Evaluating a System for Selling and Delivering MP3s?

Dredd2Kad asks: "I'd really like Slashdot's opinion on this. I recently secured an MP3 distribution deal with an indie record label, and negotiations with other indie labels and artists are in the works. The music will be distributed through my internet radio station's website. As you know, if you can sell music in a format such as MP3 you eliminate the costs of packaging, shipping, handling. You do have to contend with bandwidth charges though. Most indie labels and artists seem happy to pass along the savings to customers and stimulate sales. What I have built is simple and functional. We are trying to add value to the MP3 albums we sell by including quality artwork that can be printed onto CD labels and jewel case inserts (so you aren't just getting a 'bunch of files'). What would make you want to buy music in this way? What types things would turn you away? What are the positives and negatives of selling music in this manner? Do you think this is a viable alternative to someone who doesn't want to pay $10 or $15 for a physical CD? Does the format the music is in or on have an impact on how serious you take it?"

Comments

Fast Downloads

[t0qer]

Fast downloads, thats all I care about.

I pay attention to the music

[kevinatilusa]

Regardless of whether I can print fancy jewel case covers/inserts out, I wouldn't really see your music as "just getting a bunch of files" any more than I would see a CD as "just getting a bunch of 0's and 1's". Ideally, I would like to focus on just two things, the quality of the music you play and the quality of the transfer of the music into the file. I would be willing to pay much more for those things than I would for the extras you mention.

Adding value

[dew-genen-ny]

I'd love to see as much thought that goes into a cd album being put into this :

Specifically, I'd definately pay for a package that contained:

High quality vbr mp3s.
Multiple peices of album artwork, not just a scan of cd-album front cover.
Lyric files to all the MP3s.
Where available guitar chords as well.

I think that copy protection would be a big turn off. For indie bands, I reckon that the majority of people would be happy to buy, even if they could get it for free, just as a matter of support.

Perhaps an introduction to the album by the artists concerned.

And of course, some decent music ;)

Turn offs...

[duffhuff]

What types things would turn you away?

Juit quickly:

1. Low quality and / or fixed format files. MP3 has a large market penetration and LAME is a great codec for 99% of the material, but I'd like to be able to download FLAC, WAV, OGG, or something else. Preferably a clean open lossless standard i.e. FLAC. If the track costs more for the high-quality version then the regular MP3 version I'm okay with that.

2. Forced to purchase a full album over single tracks. This is a big turn off for me, as I find only a few tracks are really worth it.

3. No preview of tracks. I'm not entirly sure if this is bad or not, but some way of previewing, either by a short clip, or a really low quality version of the song, is definately nice.

4. No support for countries outside of the US.
Obviously the US would be the biggest market to start out with, but support for Canada is a cruicial second IMO. Apple's iTunes Music Store doesn't (to my knowledge) support Canada yet, so I can't yet take advantage of it. Ideally, the system would be able to easily support all countries, perhaps with credit cards this is possible, but I see some possible legal implications here.

Media Quality

[togofspookware]

Well, as long as you're distributing MP3s and expecting people to burn them to CDs, just make they're nice high quality. like > 128kbps :-P

From what I hear, Vorbis is good, too...

Other advice: just keep your site accessable. Don't use frames, flash, font tags, tables (for non-table things), or too many images. People are (supposedly) there for the music, not for your flashy web site.

What you have isn't too bad... I wouldn't want to deal with that HTML, though :-)

Albums

[sql*kitten]

What I have built is simple and functional. We are trying to add value to the MP3 albums we sell by including quality artwork that can be printed onto CD labels and jewel case inserts (so you aren't just getting a 'bunch of files'). What would make you want to buy music in this way?

Firstly, I would like to say that this isn't intended as a slur on your musicians.

You must understand where the album came from, why it exists. It is an example of technology leading art. When the technology existed to fit n minutes of music onto a record, musicians started to produce works that were n minutes long. This is why first there were singles, then albums. This has meant that much of what is on an album is filler. I'm looking at my rack of CDs now, and most of them I bought for a few (3-5) great tracks out of a total of roughly 10. The MP3s I have online to listen to aren't complete albums, just the good somgs from each album. There are plenty of albums I can put on as background music, but few that I'd actually want to listen to. Some vendors (like Apple) are starting to understand that the album is an artificial construct... what people really want are individual songs, delivered efficiently. You can't do that so easily on CD, because there isn't so much of a price differential for a retailer to stock a CD album as a CD single (i.e. transportation costs, staff costs, etc are all the same). But now you can, with the network and the MP3 format.

