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Magnatune - a Non-Evil Record Label?
jea6 writes "As seen on Fark and sure to intrest non-crossover Slashdotters, Magnatune is a record company with a catchy slogan. They highlight: 1) We're a record label. But we're not evil. 2) We call it 'try before you buy.' It's the shareware model applied to music. 3) Listen to hundreds of MP3'd albums from our artists. Or try our genre-based radio stations. 4) If you like what you hear, buy our music online for as little as $5 an album or license our music for commercial use. 5) Artists get a full 50% of the purchase price. And unlike most record labels, our artists keep their rights to their music. 6) Founded by musicians, for musicians. No major label connections. We are not evil. So if you are anti-RIAA (artist or consumer) and looking for an option (albeit a small option), this may be a start. The music is Creative Commons licensed, which is the brainchild of the eminent Lawrence Lessig."
What about all those people who have already signed their soul over to the devil? I'm sure if it were as simple as "switching" from one record label to another, many bands would. The choices today are getting better, but the contracts those people have to sign just to get their music on a cd is insane. The record company basically owns their ass for years before they can choose to go somewhere else, and even then in many cases the new record label they go to still has to pay a cut to the previos label.
- tristan
Listen to hundreds of MP3'd albums from our artists. Or try our genre-based radio stations.
I don't see any MP3s, and all I see are streams (m3u). It would be more correct to say "listen to hundreds of streamed MP3'd albums from our artists."
Then again, I do think this is the right way to approach this. You can listen to low quality streams to get a feel for the album or song before you buy it in mp3 form.
I am willing to bet if they didn't do this they would end up having all their songs downloaded, bandwidth eaten up, and despite the claims made here about "supporting the artists" they will not get much money back in return.
victory drive thru jade tree
-knowles
They don't have that much stuff yet, but what they have is not bad. It's regular music rather than just "experimental" stuff. Definitely better than what you hear on radio. I am definitely buying a few of their albums.
Now, how long before big labels realize that they have to start making more variety of music? With Apple music store I can already preview, download and burn on CD so they would be making some money.
Winamp plays oggs natively, its just those darn MS apps!
I'm playing around with their selection now. Be aware that any label just starting out isnt going to be producing stereotypically popular artists immediately.
I am enjoying this group however. It vaguely reminds me of a combination of dylerium and dead can dance mixed in the style of hybrid.
There is one thing thats good about this label thus far - they're not going for the stereotype. They're looking for artists that produce a unique sound, which is the only place to put your label on the map.
.
Our biggest problem is that we, as a society, have confused well marketed with "good." There's thousands of great musicians running around that are not well known.
What main stream America wants is the marketed music. Well, guess what? marketing machines are about making money.
Imagine who cool it would be if all the effort thrown into pirating the marketed stuff went into creating an underground force for marketing independent music?
The cool thing about the creative commons license is that it is a start in making such an underground force.
I found its offerings to be professional and compentent, if unremarkable. So far the site seems to deliver on what its promising. FREE downloads, FREE streaming audio. Their business model appears to be ethical (by my standards).
Basically I'm waiting a week or two to see in the media if things are kosher before buying something: e.g. this is a legitimate venture?; they're on the up & up?; people don't have nasty customer service problems, etc.
I've bought one CD from them after listening to the entire thing first a few times (in case your curious, it was "Shall We Dance" by Beth Quist). Other than the fact that it seemed that you had to use PayPal to pay for your purchase, the service was quite good. Once they received the payment, I was emailed with instructions on how I could download WAV and MP3 versions of the CD. No restrictions on the files, and the download process was straightforward.
The fact that you could also name your price (from $5 to $18 in $1 increments) was also really cool. Hopefully, they'll keep this method of payment (it is something that they were trying out to see how well it would work). Most people seem to pay about $8 (the amount they recommend). And the artist gets half of whatever you pay, which I think is much better than your typical CD (at least from what I've heard).
Downloading works fine. Everything plays with open-source Freeamp/Zinf. If you care.
But if anyone is an unsigned band: don't sign with an RIAA-connected label
Absolutely, and if you have any talent, it'll probably be wasted at a major RIAA label as well.
