact, it belongs to someone else.

Third, it assumes that artists will register with a centralized service. If you look at musiclink, you will see that a large number of musicians just never get around to doing those things.

Fourth, hardware manufacturers may resist imposing a big tax on their hardware, especially if content companies are trying to make this tax as big as possible.

Still, it's an ingenious solution, and it is a method by which compulsory licensing can be implemented without rewarding the incumbents.

As for me, I still think microtipping is the most viable solution. See my essay sharethemusicday.com .

p2p is a nifty solution, but there are intrinsic problems (with technological solutions).

1. There's no way to verify whether the copyright owner approves of it being distributed through these networks.

2. p2p lets you search for well-known things, but not obscure things (or names you don't know). P2p doesn't give you ideas about what to search for. (BTW, Audiogalaxy was particularly good at doing that when it was around).

3. p2p doesn't have a good way to store people's recommendations or correlative tastes (if you like X, you'll like Y) or related items.

4. p2p doesn't do a good job in letting the user know what versions is the definitive version (This may be a user issue).

An interesting solution by the way is iRATE radio (read my interview with the lead developer ). He chose a centralized model for legal reasons and versioning reasons.

5. At the moment, p2p clients don't have a way of tipping artists or linking to their website within the client (this will undoubtedly change over time). WWW is still the best way to learn more information about an artist.

Robert Nagle
www.sharethemusicday.com

I wrote an essay for a music advocacy site. Sharethemusicday.com