So, the thing that would make me buy online is being able to construct my own "greatest hits" album from a musicians entire catalogue, and get it sent to me on SACD or DVD/A. I'm not even worried about buying compilations of different artists - I can do those myself on my HD after all.

This model is bad for some "artists" because it means they can't make money from filler, but it's good for real artists and their fans, because the percentage of an album that's worth listening to (and hence buying) is so much higher. And it's bad for record labels either way...

Re:Albums

[Tet]

There are plenty of albums I can put on as background music, but few that I'd actually want to listen to.

Then I can only say that your listening habits are significantly different to mine and most of the people I associate with. It's rare for me to buy an album with more than a couple of poor tracks. The artists I like fairly consistently produce a solid collection of tracks with very little filler. There are a few exceptions, the odd one hit wonder that really doesn't have the songwriting ability to make a full album of music. But that's the exception, not the rule. Perhaps that's a consequence of listening to a genre of music (heavy metal) that's so under represented in the mainstream media that the concept of a single is almost unheard of. Most of my favourite bands only make albums -- there's no point in making a single, because it's never going to get played anywhere anyway. Or perhaps it's some other reason entirely...

P.S. Today's music recomendation: Masterplan's eponymous debut album. Feel the soulburn...

Re:Albums

[Anonymous Coward]

much of what is on an album is filler. I'm looking at my rack of CDs now, and most of them I bought for a few (3-5) great tracks out of a total of roughly 10

Really, those extra songs that aren't as good as your favourite songs on an album are not filler. Bands spend time and effort on those songs and want you to hear them, and just because they're not instantly catchy pop songs doesn't mean they're not good. Its ok for a geek downloading songs off kazaa to get only the best two or three songs by a particular band, but it makes for a shit gig if you're only allowed to play two or three of your songs because the rest of your stuff has been designated by some /.er as "filler".

Amazon It!

[plasticmillion]

I agree with all the previous comments: price, speed, choice of quality, etc. are all important. I would add in this context that having an online account would be a big plus, so that I can pay in a certain amount (say $10-20) and then buy tracks out of that account, rather than having to bill my credit card every time for $.79 or $.99 or whatever.

Most importantly, the user experience needs to be attractive since this is a very competitive space (and a lot of your competition has a compelling price point: free). Take a long, hard look at Amazon.com, which is the best e-commerce website I know. Notice how they have striven to make the purchasing process fun and informative. Notice also how the information-rich experience they provide helps to cross- and upsell customers ("People who bought X also bought Y"). If you can include ratings, recommendations, user comments, etc. in your site in a way that is slick and easy to use, that will definitely help to attract and retain customers.

Re:The only thing I would like

[jdvuyk]

Quality is important!!

I think the key is to give people choice. I know if I was presented with downloading ONLY 128k MP3's I would probably flag it, no matter how inexpensive. I want to be able to choice my own format (OGG, MP3, whatever) and ALSO at the bitrate I want.

For me vari-bitrate is where its at. Its a decent compromise on most factors. I cant understand why more people dont use this.

Personal opinion

[Compact Dick]

No, I don't give a shit about printable stuff as of now. Could change in the future.

However - one thing about MP3. When you're converting concerts [or anything else where the tracks are seamless] MP3 does not cut it*. Why? Because the MP3 specification does not allow gapless playback.

Stick to Ogg Vorbis or MPC instead, which are natively gapless [not to mention of higher quality.] The former is patent-free, royalty-free and more flexible than MP3. Plus Winamp has native support.

* There is a proposal that aims to calculate gaps from MP3/AAC/MP4 and remove them, but this isn't implemented in any player/decoder yet.

Some comments

[lpret]

First off, kudos for doing whole albums instead of track-by-track. This allows experimentation and breadth of style.
If I were to be downloading these albums, something I would worry about is bitrate -- whether you encode at 128 or 192 or anything in between. I don't listen to rock, but when I'm listening to a techno track at 128, I cringe at every flaw and makes it quite unlistenable. Also, I'd be worried that if I downloaded this and then my hard drive went kaput that I wouldn't have access to it anymore. Of course it may be best to burn to CD as soon as it's all downloaded.

