Slashdot Mirror
The Virtual Tip Jar
kemokid writes: "At last, an example of what Courtney Love was talking about. Fairtunes is a site set up to allow users to tip musicians directly. You can read the Music Dish news story about it." $269 and change donated so far, I'm interested to see where this one goes.
I have to wonder though: What do the artist's contracts look like? Do they have to split these tips with their labels because they are revenues generated from jointly produced work?
There's no proof that you are paying them for the albums that have been produced on their current label. You might only like their earlier stuff on a different label, or, in theory, you might be paying them for the enjoyment that you got out of seeing them live before they ever released anything. So I don't see how their current record label has any claim to the money. If you were tipping for a particular album, then things would probably be different.
I wish that it were easier for people that distribute their own music to open merchant accounts with credit card companies... this should be doable by individuals who could define their own rates and not have to worry about how big of a pie slice they've recieved or if the accounting is accurate. I know that when you put cd's out on consignment to stores that it can be like pulling teeth to get the right amount from the merchant - if the artist could _easily_ be enpowered it would be so much better.
As it is, most music sites set up an alliance deal with amazon and have to sell the whole cd and don't sell all that much... it would be great to have like 45 seconds to a minute of each song on a relase with a checkbox next to it and a credit card form beneath and charge like 35 cents or whatever a song. Yeah, I know there are some sites that do this for multiple artists, I just would like to cut the entities down to artist, consumer, credit card company, and make it easy for the artist to set up....
OK, just a remark :
You can't have a company managing it.
A company is seeking profit that it'll even take from the artist' revenue.
If the goal is to deliver art that'd directly benefit its creators, then the system has to be managed by a non-profit organization.
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
It's still under development but all open source. They have a site on SourceForge.
Burris
"Killing the RIAA" will not only not decrease the amoung of teen pop music produced, but it will significantly increase the amount of teen pop music produced. Here's why: when artists start selling direct, they get to keep ALL of their profits, instead of having most of the money skimmed off in order to pay for unprofitable artists. Britney Spears sold 12 million copies of her first album, but probably got very little royalties from it (probably less than $10 million). If she sold direct, she could have $120,000,000.00 or maybe even more. She could re-invest this money into promoting herself even further, and become even more pervasive. Today only 10% of artists make money, but they are subsidized by the profitable artists (through the record company). When the record companies disappear, so will 90% of artists, the artists who can't make money.
There are various other reasons why teen music will be so successful: artists will be forced to impress listeners with short, catchy snippets, and teen pop music is the only kind of music which is catchy. Moreover, in "online distribution" there is much more emphasis on hit singles (which is the realm of the top 40 teen singer), instead of actual albums. All of this tells me that top 40 teen music will be extremely successful after the record companies go out of business, and that almost nothing else will be produced.
It is unclear how the tipping system will really work with the anonymity of the internet, i.e. we do not know that small bands will get paid. I think there has been some research which showed that people tip waiters and waitresses to make themselves look good.. and not to get better future service. This means systems like fairtunes should try to make people who tip look good, i.e. publish your handle on a list of people who contribute to this artists AND give a message to the artist for you---the artist will tend to give your message a short read when it has money attached.
Actually, it might be possible to implement a tipping system based on email.. if you had one of those attach money to your emails things that people sometimes talk about.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
How do the Record Companies get Paid? This is still unfair to them.
Considering how many years labels have been selling CD's for far more than the cost of production and distribution, a scheme like this ought to even things out in a decade or so.
SO, when does the revelution against the cereal companies start? They are selling their cereal for a lot more than the cost of production and distribution. Face it, the record companies aren't doing anything that any other industry is doing. They are maximizing profits. The are shelling out a lot of money to make and advertise records, and they want to get a lot of money back for that investment. When you spend a lot, you expect to make a lot.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
In my experience, small amounts of cash + Visa = skimming.
You're correct, but not because of the nature of administrators IMO. Even honest administration can't get around the fact that Visa makes very small transactions un-economic, and makes person to non-merchant-person transactions impossible.
