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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."
No posters here yet, but revolutions take time
Obligatory link to an article by Courtney Love:
Courtney Love does the math
The final score?
Band: $0.00
Record Label: $6,600,000.00
It's nice to see someone try to make it without the RIAA et al. I hope this kind of thing becomes more common.
People: Please support these guys even if you hate their music. If they turn a profit, other bands will follow suite.
I'm not Seth.
Don't you think that this wonderful concept should have a few artists to start with --- exactly whom is participating in this revolution? They should have prominence on this site -- the "founding fathers" as it were.
I want my old mtv! (where they played MUSIC videos)
If this thing ever takes off (they're at zero artists right now... not a good sign), I'm just curious as to how Fat Chuck is going to pay for bandwidth. Anyone can put up a website. I'll believe that they take 0% when I see it. That's like opening a retail store and selling everything for what it costs you. Sure, the customers are happy, but you have expenses, and with zero profit, you won't be able to stay open for long.
This service doesn't add much to what's already out there. You have to pay them $60 for the first year, just to get a subdomain listing that shows your CDs, links to your website, and lets people order your stuff. Then, if somebody does order something, you get an email and have to process the order and send it out. The only thing they do is handle the monetary transaction.
How is this any better than musicians setting up their own site and using paypal (which takes out a lower percentage for credit card charges)?
This doesn't seem like a revolution, just a way to make money off wannabe musicians that think they might sell something.
Totally ghost written. That doesn't make it BAD, and I'm not casting dispersions on Courtney Love- I think its admirable that she would use her fame as soap box to tell the Truth, so props to her. But something about her doesn't strike me as a researcher.
Obligatory Steve Albini article
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Your sig mentions EMusic. I listen to a lot of jazz. For the price of a CD every month, I get unlimited *legal* MP3 downloads of classic stuff. Bought a Penguin guide to jazz on CD to help sort through EMusic's collection, and have pulled maybe 11G of tunes in three months (and I haven't been hitting it that hard). It's practically more than one can listen to.
I guess it's a product life-cycle thing. Relatively few people are buying classic jazz these days (compared to top 40/pop/alternative), so the record labels are figuring they'll take what they can get for it.
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