Things I Like: I like having stuff in .mp3. I have 3 mp3 players so it's much easier to not have to convert and as is especially the case with indie stuff, enter in the id3 info meticulously. I like the lower price. 2 bucks for a whole album? Sure I'll give 'em a whirl, especially if I heard them on your internet radio. I think internet radio sites need to become publishers more often so that people who hear the music can find it. I like your model: listen to IR, hear a song you love, go to your website, find the album the track is on and download it for 2 bucks, knowing you'll love at least one track but possibly more.

Again, kudos, if I listened to punk or metal or whatever, I'd give you a spin for sure.

People also want quality features.

[HanzoSan]

The problem is people think selling mp3s is a good idea, you have to sell services and INCLUDE mp3s.

Selling mp3s is like selling webpages, people will not pay on a per site basis, EVER.

However, people will pay for quality and service, people do subscribe to gaming sites, if you offer it at a cheap $1 a month, or $12 a year, people will subscribe. You also must offer alot of things in the members sections, not just mp3s, but video clips, tourdates, blogs, forums, pictures,interviews, etc. You have to make it into almost an online magazine, you need to build a community, then you charge people to access that community

You charge the fans to access a SCENE, because to the fan, its all about the scene, just like to the musician its all about the art. Treat it like what it is, art! Do not treat it like product, when you treat it like product and worry about how many sales of mp3s you'll get, you wont sell any.

I suggest you let a person subscribe to your site, your fans will subscribe, you may only have a few thousand fans, but thats enough. 5000 people paying $12 a year, is decent money, more money than you'd make trying to sell mp3s.

Re:People also want quality features.

[HanzoSan]

unless you're offering the whole spectrum available in your field - few people could be bothered to join all the punk, rock, pop, metal, techno, classic and whatnot communities to get what they want.

Here you go treating them like customers when they are actually fans.

Fans dont follow logic, its illogical to go to concerts and listen to the same kinda music from the same DJ or Bands every friday and saturday night, but people do this. They do it for the scene, the culture and the community, not for the product.

Sell the community, use the product as a marketing device for that community.

Centralized payment wont work for music because people all are into different scenes.

I may like the rave/hiphop scene, you may like the hardrock/black metal scene, the solution is to have us subscribe to the specific bands we like or communities we like, so we subscribe to one? Link them up to each other, link the hiphop subscription with other hiphop sites, and let those sites convince the user to add on to their monthly subscription.

Just like your cable company does when you decide on the HBO2 package even though you have HBO1, or when you decide to get showtime even after you have cinimax.

Re:People also want quality features.

[StrifeCX]

One problem with an Idea like this is the artists may not feel obligated to make good music after the first several songs, because you have already payed your 12$ for that years music. Kinda similar to selling albums...

Or am I just not thinking of it as a 'scene', and treating it like a product? I don't think so, making music may be more of an art than many other professions, but artists have to eat too.

Re:People also want quality features.

[hubertt]

iTunes is only used by people with waaaay too much money, the same people who would even pay for a Mac.

So what? Aren't they the best customers? We are talking about selling, man. It's always better to sell to people with too much money than to those with not enough.

Re:People also want quality features.

[CastrTroy]

I would have to say otherwise. What you really want to do, is sell to the people with the lowest IQ's. The fact that Ron Popeil(the infomercial guy) is still on TV on a regular basis, as well as countless other stupid infomercials, shows that there's definitely money to be made in selling to the people with a high money to brains ratio. This can be done by either your method, of selling to people with lots of money, or by the other method of selling to those without brains.

Re:People also want quality features.

[Rogerborg]

>It was just an example

It was indeed a perfect example of how vague handwaving and "oh, but of course" economics fall flat on their face when you're not living in your parents' basement.

>If you are hiring a webguy and doing all this stuff, you better be a damn good band.

But if you can't afford a webguy, how do you let people know how good you are. Hmm, that reminds me of something:

Bill: Ted, while I agree that in time our band will be most triumphant, the truth is Wyld Stallyns will never be a super band until we have Eddie Van Halen on guitar.
Ted: Yes Bill, but I do not believe we will get Eddie Van Halen until we have a triumphant video.
Bill: Ted, it's pointless to have a triumphant video before we even have decent instruments.
Ted: Well how can we have decent instruments when we really don't even know how to play.
Bill: That is why we need Eddie Van Halen.
Ted: And that is why we need a triumphant video.
(Pause)
Both: Excellent. (Air Guitar.)