There's been a lot of coverage the past few years about the real problems of these labels, including the absurd advances to dated artists like Michael Jackson (who never make back the advance money and end up costing other less prominant artists their chance), promotional efforts being spent on the tired old artists at the expense of up-and-coming ones ("Hey folks. That new Madonna album's out. Let's put lips on that pig!"), termination of thousands of smaller and newer artist contracts, fewer releases, etc.
Compare that with a label like Metropolis Records which has amassed a base of artists like Funker Vogt, KMFDM, VNV Nation, Juno Reactor, Apoptygma Bezerk, Frontline Assembly, Project Pitchfork, De/Vision, etc. - much of the EBM and techno-industrial sounds come from this label.
How do they play with the Internet community? They support royalty-free shoutcasting (which is how I found them and ended up spending a few $$$ on their artists!).
Support these labels by buying direct whenever you can, and let them know each time you buy that the reason you're sending them business is because of their support for great artists and the promotion of a music marketplace free of RIAA manipulation and anticompetitive behavior.
*scoove*
May I take this opportunity to suggest you check out emusic.com. I signed up for the 3 month at $15 a month subscription a few weeks ago and it's already MORE than met my expectations. I have over 1.5GB downloaded of high quality LAME encoded VBR non DRM mp3's already and there's NO LIMIT to how many you can get. Yes, sadly, they're part of Vivendi, but profits are split 50/50 with the artists.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Small independant labels that give their artists good royalties are nothing new. However, such a label coming up with an online music service that is actually *good* is new!
Let's compare this service to iTunes, the most popular current service.
Price:
iTunes - $0.99 per song
Magnatune - $5.00 an album
If it's a good album without crappy filler then Magnatune is the big winner here. Classical fans get a great deal, but pop fans may not, depending on the band. Overall, I'd give the edge to Magnatune, but not a big one.
Format:
iTunes - AAC with some annoying DRM
Magnatune - Uncompressed WAV's!!!
Absolutely no contest here. Finally an online music store has listened to audiophiles! They'd be smart to use a lossless compression format to save on their bandwidth costs though...
Ethics:
iTunes - Apple takes it's (big) cut and then the Artist's (frequently RIAA affiliated) label takes most of the rest.
Magnatune - The artist gets 50%!!!
Again, no contest. Instead of feeling guilty about fueling a powermad monster when you buy music you can feel good about supporting the people who actually made it!
Selection:
iTunes: Lots
Magnatune: Not a lot
iTunes is the clear winner here.
To sum up, you get more for your money with magnatunes, including peace of mind. You just can't get many albums there... yet. If magnatune manages to get off the ground that may change, but they have a long road ahead of them. Their biggest challenge is getting more content. In my opinion they need to forge alliances with other like-minded independant labels. There are a lot out there, but many use mail-order as their only form of distribution! Magnatunes needs to get these labels on board pronto.
They may not be evil, but they may not be too smart either.
When I went to buy one of their albums, Magnatune wanted me to type my credit card number on a NON-SSL page. Naturally, my attempted purchase ended right there. $5 to Magnatune and $5000 to man-in-the-middle hacker is not cheap.
According to Magnatune's "forum", they plan to add SSL "in a few days". That this wasn't a higher priority makes me very worried; even if they do set up SSL, it suggests they might not be too careful with say, customer lists and credit card numbers.
And there doesn't appear to be way to search through the albums for sale.
Still, Magnatune's a step in the right direction.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
But Evian doesn't come out of your faucet at home, and CD-quality wave files don't come off Kazaa. Not the way Mp3s do. Magnatune sells you the CD-quality version if you like the MP3.
Things look better now, but still sluggish. (at least it's still working).
I've moved all graphics to my secondary server, running Squid. That helped Apache, but graphics are taking some time to come up. I'm bringing up another squid server now.
Audio streaming seems to be working ok (at least for me)
And THANKS for all the kind words on this thread (I'll respond to them once I get the servers running fast)
- John (the Magnatune guy)
A lot of small labels have been working in this 50% to the artists fashion for quite some time. A few of these labels also just use manufacturing and distribution contracts with artists (not copyright), some are also non-exclusive (meaning the artist is also free to release their material thru someone else as well). Ours works this way.
;). But we will from now on judging by the posts here. huzzah. The next stage, for all of us said labels, is to start sharing distribution channels with each other.
