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Where Indie Artists Get Everything
anonicon writes "From the same people who brought you the Web's first corrupt CDs tracking list comes the first site where independent musicians receive 100% of the money that fans pay for their music or merchandise (of course, after the credit card company takes their cut from the payment). More information can be had here or here."
They do take some money. It costs $60 for the first year and $40 for every year after that (as seen here)
Even if they didn't ask for payment they might still take donations or some well meaning people might choose to fund it out of their own pockets (as with the Wikpedia)
My brother-on-law sells on CD Baby and seems pleased. Not sure how they structure the deal, but the basic idea is to allow independent artists to get most of the money.
None of these sites solve the much larger problem of artist marketing, IMO. That's the one service that the record companies offer to the artists that no one else can get close to (in part because they lock competitors out of radio access, for example). There's room in the market for someone to do that, but they're going to have to find other means of getting to the customer other than radio (sites like Epitonic.com are a good step in that direction).
This has already been done before. Go take a look (and listen) at cdbaby. They have over 34,000 artists, and a lot of them are pretty darn good. I buy most of my music there.
As for 0 artists, you're right. We launched about 36-48 hours ago, the idea's been in development for about 6 months.
:-) Remember, if there was no opportunity to stay in business, the idea wouldn't have been started. We're not interested in being a dot-bomb.
Per bandwidth, 300gb/mo is $95.00. If I need more, I can get 2tb/mo for about $600/mo.
As far as keeping 0%, that's absolutely no joke. When you pay for an artist's CD, the money moves from your bank through the processor (2CheckOut) directly to the artist. We keep nothing because we're not even in the payment stream.
My expenses for now are $10/month for cheap hosting. I think I can handle it.
Peace.
Bandwidth is cheap. Ads are not cheap since they generally alienate your audience and cost you visitors (pop-ups! pop-unders! egads, the horrors!).
For more info:
http://www.fatchucks.com/about.html
Scroll to the end. No ads.
Severed Heads also offer improved versions of their older stuff - and the latest album (Op) comes with a key to access 'upgrades' - i.e. extra songs and new versions. On top of all this, you can hear just about everything they sell as a (low bandwidth) MP3 before you buy.
Cut up the middleman!
Who would believe in penguins,unless he had seen them? Conor O Brien - Across Three Oceans