Other Online Opportunities for Independent Musicians?

Rimbo asks: "MP3.com has recently announced that as of October 1st, artist royalties will be slashed. 1000 listens used to be worth about $30; they will soon be worth $5. Since MP3.com requires that artists pay $19.95 per month just to get the royalties, breaking even -- which used to be easy -- is now impossible for most artists. Most of the artists are now out of what used to be a major source of income. So where can independent artists go now?"

"A tool like Mojo Nation won't work quite as well, since we rely on the web to do our advertising -- unless a cgi or java front-end exists for it. And other audio hosting sites such as Java Music and Ampcast seem likely to feel the same financial crunch that MP3.com has.

Much of these recent changes were expected with the Vivendi buy-out. But it's clear that the business model wasn't working, either. MP3.com has to face overhead and has to get its money from somewhere. It can't just serve up MP3's for free to everyone.

It seems to me that the best way to go would be some method whereby listeners can try music before they pay for it, and when they do pay, can do so conveniently and without having to pay very much. I know that most artists would be able to do very well for themselves with as little as a nickel per download. Would you be willing to pay that much? What would be a convenient way to pay that you would feel is secure and private?"

Comments

MP3.COM goes down the tubes

[YIAAL]

They've gotten steadily worse. Some alternatives: Vitaminic and PeopleSound are pretty good, let you make CDs on an on-demand as-sold basis (though PeopleSound actually makes you mail them files on CD-R, no uploading) and let you charge for downloaded tracks.

AngryCoffee doesn't pay anything, but it's free and cool.

I'm extremely disappointed with MP3.Com, though. Every time they change their policies they get suckier.