You see the problem? Sure, tell yourself that you can set up a fan site for peanuts, but the first time it falls over with an "Out of Cheese" error, you have lost your revenue stream. Better hope your cupboard is full of those noodles.

>I was being very conservative when I came up with the 5000 number, any good musician should be able to do 15-20,000 easy

Which end of you did that number get pulled from? I'd like to know before I touch it. Can you provide examples of several non-RIAA bands that have managed to set up fan sites that have 20,000 subscribers at $12 a year? Note "several", because "any good musician". If it's that easy, let's see the examples.

If, as I suspect, you're pulling all this out of your quivering pick ass, and you're living in the aforementioned basement (or otherwise living off of handouts) and have no idea what the phrase "working musician" actually implies, at least have the good grace to acknowledge it.

Re:People also want quality features.

[Rogerborg]

>I used 5000 because I know even a crappy band can sell 5000.

Great! Please let us know which crappy (non-RIAA) band has a web based community that collects $12 a year from 5000 fans. For extra points, find us a solo singer/songwriter/musician/backing vocalist/recorder/editing/web guru.

You have no idea what you're talking about do you? I'm calling you out. Show us the money.

Re:People also want quality features.

[Rogerborg]

>Obviously you know nothing of the dollar stretching power of musicians. ;)

Obviously you know nothing about how quickly people get tired of their musican friends and relatives parasiting off of them when they actually start bringing in money.

>Most groups I know have friends or relatives that do the website.

See above. I'd do a fan site for nothing. Once it's asking for money, I want a cut.

>Server cost is negligible

Everything is free until you have to start caring whether it works or not.

>A band that gigs regularly and has a fairly sizable local following will easily cover bandwidth in one or two nights.

What's a band that's gigging regularly going to put on their fan site that'll attract people who weren't at their gigs? If you're gigging, you're not working on new material. If you're not putting new material on your site, who's going to subscribe?

I take the point that for small bands, this might - might - provide some extra income, but I suspect that it will be beer and guitar strings money, not apartment rent or healthcare money. Heck, go ahead and prove me wrong.

Re:People also want quality features.

[sleeper0]

really, why do you pst so many times on a topic you know so little about? You have claimed that the only viable business model is a yearly subscription, while the truth is anything but that... album sales are time tested, you can't even give one example of someone who has had success with this business model you have more or less dreamed up

second, you have no concept of what the standard roster of an indie music label will consist of in terms of sales. Many records will sell less than 10,000 copies total in a year. You cannot expect half of their sales to come from an online venue.

With many "indie labels" sales of 100,000 for a single record would a break-out hit. Labels on this scale would be lucky to have one of those a year, many will not have one this year (or next year). And yet thats what you'd need to get 5,000 online subscribers, figuring about a 5% conversion rate which is being overly generous.

You seem to confuse total album sales with subscribers for your pet service over and over. You would do well to realize that many fans of a band will buy the record at a live concert or store, never go to the website, and wouldnt care less about what you're trying to sell there.

Lastly, if you are going to run around saying "if you can't sell 20,000 records your music must really suck bad" or whatever it is you said, you should really re-evaluate they way you judge and appreciayte art. One of my favorite CD's of last year "A rough mix..." by steinski sold only a few thousand as i understand it but it has been critically aclaimed and is without question both thoroughly enjoyable and pushing the genre. Also if you are going to run around saying things like album sales == suck/not suck in a way that claims that a huge amount of indie artists must suck, I'd like to request that you play us some of your own music. Get my point... shut the fuck up about it.

It sounds to me like you may have developed some OK musical taste lately and have gone to see a few unsigned bands but your head is still stuck thinking that music is mass market and that indie means only having one video on mtv2. A vast majority of the world's music is made on a relatively small scale.

In summary: Please stop posting 100 times trying to act like you know a lot about the music industry when you actually know very little. You don't have to be an expert at everything. Take a deep breath and listen to folks instead of trying to tell everyone how it is just because you know someone who knows someone who's in a band.

Re:People also want quality features.

[Eccles]

Just to extend this a bit, the unreleased material, live tracks, stuff that didn't make the album, rough tracks from the upcomming album, remixes, instrumental tracks etc. could be considered as the focus of web sales. A minor remix of a song isn't worth publishing as a CD, but the lower overhead of website publishing means you can make less-polished, less mass-market stuff available for your most devoted fans, and it should have no effect on normal CD sales.

