Slashdot Mirror
Ideas for a Recording Industry Alternative?
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?)."
mylocalbands.com is trying to do this.
Any system that allows consumers to purchase songs one song at a time (at a low one-song price), rather than as expensive packages (like CDs) that contain unwanted songs at a high price, will go a long way toward helping small artists get recognition.
Do the artists have to sign some contract to help support the service provided to them?
Isn't this where the music industry started?
Anything you say will be held against you.
"popular format like OGG".
Kinda like a mainstream desktop operating system like Linux?
- oZ
// i am here.
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).
You can't have it both ways. Local bands, or somewhere else's local band? Every band is local somewhere.
At any rate, mp3.com had for years - and I presume they still have - charts and artist lists sorted by region, so that you can just listen to "local" bands. They already tried exactly what you're talking about.
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.
Um, mp3.com for years. Have you even looked at it?
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?
Um, did you cut and paste that from mp3.com's prospectus from a few years back? It's all been said (and done) before. And look where it got them, and their share price.
Oh! And dump the necessary registration required to listen (are you listening mp3.com?).
Sheesh, just make up a fake email address and you're done in 10 seconds.
I'm sorry, but I fail to see how this ill-informed "idea" made it to slashdot.
This utopia exists.
It is called besonic.
It has been online for over two or three years (previously known as Riffage), and has a gigantic list of music online for free, as well as albums available for download from thousands (believe me, there are a lot) of bands from all over the world.
The great part about besonic is that just to be an Artist is free (you can post your own music completely free, charge euros - 'cause that's their currency - for albums, everything.) - the only thing that costs is the albums (that can also be sent in cd form to your home address) and a full artist service, with a custom web site and everything.
Can't believe nobody's heard of it here. Then again, I'm big on music and recording and everything...
Spaceman40
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Yeah, sounds great. You just left one part out. Who's gonna pay for all this? The bandwidth alone is going to be astronomical.
There were a bunch of dot-bombs with this idea, and they all burned through their funding without ever having a hope of turning a profit.
How am I going to know if I like a band's music enough to buy the whole CD? I gotta download the songs and listen them to a while before I'm gonna be willing to plunk down my hard earned cash and buy their product. If they're gonna give their music away, they just need to use the existing P2P networks, not create a new one.
You saying you can dance to Tori Amos?
That's something I'd love to see.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Independent artists tend to be extremely lo-fi, very unpolished, and more often than not, just plain unoriginal.
Meshuggah, Throwing Muses/Kristin Hersh, King Crimson, Ornette Coleman, Ani Difranco, Dead Kennedys...
Of course media companies, as agents, try to extract as much rent as possible from their principals -- the consumers. They try to shape our tastes to easily, cheaply copied versions of artists they know consumers already like. They try to extract as much as possible out of their existing set of artists and invest as little as possible in discovering new talent. This is just the typical kind of agency cost you have in any principal-agent relationship.
If the market were properly competitive, with a sufficient number of media companies all competing hard with each other for the attention/money of the consumers, then we'd have an optimal balance of filtering and discovering done by the media companies, and consumers would have good, reasonably priced music from interesting artists satisfying all kinds of tastes without having to invest in discovery for themselves. The problem is that I think we have a few media companies that are too large, so that the agency problem is a big deal. The media companies can afford to shirk and persist in being complacent and feed us recycled garbage over and over again simply because there are so few of them and they dominate distribution.
If we really want to solve the problem, a site offering lots of free indie music will not do the job. We need to find agents as alternatives to the media companies who can perform this filtering function and discover good talent for the consumers who can't afford to do the search themselves. That requires a trust relationship to be built up between the agents and the consumers (so we'll respect their choices), and a pay structure to provide incentive, and sufficient competition to keep the agents honest. I think that's a much harder problem and one that may not be solved by technological means alone.
Cdbaby isn't a bad choice I hear. They focus on international distribution of indie bands not the localized system that the post is discusssing but they are definitely more amenable to fans than the RIAA.
What you say might sound convincing if I didn't hear hundreds of new, quality, original songs by lots of small-time bands every month.
I listen to a couple good college stations in my area (college stations vary, of course-- some are horrible): KFJC 89.7 and KZSU 90.1 in the Bay Area. The DJs are passionate about the music they listen to, and most of them tend to play really, really good music that you'll never hear on a mainstream station.