Fairtunes is interesting, and anything's better than the RIAA as a middleman, but if Courtney Love would ever-in-hell listen to me about e-gold some really interesting things could happen. Yes, if e-gold is the tip jar, there's a small spend fee & storage fee, and you have to get used to a market with lots of merchants who have different bid/ask spreads. If Fairtunes uses e-gold properly, it should be good for both artists and me (just a guy who likes art).
It's easy to do things like my Dutch friends did with "The Plant" by Steven King even if artists have never even heard of e-gold (Thanks for covering only hype, instead of fundamentals, news media of the planet!).
JMR
(Ok, I'll try to stop posting on this subject.)
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
Don't you mean:
One MTA to rule them all, one MTA to find them
One MTA to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
Bitchslapped. Neat.
I really wish I could believe that. In many cases it may be true but it is obvious that the modern "record industry" is trying to sell the artist rather than the music. That's why we see all this crap like "Making the band", "The personality behind Britney Spears", "The legal battle between Eminem and his mom" etc. And people like that. If I meet one more gossip hog.... (well that's another story).
It's not about the music, it's about being famous and making rich people even richer (and obviously I don't mean the artists). And since so much is put into this people pay attention. How many die hard Beatles fans ONLY listened to their music and didn't try and get all the intimate details of every band member's life?
Well this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
--
Garett Spencley
I agree, it's a pain. Furthermore, the credit card part is also a pain. I mean, I haven't memorized my flippin' numbers. Have you memorised yours?
What if there was an X.com (PayPal) tie-in, where all you need to remember is your email address? Even better, I think.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
Why do I know the site will now feel the slashdot effect, but not the tip jar?
Also with the shopping cart model you can send money to multiple artists on one invoice and the .23 cents is spread across all of those 'tips'.
Matt
co-founder
Fairtunes
...between those, we're looking at what? 40% of the total? Maybe 30%? It's a big chunk, but that's not the main difference.
Promotion does not benefit the end user in any way. It just sticks stuff in your face whether you want it or not. It's a hostile act and if I can avoid paying for it, I will.
Promotion is often a much larger cost than production, too. When things are freely available on the internet, people find the good ones whether someone's spending lots of money pushing them or not. "Promotion" costs, like "distribution" costs, are really control costs. If you give up control, these things take care of themselves.
The internet is as much a more responsive and convenient a distribution system than retail CDs as email is a faster and convenient a way of sending messages than paper mail. With the support of the producers, it would be as convenient as radio with more choice than retail CDs.
So now we're down to production cost. No agents, no "label", no printer, no retailer, nothing. Production costs, hand it off to a fan site, and it's in everybody's home who wants it.
Add in the ability for anybody, anywhere to donate money in various automated, convenient ways, and there's your advantage.
If people are willing to make the donations, they'd only have to pay about 5-20% what they'd pay for CDs. That is the advantage of buskware. More money for producers, less money out of the users' pockets, no money for parasitic middlemen. Everybody who counts is happy, and the others can go do some honest work.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
NO MORE BRITNEY SPEARS!
I never eat a sig cuz my sig is a crock...
Sig it.
I don't really trust any of these things. Partly because there are a number of charities that request money, etc., but after a lot of "administrative" costs, the end-receiver does not get the main chunk of cash. Maybe this is different, but I don't know. In my experience, small amounts of cash + Visa = skimming.
Also, the fact that my Visa card bank has a minimum charge of £5 means that I will pay more to the bank than to the actual company or artists!
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
Yes, I'd like to make a withdraw. Everyone who sold out or backstabbed their listeners owes me $5 each. Also, if you suck and get played on the radio all of the daggon time because you are what the companies want me to hear, that's $15. Eminem... The Real SlimShady will be $50. Not that I don't like the song, it's just been marketted to death... I liked it the first 50 times I heard it, but when I had to suffer it being played every 3 songs while driving through New Jersey, your daggon company just went too far, bill it to them. Also, RIAA, for being a bunch of pricks, and destroying the industry's dignity and all that was right with it... And for all of the illegal things that you have done... And just because I don't like you... 15 million dollars, and I want you to sign a contract with some bands that don't suck. I have a list of them over here, including the ones that I like that you can keep, and the ones that you keep turning down that you should pick up, come and pick it up any time.