You don't have to pay for bandwidth

[trikberg]

You do have to contend with bandwidth charges though

Is this really necessary? As I've posted before I think a different approach is possible. Set up a site where people can select songs and pay for these using whatever method you prefer: credit card, paypal...

Once they have paid they are free to acquire the song any way they can. This could include you providing a torrent or a slow download, but users are equally free to get the song from any P2P network or by copying from a friend, relieving you of much of the bandwidth costs

This has the effect of legitimizing P2P networks which is why big brands are not going to go for it for a very long time. It does however give small brands an easy entry to online sales. Users take care of the distribution and you only have to provide them with a way of paying.

Ogg Vorbis

[SmilingBoy]

A big plus would be if you offered the files both in MP3 and Ogg Vorbis.

Ogg Vorbis would also save you some bandwidth cost as files with the same quality are smaller than MP3 files.

Ideally, you would want to encode at quality setting 5, which results in pretty-close-to-CD-quality. This is about 160kbps at the moment and the quality is, IMHO, a tick better than a 192kbps MP3.

It should be better than what we have.

[HanzoSan]

Theres two options. One option is to sell the product, I dont really think this would work very well but it would make some money. .50 per mp3 is sometihng people would be willing to pay if you are good, if you arent all that good, .25 per mp3.

Micropayments are an option.

The other option is subscription option, and this is the option I think will ultimately work. If we treat music like we treat TV, and we create channels for certain labels, you can charge someone to subscribe to a channel.

So on your site if you are a channel, you list the price of all your musicians, and combine it up, then offer a subscribe button which a user clicks and makes payment to subscribe.

Once they subscribe for maybe $1-5 a month, the user now can access all the music from that label as long as they pay their fee, or you can charge them for the whole year, charge them around the price of a CD, maybe $15-20, and they can access the music all year.

There should be more than music, this means the whole community, the blogs, the forums, the pictures, video clips, everything you offer and you should offer as much as possible.

Look at AOL, they are king not because they offer the net, we all can get the net, they are king because they offer the features people are willing to pay for, they improve the net experience.

Its your job as a music company to improve the listeners music experience. INNOVATE, dont treat the listener as a sale, treat them as a member.

Re:Use your MP3s for marketing.

[JaredOfEuropa]

"Sell your services, dont sell your mp3s, people want to pay for services not for music. Do what AOL does, dont sell the websites, sell the service, set it up so we have to pay to access the blog, the mp3s, the pictures, and anything else a fan may like, make them pay to access the forum, and use MP3s are just part of the whole package."

Hell no. Stick to your core business: music. Yes, do the rest as well, the blogs, pictures, and so on (I like the ability to obtain CD cover art), perhaps as a premium service for subscribers. But your core business is music: sell that! When I visit the site, I will do so to download music, and I'd be willing to pay for that. If I'd find enough music to interest me, I would take a subscription if it was offered. I might be interested in cover art, artist blogs and video clips, but if I had to pay to access these, I would simply do without them. My advice: offer these additional services for free to hook your customers to your site, and hope that it'll make them buy more music from you.

That said, it's a good idea to set up subscription-type plans, where a user pays a monthly fee for limited or unlimited downloads, ie. charge $0.99 a song, and $15/month for 50 songs each month. Perhaps offer subscribers a few extra services.

Also think about selling download bundles / gift certificates! Ie. an (electronic) gift certificate for 50 songs that you can order and mail to someone else for their birthday. If your current customers like your service, they'll want gift certificates and with those they will do your marketing for you, in a way.

Partying Like It's 1999, eh?

[RobotRunAmok]

"Albums?" "Bunch of files?" Ye Gods, man, why? It's been years since music packaged as an "album" was meaningful. Unless your boys are the next King Krimson or Moody Blues, they -- and you -- should be focusing on distributing their work on a song-by-song basis.

"Artwork?" See above. Lyrics, sure. Give us a link from your Website. Band photo? Okay, fine, whatever. But artwork? Cute, but not a whole lot of value added, IMO. The odds of your band's tracks living on their own CD in my collection are tres slim.

Price? Competitive with iTunes. Less than a buck per song. Per Song Want the ability to preview each track I buy.

Format? I'm a 256kb/s Ogg man myself, but it's tough to argue for that against the vastly more popular MP3. You are aware that the second your avaerage customer downlaods a track from your site it will begin to swirl about the planet freely on P2P networks across which you will receive no compensation? I trust the bands have another surce of revenue (touring, day jobs) and aren't planning on getting rich from MP3 sales...? If your sales just about cover your prep and distribution costs, and you categorize the whole venture under "PR" or "Promotion," I'd say you would have a winner.