Can't dance to it? Bullshit-- local DJs come down and spin all sorts of supremely danceable tracks several times a week. Extremely lo-fi? Unpolished? Hardly-- lots of these bands have been around for a while, and use some pretty solid studios to record in. This isn't the straight-ahead indie garage rock your pappy used to listen to.
The truth of the matter is that mainstream radio today is so narrow, there's a huge range of artists that don't get any major play (and many not on major labels) that have talent, experience, and dedication. In addition to the totally indie artists, there's all the other great music that doesn't get much play here-- international stuff, old stuff, etc.. Since those types don't get any mainstream radio play, the owners might be willing to allow free webcast of it just to get interest back. Hell, when's the last time you heard your local station playing Sun Ra?
Now Rolling Stone is behind P2P and Internet radio according to this full page ad that they ran in the NYT yesterday in support of P2P. They may be just fishing for new readersip, but it is still an entertaining read. The full text of ad is available in PDF format, or as follows:
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
Why not use what we have here: 250,000 readers, 2 or 3 posters ;) and many countries and genres represented.
We don't need to serve the mp3s themselves, just link to an exciting artist that isn't signed. (No new Madonna songs, IOW. She's already got enough exposure.)
Perhaps have an artist interview once a month or more), music software reviews(mp3 and recording), some sort of voting on a /. top ten, whatever.
As long as we don't have any mp3s here, there shouldn't be any bandwidth/legal problems.
Of course - the flag icon still isn't fixed (even after I sent one in) so maybe this will fall on deaf ears. (Pun intended.)
mp3.com (biggest >1.5 million tunes, now owned by Universal Vivendi who, so far, haven't messed it up too much)
IUMA (based in the USA, but international)
Besonic (based in Germany, but international)
mp3.de (based in Germany, but international)
Soundclick (based in the USA, but international)
(Garageband based in the USA, but international)
France mp3 (based in France)
Vitaminic (free + pay - based in the USA, but international)
Washington Post (yup, the newspaper)
Online Rock (based in the USA, but international)
Peoplesound based England
mp3.com Australia (not the same mp3.com - based in Australia, but international)
Emusic (pay and not really indie per se, but smaller label and re-release oriented, based in USA)
Artistlaunch (based in the USA, but international)
mp3 Poland - (Based in Poland - mostly domestic)
Good Google will searches turn up more small sites, thousands of independent artists' sites with free mp3's, some smaller labels that have free samples, many, many links pages. The biggest problem here is that it takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is some incredibly good stuff out there and a lot of crap.
Use Google - many local newspaper sites have mp3 sections for local artists and there are many mp3 sites that are specifically for local talent.
If you're not familiar with mp3.com, it can be daunting in the sheer volume of material (no pun intended). And they accept material of all (musical) quality from absolute crap to incredibly good. They have many genre-based top-40 style charts and new-release charts. Walking through those is a natural first step. One concept they have that can be a big help is "stations" - really a euphemism for fan-generated lists of tunes by various artists. The tunes can be played separately or sequentially. So, when you find an artist that you like and get to their page, click on the "stations now playing" tab. On that page could be one to several "stations" where you might find additional good material that someone else has taken the time to comb out and list. I've seen lists from 2 to 200 tunes long - this can expand your options very quickly.
I have looked for ogg sources and found precious few. Unfortunately, Ogg is still a long way from critical mass.
Sigs are bad for your health.
The only way to fund bandwidth is to create coupon clipper sites. That is, put up a fund for a particular purpose and when the fund's principal is generating enough interest, fund bandwidth from that interest. Let's say a T-1 costs $500. That's $6000/year in interest income. At a reasonable assumption of 6% interest, that would make the originating fund need to be $100,000.
I would see this as putting in a one time payment of maybe $20 for a share in a non-profit corporation devoted to establishing permanent free bandwidth services. The majority of votes would determine whose 'free' service would see the light of day first. This would only take you approx. 50,000 participants to get your first free service. That seems difficult but not impossible. Surely there are more than 50,000 people who want to ensure that there is no RIAA hegemony? But beyond that, money that is donated before reaching 50k will accumulate interest and reduce the ultimate number of members needed.
Then again, with bandwidth prices likely to be on a long-term slide, as time goes on, the same money is likely to give greater and greater bandwidth.