Eh...
Jeez, that's pretty dumb. Are you allowed to listen to music at work? If so, there would be a very good case for challenging the new rule based upon the availability of thousands of completely legals MP3's at places like mp3.com.
:-)
Of course, if their reasoning is based more on productivity or download bandwidth, it's slightly more understandable - but not much!
Where do you work? The RIAA
"Give the anarchist a cigarette"
A little planning goes a long way...
King's popularity is mostly a function of his career with big-publishing and especially their marketing department. He can get away with the dollar a chapter deal because he's a big name. I really don't think nobodies, talented or otherwise, could pull off the same trick.
Besides, if you could find the specific album, that would be admitting Napster is designed for publishing ripped off records rather than designed for unsigned bands and home DJs to publish their own Napster Public Radio shows.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Ultimately, I don't think that a subscription model will work for unsigned/unknown bands.
Of course, subscription would only concern access to notorious artists' works, like Courtney Love or any other that escaped a vampiring contract.
I bet this system could also represent a viable opportunity for them.
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
At a guess I'd say the important point is that you are tipping, not paying them, it is a personal gift from you to them. (can't get to the site right now for some strannnggg reason).
...spend it on food .... please?"
Kinda like if you met them in the street, "Hey! Wow! Cool! Wizard! [musician's name]!, I love your stuff, especially [album name]. Here's a tenner, and
~ppppppppö
===== From AP Wire Story =====
Tiger, which is owned by toy giant Hasbro Inc., has the Yahoo! HitClips Downloader ($20). Kids can plug the unit into the speaker jack of their computer, play any music or audio they want online and record up to 60 seconds of the sound on a computer chip in the downloader. The recorded selection then can be played on the transportable downloader or on any of Tiger's HitClip products, including an alarm clock ($15), a boom box ($11) and a personal audio player ($8) -- none of which are linked to the computer.
============================
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
What struck me about Coutrney Love's interview was that so much of her concept of an artist is derived from the manner in which hollywood and the recording industry treat artists.
When she uses terms like "creative person", or talks about how good recording execs are at masssaging the egos of their "talent", she's revealing how much she has bought into the whole system of maintaining stables of "talent". I mean really, who says artists have to be treated like gods, or treated by fans, distributors, managers in the manner the recording industry treats them? What Courtney Love is really saying, is that she likes the way the recording industry execs treats her, and wants internet content companies to massage her ego in the same way. Whether this is how all artists want to be treated is a different matter altogether.
The nonsense about the sound quality of MP3s preventing someone from enjoying the performance is another strawman. The problem generally is that someone used a bad encoder, or a damaged recording to make the MP3. If one does it appropriately, MP3s have very good sound quality. If you're listening to something interesting, even an LP makes for an interesting listen. If you're listening to bad music, using a better format won't change anything.
This attitude towards technology is not surprising at all. It feeds in perfectly with the strategy of the recording industries, where increasingly bad content (and yeah, I'll call it content if I want to Courtney, little of the mass entertainment produced by the music industry counts as art in my book) is released using increasingly sophisticated technology. Witness the quality of films produced by Hollywood, it has been steadily declining, as the quality of special effects and distribution media becomes better. Something most people have seen occur on the web, flashy sites, dumb content, high co-ordination with the point when LA become home to web-development companies.
In sum, I think Courtney makes some great points in the essay. The distribution system used by the music industry is broken, and serves only their own purposes. It would be great to see an independent distribution mechanism arise which is efficient, and capable of rewarding the people who are most important to a music recording (or a book for that matter). Some of them may well require managers, or editors, to guide them (clearly Courtney excepts to have someone like this), but this fucntion should not be foisted on the distribution company. Why should artists who are mature enough to handle themselves, have to see some of their earnings diverted towards paying psychologist-managers to look after enfant terribles? Why should consumers have to pay more either? If the artist requires therapy, they should foot their own bill.