Re:Partying Like It's 1999, eh?

[cubicledrone]

You are aware that the second your avaerage customer downlaods a track from your site it will begin to swirl about the planet freely on P2P networks across which you will receive no compensation?

Where all the wonderful customers can wait in line behind 971 other Pringles-eating warezzzz d000dz to download one track on a flimsy 2.1 kbps dial-up connection.

Meanwhile, this service's customers will be able to pull high-quality reliable downloads for four bits (or whatever the price is).

Who's gonna have happier customers? Yeah. Thanks for playing.

(This argument is getting so FUCKING old...)

Re:Partying Like It's 1999, eh?

[cubicledrone]

"Customers?" What "customers?" The P2P guys are getting stuff for FREE.

Free != non-customer

Spending 35 minutes to find and download one mp3 track is also not free. Break out the cost of the Internet connection, then the time, then the cost of the CD-R. Now that it's fair, the business will be more competitive.

They're also "sticking it to The Man," as well,

Yeah, for 75 cents. Big fuckin' deal. Wake me up when they find Utopia.

Businesses like this will sell data, people will pay for it and they will make millions. Apple has already proved it will work. They will also sell books, movies, animations, music, and all manner of other things. Deal.

Shameless plug

[thaddjuice]

This is one of the worst instances I've seen in a while of Slashdot being used for free advertising. I mean come on, this wasn't meant to spark discussion, it was meant to get the Slashdot crowd to look at his site and get interested in buying from him. There are many better "Ask Slashdots" for the front page. Let's address them before we start advertising for online music upstarts.

Reputation problems

[Paul Johnson]

The big problem with selling content is that the customer can't inspect it before the sale, and can't effectively return it after the sale.

(Incidentally, have you thought about the rate of chargebacks you will get from people who download the music and then claim it wasn't them?)

This introduces a risk for the customer: what if I don't like it. You can reduce this risk in two ways:

1. Provide low-quality samples from the tracks.
2. Provide some kind of "reputation" system akin to those provided by Amazon, so that people can easily find music that people with similar tastes also like.

Good luck.

Paul.

Re:Reputation problems

[__aafkqj3628]

I wouldn't provide low-quality samples, because that might cause users to think that the music you are providing is of similar quality. Providing a free track or two from the disc or a 30-second preview (a la iTunes) would be a better option for users to sample your music.

Also, remember that the costs of shipping, handling, packaging etc. will be quickly made up in the costs for bandwidth.

everthing matters

[sPaKr]

I think you touched on many things that matter. Price, Format.. but even more rights or site features also matter.
Here are a few ideas that might help you out.

• Format - mp3, ogg, wmv.. the answer is yes. Why not offer all of the formats.. if you offer one its trival for someone to re-encode to a format they want.. but why make them? It will save you a small amount of disk space in the end.. but possiably cost you users. So the correct answer is to offer all possiable formats at the expense of a little disk space.
• Price - this is a tough one. I would recomend going with at least two options.. first a per track - with a cut price for full ablums. The second is a all you can eat flat rate. As the recent RIAA articals posted on slashdot we know that artist make next to nothing on their album sales. So why not embrace this, use this reason to keep the costs per track as low as possible.. something on the order of a nickle or dime per track. At that rate you will kill most pirates as it wont be worth it to pirate when you can download everthing for a few bucks and get it quick and clean. Remember your goal is to make keep the serivce profitable and while keeping the artist in the front and getting them gigs where they make the real money.
• free radio streaming - you should run streaming on the site.. and push it.. with shows.. and user requests allowing communitys to build around the service.
• real world tie-ins - as part of the communitys you should give presales and promos to community members. Such as cut rate tickets or even garrenteed presales to subscribers. Many people who dont download would be willing to pay a few bucks a month to get them deals on concert tickets. Avid fans would kill for a chance at backstage passes or other common give aways. I mean big acts hand these out to radio stations to give to jacksasses that dont have jobs and most likly never heard of the band. Shouldn't promos go to the real fans?
• Band sites - as communitys build you should plan to have at least templates for bands to have their own sites including forums and other tools. Another part of this is to have clear rules about fan run sites and things such as art work and linking. If you have the rules clear before this happens youll avoid stepping on toes and pissing off the very people that your making money on. The Rules should not be just donts.. but also do's and things like sources of art work.. and how to link. How to attribute and how to stay legal.