The problem is, pop artists rely more on a cult of personality than their art. The recording industry loves it because they control the media that creates personalities (Hansen, Britney Spears, Jenifer Lopez, Leonardo DiCaprio). I'm more interested in the substance. So I'm not particularly interested in what Courtney Love does, but rather what she produces.
-- Equity lord of the Trill Consortium
I don't purchase CD's.
Eh...
We're both arguing pretty much the same point.
Eh...
I will give a krispy one-dollar bill to any artist listed with this site every time I download a song I keep more than a week.
.02
My
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
Yes, in a competative market that is true, but there is evidence of price fixing by the record labels, which happends to be currently landing them in court. I wish I had the link
People imagine themselves to be generous, but few of us are as generous as we imagine.
BTW, $269 wouldn't even pay for the 2" tape used to record one album...
What if you're a runaway success? You can't raise your price and not expect your customers to feel betrayed.
One possible way:
You think: I need $2000, and I have ~4000 listeners.
You say: "I need about one dollar from each of you."
Later, you think: I want to make five times as much, and I have ~40,000 listeners
You say: "Now, just 50 cents per person!"
In today's business model, it doesn't cost much more to listen to the most popular musicians (with the exception of live shows, and I'm not sure how much of that is venue-gouging). A CD is a CD, and the extra profit comes from volume.
- Michael Cohn
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
Yup, I think it is. So let's say you download 25 songs by 15 different artists on napster one night. And you actually like, say, 5 of them enough to tip. So you're going to jump over to fairtunes.com and individually search through the database 5 times to find your artists and go throught the rigamarole of tipping them?
Sure, if you're really committed. But it's a pain! What there needs to be is some kind of tie-in with, yes, napster or [insert p2p sharing system here] that collects info on what you've downloaded in a session, and provides an easy-to-click dialog saying "You've heard these 10 artists tonight. Check a box next to the ones you'd like to tip."
Then, if you were subscribed to the service (or had a cookie set or something, whatever) it could even fill in a default amount for each and your credit card number. Click! You just used 1-click (tm) tipping online. Okay, better make it 2 clicks to avoid patent infringement :)
I think that fairtunes is a wonderful concept, and would love to watch it suceed as I dance through a meadow with faieries and leprechauns, but really........(sarcastic tone intended to imply that for the most part good natured, kind hearted people don't exist, Stephen King fans aside).
As dougman said, I read about this two weeks ago and the money hasn't exactly been rolling in.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
They pretty much do, at least in this state. The minimum wage for tip-based jobs is rather lower than the normal minimum wage because, well, it's expected that you'll get tips to cover the difference. And if you're good, it'll probably get you a bit more.
--
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"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
- You go on an MP3 site and they charge you, say...
- 5$ a month for limited downloads,
- 10$ for unlimited radio-like broadcasts (you are only allowed to make a selection amongst a selection to which you contribute by vote)
- or 50$ for unlimited downloads (whatever there is, you can accees it and download it).
- Regularly, statistics are gathered and artists get a percentage for what they got heard.
Of course,this is a draft so it might sound incomplete, so, instead of [flames ¦ moderation], juste contribute and suggest.Some remarks before I click the Submit button
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
(I'm playing the devil's advocate, by the way, so please don't moderate this as flame bait)
I've seen the statement "we don't want all the money going to the middle man" tossed around here quite a bit, and it got me thinking... I bet most of us here who have jobs end up working for some sort of "middle man". So if we try to cut out the middle man in these transactions, aren't we in fact taking money away from our fellow workers' pockets? (i.e. the middle men will see a decline in revenue, have to cut wages/jobs, etc.)
Okay, I'm done playing the advocate, I know that the above doesn't take into account all of the variables, but the fact is that for most products, middle men are necessary. There aren't a whole lot of CD manufacturing plants that have walk-up counters with cashiers, ready to take our orders. And our economic system seems to be built on the idea of having tons of distributors and resellers and retailers and whatnot, which in turn gives lots of people a job and food on their tables.
Just something I thought that people might want to think about.
- Mike
I don't know of many waitresses that get more than that. Most of them DO rely on tips, and end up doing far better than I who make $7/hr. It is possible to make a good living on the kindness of strangers, but the strangers have to have it in their heads to be kind in the first place. After all, would you tip at restaurants if it wasn't expected of you? If this sort of model is to work, there has to be a re-thinking of the entire entertainment industry.
Most artists would make more money working at McDonalds than recording and selling CDs, at least until they've had a good number of big hits.
The way the system works, the recording company gives you an advance for recording the album, say, $250,000. They you record it, they manufacture it, market it, pay promotions people to bribe radio to play it, and so on, which costs the best part of a million.
The CDs go on sale. In a typical major-label contract, the artist gets 50c-$1 for each one sold. That is, after they've paid off their advance, marketing expenses, producers' fees, returns, breakages, &c. Which means that you don't see any money from CD sales until you've sold several million units, and then see only a trickle. Meanwhile, the recording company sees money from the first CD sold. They're not the ones who have to pay for the whole thing, after all. In his book Confessions of a Record Producer, Moses Avalon estimated that this is equivalent to a loan at 66% interest.
If you're a big-name artist, say, Metallica or someone, you can negotiate a cushier deal; say, $2 per CD, with the company footing parts of the bill, and you owning the copyright. After all, it's in their interest to sign you. However, if you're just a young band, star-struck that Warner or someone would be interested in them, no dice. If you don't sign on their terms, one of the young bands in the line behind you will.
And if I don't like my work, I find a new job.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
An AC wrote: How do the Record Companies get Paid? This is still unfair to them.
CmdrNacho wrote: If you're looking for freebies, go to a soup kitchen or your local Salvation Army.
Well, that's exactly what we keep trying to tell them, but they don't listen! Buncha lazy good-for-nothing bums! They think they can get stuff for free -- that just because they've always got things for free in the past they have a right to continue this practice indefinitely!
It's time for the record companies to wake up. Their free ride is over. Their welfare state -- created and empowered by a government-granted monopoly on an infinite resource -- is being destroyed.
The world -- or at least a small part of it -- is finally beginning to realize that "intellectual property" is a crock of shit. Just because someone has a funny little C-with-a-circle-around it and their name on something, that doesn't mean that they have a natural right to make money from it. In fact, there is no natural right to make money at all. That's what a free market means -- you may make money, or you may not. You spin the wheel, you take your chance.
Now all we have to do is survive the mercenaries they're likely to send to kill us. (Hint: they're the ones with the red-white-and-blue flags on their uniforms. Bought and paid for by the RIAA using the money that you spent on CDs. You didn't think all that money went to the artist, didya?) At least the second amendment isn't completely dead yet. We still have some hope of living through this with both lives and freedom intact.
(Sorry, I'm in a bad mood this morning.)
- Can see total contribs to date for entire site
- Can see total contribs to date for individual artists
- Can contribute via credit card
- Marketspeak free (the fine print re: credit card fees is refreshingly clear and frank)
- Tip amounts are free-form entry (i.e. no "$10, $100 or $1000" drop down)
- Can leave message to send to artist (of course proof that they read it is missing, but whaddya gonna do)
- Very simple and fast site
Some of the music I own is so good I'd be willing to use a site like this to tip even after buying the album.I have to wonder though: What do the artist's contracts look like? Do they have to split these tips with their labels because they are revenues generated from jointly produced work? I can see how they'd get around this if I were tipping a band member (just a person-to-person transaction). But I'm tipping by band name--not really the same thing.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
I completely support artists getting compensated for their works. I think voluntary donations are a great way to do so. But I don't see any way at all that this could possibly be a viable business model.
$269 is a good gesture, but its only that -- a gesture. That doesn't pay bills, keep food on the table, or make it worth the hassle for the artist to keep on creating. (He could do better working at McDonald's) An argument might run that an true artist doesn't really need to be rich if he really loves his job, but we have to face reality, artists need money -- real money.