I have yet to see a site that knows whats its doing. Most are crap.. and the few that do something right.. do alot more wrong. The best thing is to remember what the goals are .. and to plan well while remaining flexable. Never forget that your in this to promote the music and build a following.. so the normal RIAA tatics that confront end users dont work so well. Passive aggreive works the best.. give and take.. when you find a person swapping the albums.. show them how to link to your site and program their own radio show and then ask them to stop swapping. When that doesnt work use the good will you have built in the community to put on the outside and watch the peer pressure stop them. Soon the community will be self policeing

Dont be like Darth Vader.. dont squeeze your grip..they will only slip between your fingers.. keep your hands open.. and scoop them all up.

Ideas

[Farscape Rocks]

These are some things i liked from reading the other replies and some of my own ideas. 1. Ability to download single songs - This means i only get the songs i like. 2. Fast downloads - Always good ^_^ 3. Mailing List - This is an idea i had. Once the customer has submitted their details and created an account with u're site. The customer gets low quality MP3's sent to them, say 32kbps. This means that the MP3 will be small enough to email and good enough for the customer to decide whether they like the band or not. The MP3's sent are chosen according to the customer's music genre preference. This way the customer can listen to the MP3 anywhere with a comp and purchase it....which brings me to my next idea. 4. Credit - The customers have credit, just like a mobile phone. The customer can put money from their credit card to the MP3 account. So say, i recharge my account with $20 credit. Now i can download songs that i want without having to worry about my credit card number.....which prolly is more secure anyway. I know i didnt explain it very well, but in my mind it'll work. Well those are a few ideas any way. Good Luck with u're project. BTW FARSCAPE ROCKS!!!!!! |:>EmJaY:|

Hate to blow the bubble....

[SerpentMage]

5000 people at 12 USD per year is ONLY 60,000.

Now lets do the math. Assuming you have hosting costs, Internet transfer costs would run in the order of about 1K per month, which is 12K.

So now you are left with 48K USD. You need a machine to host, so most likely you will use a providers machine (fail over, etc). That will cost you another 199 USD per month, which is 1200 USD per year.

Now you are left with 46.8K USD. Next you will probably run your own company and you need to pay health care, and other little office costs. Lets say that it runs up in the order of about 1K per month, which is 12K.

Now you are left with 34K USD where you still have to pay taxes. You will probably have to pay 5K, which means you are left over with 29K, or after all is done and said you get 2,410 USD per month.

You want to feed yourself on THAT? Come on you have got to be kidding yourself.

Being cynical, this is exactly why the dot.com's failed. NO business plan...

It is not to say that your idea is bad. But 12 USD per year is not a reasonable fee. The reasonable fee would have to be calculated....

Re:Hate to blow the bubble....

[Rogerborg]

Well said. I get the feeling that all of these schems are concocted by people living off of their parents, who's biggest problem in life is scraping up enough money to buy that '93 Mustang.

Physical Stuff Tie-in

[Corrado]

I think it would be valuable to give away "stuff". I would love to be able to purchase 10 songs from my favorite band(s) and get a limited edition T-Shirt for free. Or a bumber sticker, poster, something. This would keep me loyal to the site (I have to have so many purchases in order to get my "stuff" points) and keep the P2P poachers at bay.

Well, at least if gives them an incentive to purchase instead of steal (even if I "share" the files I won't be sharing my T-Shirt).

File Quality

[StarFace]

As it has been noted by several others, there is no firm reason to sell music as "albums." If you are going to move primary distribution to a media-less format, there is no reason go constrict your sales to formats that are bound to media constraints. There is nothing wrong with selling files in sets, this is a good thing because it allows the artist to play with multi-song themes and such. There has been much cleverness with the ablum based format, and I would hate to see that disappear. But the age of the single song release is approaching. Even if they come in sets, they should be available individually as well.

The primary concern of mine is audio quality. I will refuse to pay for MP3s. Those are for sampling what an artist has and deciding if you wish to purchase their work or not. Listening to even higher quality encodes on my system is pretty painful, and my system is not even that particularly expensive (in the grand scheme of audio, at any rate.)

I would pay for FLAC, but that is a lot of bandwidth.