I think this is a good first step, but we need to improve on this idea. You can't really count on the generosity of others to make a living. What if waitresses didn't get a salary but instead relied entirely on tips?
Actually, that analogy is flawed, because in the case of the artist and MP3s, you don't really see the artist's face being polite to you trying to win your favor like a waitress does. People pay much less attention to the artist than the actual music. How do convince people that they are ethically obligated to donate money into this tip jar? Maybe they'll get about 20,000 Slashdot folk to do it, but there are hundreds of millions in the US alone that need convincing.
Donating not only supports the producers things you like, enabling them to produce more, it encourages others to produce things you like in the hopes of getting your future donations.
the cost of music IS real world cost. Tape costs money, studio time costs money, rehearsal space costs money, FOOD costs money.
These are fixed investments producing unlimited copies of music. It is a fundamentally different situation than an investment producing transient performed music which can only be heard by a limited audience. It demands a fundamentally different income model.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Your prize is a "imagine a beowulf cluster of street performer protocols!" shirt.
sig:
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
I was never a fan of the music, image, acting abilities, or miscellaneous talents of Miss Love, but after reading her music industry manifesto I have a whole new opinion. Give it a read........she's no slouch.
As for your joke about Kurt Cobain's death.........grow up.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
I wrote an essay on why I think this is a viable economic model for all IP based on the self-interest of the donor. Personally, I like to call the general concept "mass-market busking" and any such freely-redistributable product "buskware".
In short, the reason you donate is that it sends a message to the world that there is money to be had in making something you like. You aren't donating primarily to support one specific producer, but to reward, and thus encourage, the behavior of making such products and releasing them for free distribution.
The key to making it work is for each buskware producer to give full public disclosure of how much money they receive, with as much information about which product it was for as is available. This is the payoff for the donor, as other people can look at this and think "Hey! He's making money at it, I should try, too!" (conversely, they are discouraged from following the example of people who don't make an adequate profit).
Music is something of a special case, as most music isn't tailored to a particular audience, and people generally don't seem to prefer that it is, but at the very least you are encouraging musicians to believe that they can distribute their music freely, without signing on with a big label.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Perhaps something like Bruce Schneier's Street Performer Protocol would work for sites like this?
--
bgphints - internet routing news, hints and ti
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This is what Gene Kan of Gnutella was talking about in the "Future of Digital Music" hearing I believe: incentivizing "pirates" to create new legitimate business models. Well here's one. A virtualization of the street performer's protocol. Think of a street performer: some people walk by and drop a coin in a hat, others do nothing, thereby technically "pirating" the performer's music without compensation. The recording industry's answer is to jail everybody who doesn't pay, or create some cumbersome locks on the music so that nobody will want to even listen to it, and the whole business is driven away and dissolves. A protocol like this recognizes that some people *won't* pay, but those with a good heart will. I recognizes you simply can't *stop* people from not paying, but you *can* make it easy for those who want to.
Even better, this money goes *right* to the artist (sounds like it at least) circumventing every middle-man down the line slicing his share off. I think this could turn the tables so that now *artists* are in control, and instead pay for the services of the recording industry.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
A real micropayment system would require a lower base fee. For example, maybe you could set up an account at the site and buy a few dollars worth of tips at a time (thus losing only 4 or 5% to Visa), which you would then distribute as you see fit over time. The other advantage of this system is it minimizes the number of times you need to enter your credit card data (which seems like it would improve security, though I know little on the subject).
Metallica lives way more comfy than I do and I still haven't gotten my thank you letter yet. In fact, they lashed out at their fans. I figure that even with the fact that they only get a cut of all of their sales, between myself and a handful of my friends, they have made pretty damned good money all the way since I was in elementary school. Still like their music, just wish that this knife wound in my back would heal... and that they'd stop just saying what they're producers tell them to. The second they cut their hair, the damned record companies saw them as about as markettable as a boy band, already a lot of fans, and they had good music, now the cleaner, safer, more cuddly heavy metal band. Sort of like the "tough guy" from boy bands who looks like any good sized high school jock could break him in 2.
Look mom! We're rebelling!
Eh...
This was covered on The Swindle, uhmm...2 weeks ago. At that time, a whopping 60 dollars had been donated.
I wish Fairtunes the best of luck, tho. I put my money where my mouth is.
There needs to be a method of micropayment available which is secure, resistant to fraud, and easily limited. Ideally I could just go to the store and buy a card worth $20 to $50, like a phone card, and use it until it's gone. Then even if the card is compromised, I'm not out a whole lot.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In then end though, I end up paying the band, the sound person, security, the hall, etc out of my own pocket.
There's your problem. You're talking about a very limited distribution medium (how far does sound carry?) with a real-world cost.
In that situation, you need a certain minimum average donation, and that's what kills the profit model.
There is no motive for the people to donate more. They gain no advantage by encouraging voluntary admission shows if they pay more at each one. If they were willing to pay $30 for the show, they'd rather it be required and not have to fight for elbow-space with the riffraff that crowds in for free. It is against their interests to subsidize the admission of people who pay less.
There is also the problem that there is only one opportunity to donate. If you have a copy of a song, listen to it often, and the option to pay is always there, you are a lot more likely to decide it's worth paying for at a time when you are able to donate.
Paying voluntary admission is "social donation", people pay because they are in a public place and feel obligated to demonstrate that they're not freeloaders. Naturally, they look at it as a problem in how little they can get away with spending (hmm... what's the recommended minimum?).
It's different when you're paying for freely distributed (whether legally or not) music in private and at your own convenience. Then you stop thinking "how little can I get away with spending" and start thinking "how much do I want to spend on keeping this band around"?
Whether this will work out remains to be seen...
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
I will use tipping in New York city as an example of how this can be a huge success.
$269 is a good gesture, but its only that -- a gesture. That doesn't pay bills, keep food on the table, or make it worth the hassle for the artist to keep on creating...reality, artists need money -- real money.
Most of my friends in NYC have worked as waiters at one time or the other and currently do so now while in school. One of them is a bright kid who is currently working on Nanotech research at the Rochester Institute of Technology yet he frequently waits tables while in school instead of looking for a better job.
Why is this?
In New York city, everybody tips. There is a social stigma associated with people who do not tip. When Hilary Clinton ate a meal at a restuaraunt and didn't tip, it made front page news in some tabloids. Because of this it is normal for waiters to make anything from $100 to $200 a night depending on how busy the restaurant is. Working five days a week that is comparable to what most people make after a gruelling 4 year degree in college.
I think this is a good first step, but we need to improve on this idea. You can't really count on the generosity of others to make a living. What if waitresses didn't get a salary but instead relied entirely on tips?
They do, most waiters/waitresses make half of minimum wage. Obviously no one is making a living on $80 a week (after taxes) for 40 hours of work.
How do convince people that they are ethically obligated to donate money into this tip jar?
Easy, bombard people with information about tip sites until they feel socially obligated to do so. If all 20 million Napster users suddenly started getting hit with banner ads advocating tipping the artists whose music they were downloading, how many do you think wouldn't? Especially if the payment process was easy. Heck, if I could click a link from Napster everytime I downloaded a good song to throw a dollar or two at the artist I would. Multiply that by a few million and you have a new distribution model that pays artists a lot more than the current butt-fucking that the RIAA gives artists.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
We're working on embedding meta-data into digital content files which will allow for easy voluntary payments and will encourage free distribution. We're using crypto in an attempt to assure consumers that the person they're paying is actually the originator of the content, not an imposter with their hand in the artist's tip jar. The discussion is just getting rolling and we could use some input:
http://tipster.weblogs.com
Fairtunes strikes me as being a reasonably good step in the right direction. The thing that people aren't realising here is that it needs a lot of donations to work out right, and it's not getting those donations from people are take one look at the site and say "That's not enough to afford XXXX thing for them crazy artists!" or "bwahaha with so little money there's no way to get the puny tip to the artist reasonably!". Well, gee. If you actually made a donation, not only would it help overcome these two factors, but it would entice more people to donate. Unfortunately, this sort of phenomenon plagues anything like this and will probably murder fairtunes before it gets off the ground.