Originally, I was going to write that you should provide the ability to re-download in the future at no cost, like some of the better eBook distributors, but I think that is unnecessary and too expensive for you. The user should be responsible with their purchase. When I buy a CD, I immediately rip it, burn a copy and then store encoded OGG files for light listening usage. I then use the CD-R for common usage, and the "master" goes back in the jewelcase and into the library where it isn't touched. It's just common sense to me. If you buy a CD and step on it ten years later you are going to have go buy another one. If you lose the files you bought from some online retailer ten years ago, you'll have to buy another copy. The same risk of whether or not the original is available is still there with CDs, the thing might be out of print. Half of the CDs I own are already out of print. That is why I am so careful with them.

My two cents...

[UrGeek]

...make it 128Kbps Ogg Vorbis format, stereo, and downloadable with the "Save file as" function. Do not charge more than 10 cents a song or a dollar an album.
Have a web page per song with lyrics and artwork. These pages can be saved. Have a tutorial for newbies.
Never use Real Player, Quicktime, or anything but Ogg Vorbis, or maybe MP3 if you have to.

Re:The only thing I would like

[LordBodak]

Although this was obviously meant to be funny, there is also a very insightful point in here.

In the days of vinyl, a record came with all sorts of stuff-- large, often beautiful cover art; liner notes; lyrics; etc.

Nowadays you get a few pictures in a booklet that are barely large enough to see, and only occasionally do you even get lyrics.

The value-added content helped sell LPs; there is no question the lack of it is at least partially responsible for poor CD sales.

Re:So 100,000 rich mac users like Itunes,this prov

[PyromanFO]

Unlike most of these napster babies, we know what it costs to produce items that have no physical value, but more aestetic or personal value.

I hate to tell you this, but we don't live in a Marxist country. Nobody gives a shit how much it costs to make. It's all about how much people are willing to pay for it. And if 90% of the world thinks mp3's aren't worth paying for, then they're not, regardless of how much they cost to make.

And look at it like this, no matter how much you spend at the iTunes store, would you spend as much if the store was poorly designed, slow and/or run by someone other than Apple? Hmm, maybe you're not paying for the actual file after all, but the service instead ....

Re:One important thing...

[rockmanac]

Can't stress this one enough... I'm sick of sites that say I have to be running Windows (I'm on a Powerbook G4/OS X Jaguar... At least there's Virtual PC for those sites.) As for the whole MP3 thing.. Good luck.. AC

Albums are not simply arbitary

[AnEmbodiedMind]

While your point about the artificial length of albums is interesting, I think you may not have a full appreciation of the song and album writing process. While you may feel that most of the tracks on an album are "filler", I assure you that this is not how the artist (in most cases) feel. While only some tracks may grab _you_, each track was carefully crafted by the musicians and may be more enjoyable to different people, and after different numbers of listens. Also, while the length of albums may be artificial, the ordering and selection of tracks for albums is certainly not arbitrary. These factors are (usually) carefully taken into consideration in composing an album to create an entire and complete work of art. As the opinions of others in this thread have shown, your "Hit" track mentality is not shared by all.

Right, but...

[PhinMak]

The thing you are forgetting is that once these guys have this web distribution up and running, there is little extra time needed besides the occasional site update or links to new songs. The rest of the time they can spend on advertising/tours/new material/second job. Think of this system as a supplementary income whereas the system is making them money while they are free to do other moneymaking things.

Re:MP3 is obsolete

[djeaux]

These are good points.

You might consider encoding some sample files as mp3, Vorbis & flac, and then let some of the musicians be the judge.

Same goes for artwork. Sure, a lot of listeners might think it's peripheral, but musicians often think it's pretty important.

Remember, the musicians will be as much your "customers" as the folks who download the music.

I'd buy if I got two versions of the music...

[The Panther!]

I'd buy if I got two versions of the music: the version I use when listening on an audiophile quality stereo, at home, when enjoying the music to its fullest; and secondly, I'd want a really gritty quality version that is low bandwidth and mostly representative of the music, with a short clip of audio at the end of each song giving the WWW for how to buy the original.

That way I could distribute to my friends low grade versions that prompts them to buy the originals, and I don't have to feel guilty about discovering a great band and wanting to share the joy of music to friends and family.

The high quality versions could be upwards of 10mb per song, the low quality should be less than a meg or so. Really dirty. If someone likes what they hear and are inspired, each song will tell them how to buy the good quality ones.

Just an idea. I know I'd be more likely to buy online if that were the case.