I praise Courtney Love for the opinion she wrote. It indicates that she has a good grasp of where things should be going and why what's happening now is wrong. I can't wait for the day when all it takes is the artist, a credit card commerce outfit, and a web pimp for bands to exist. At that point, costs will be ultra-low for everybody. I'd love to slap $1-5 for an mp3'd album (or whatever compression system is big in 2020 when this actually happens =P ).
Diehard
Maybe a name more like "Ransom Protocol" would be more appropriate, or "Communal Purchase Protocol".
The Street Performer Protocol has little relation to the operating procedure of street performers (a.k.a. buskers): a price is set and must be matched. Have you ever seen a busker with a sign, "I'm only playing the first half of this song, if there isn't $10 in my hat by the end of the first half, I won't play the second half."? It doesn't fit the analogy at all.
I think it is a badly flawed variant of mass market busking (not to suggest that the idea was derived from it, just that MMB is the more general term).
The flaws?
Well, how do you set the price? You know donations are going to drop right off once one the price is reached; when you explain it in terms of influencing this one single producer, people will think of it in those terms and look for the minimum donation they can get away with (and who knows what price you'll set for the next piece? better to hold some back against future increase). So when you set a target, you also set a limit.
What if you're a runaway success? You can't raise your price and not expect your customers to feel betrayed.
What if your sequel isn't as well-received as the first book, even though it pays well enough that you'd like to keep going? You can't lower the price when you see it's not going to be met, or people won't take you seriously at all.
IMHO, it's far better to just let people pay what they will. If you want to make noises about giving up on the project because you're making too little money, fine, but don't try to set a price target/limit before release. Only someone like Stephen King, who has such a loyal following that he can predict demand, can get away with this kind of thing.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
I think this idea has considerable merit. I like it. I do have, however, some concerns about their ability and plans for dealing with "imitations", for lack of a better word.
Just like cyber squatting on domain names, and their similar-looking/sounding names, it seems it's only a matter of time before someone starts registering:
Then there's making web sites that are variations on www.fairtunes.com such as:
I think this sort of thing could have some serious potential.
:-> ) when they know that he is the one getting the money, rather than some middle man.
The thing about these sorts of scheme is that they believe that fundamentally most people are honest, as was demonstrated by King. The record industry (and movie) work on the principal that if people can steal it they will.
I believe that the latter arguement has got human nature fundamentally wrong. I don't mind paying for a CD/Video but what I do mind is the fact that these things cost so much and most of the money goes to the middle men. This is especially true with CDs when the artists get relatively little.
This sort of thing works because most people don't mind paying Steven King 1USD a chapter (as long as there arn't too many chapters
The same could work for music. When we are all downloading music direct from the artists we cercumvent the distibution companies, removing them froom the loop. Most people would be willing to pay a reasonable amount direct to the band on an honour basis, and with costs so low you wouldn't have to ask for much.
I live in York (england) and at the Minster (big church) they don't charge you to look around (partly because they can't), but they do request that everyone make a voluntary donation of a suggested amount, and most people do. Admitidly it being religious probably helps, but I have seen a similar scheme used for other historic buildings. This works because people are generally willing to pay for what they get.
The same is true for musicians, artists, writers, movie makers and software writers. If people like what you have done they will more than likely pay for it because they want more.
What people object to is paying through the nose for a CD only to find out that it is rubbish when they get home.
With the advent of digital distribution for music, books and films (digi projectors and broardband?) we could (eventually) see the sidelining of the distributers, and money going direct to artists on an honour system. At which point piracy becomes moot and everyone is happy (except the RIAA and MPAA of course).
A little utopian (and rather long winded), but we can hope. King has already shown that it can work for the well known artists, it just remains to be seen how it scales down to the up and comming ones who have no publicity machine or well known name. Mabey.
Paul Leader