Thing is, non of us have used this ethical approach as our core marketing technique
The control that the majors have over distribution is the only thing that prevents us from truly competing with them properly.
http://www.newsense-recordings.co.uk - A label in desperate need of a free web designer/maintainer.
No idea about the other stuff, but their classical lineup is surprisingly good, and features several big names - Trevor Pinnock and the English concert, Lara St. John, Ensemble Sonnerie, etc etc... Of course, the selection's not huge, but for something that's just starting, it's amazing what people they've got on there already.
I'd like to see some jazz on there too, but it's a very good start.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Well its a true record company, you get studio time, and equipment, and maybe backup artists, to make a product. CDBaby helps you with a finished product, same with iTunes.
Yah, I'm the "sales guy" (actually, the only guy at Magnatune) -- I don't (yet) have paypal integrated into my shopping system.
My credit card vendor gives me an API I can call to run a charge, but Paypal makes me send users off to the paypal shopping basket, and I therefore can't easily validate that you paid.
So... that's the long story why, if you pay for something on Magnatune with paypal, I get the email confirming payment, and then (manually) send you the download info.
I've got a piece of software called "DLMan" which I need to install (later this week) which does the fancier paypal authorization dance, and when that's done Paypal users will get the download URL immediately, like visa/mcard folks do.
-john (the Magnatune guy)
Most musicians who come to me already have a self-released CD, so it's not an issue.
However, I also:
-john
I love the model, I just wish that they had a studio somewhere. I am a musician myself and would love to have some talented studio professionals who also happened to have some ethics.
6 7 :
from http://forums.magnatune.com/read/messages?id=5438
Magnatune acquires portable recording studio
Magnatune has acquired a portable recording studio, and will soon begin recording artists specifically for release on Magnatune.
When under a recording agreement with Magnatune, artists will be able to record an album at no cost to them, Magnatune will distribute and promote the album, and the artist will still own all rights to the recording. For example, the artist will be able to print their own CDs of the recording and sell them at gigs.
Magnatune acquired the recording system so that it would be able to broaden its reach, and include talented artists who don't have the thousands of dollars (at a minimum) it takes to make a typical record studio-recorded album.
For the gear-heads out there, the recording setup comprises of:
- a 17" mac powerbook
- pro tools digital audio workstation software
- digidesign's digi002 8 track recording console
- an additional 8 tracks of recording capacity (16 tracks total)
- a variety of high end "Studio Projects" microphones and stands
- various off-board racks and effects (and software-based ones)
In most cases, it is easiest if the recording happens at our premises in Berkeley, California (it's still a lot of gear to move around), but in some case we will record at a band's performance site
-john (from Magnatune)
However, screaming is not music.
Says who? I always maintained that the western violin is not a musical instrument, but an instrument of torture, inflicting injury on players and mental anguish on listeners. Still, it would be idiotic for me to dictate that violin music will not enter our home.
On your rule of "no distortion": So Shakti would be kosher, but Mahavishnu Orchestra wouldn't be? Shankar would be OK, as long as it isn't that "screaming" album he did with Frank Zappa? The Roches would be forbidden because Robert Fripp used a distorted guitar on the second track of their self titled debut album?
Death Metal singers don't scream - they growl. Would that be ok? No? So I guess Tom Waits is verboten. Too bad.
Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz To Come: Fine - an acoustic, instrumental work. No screaming there. What about Free Jazz? They don't actually scream, but they might as well have. The screaming attitude is there. There goes a seminal 20th century recording. Plonk.
Listen to anything by Devin Townsend. Is he singing or screaming? Whatever it is, it's musical, except that your daughter won't even get the chance to argue that with you, because this screaming ain't getting in your home, no siree.
Krzysztof Penderecki made a symphonic orchestra scream in Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, but I guess that's not music. Damn - I rather liked it, and I was deeply moved by it.
I suppose you'd approve of Pat Metheny's work. No screaming or distortion there... Oops, I forgot about Zero Tolerance For Silence. It's a work of great beauty, if you dig into it, and see past the, well, distortion.
Give me a break. This isn't philosophy, or moral structure. This is an arbitrary, boneheaded and ignorant rule of aesthetics. If you give your children a philosophy of life (as you should, and you seem to strive to do), it must be consistent. It must have structure, and things must follow logically from the ground rules. Setting arbitrary rules to satisfy your preferences in music is neither consistent nor fair.
Check the local alternative weekly. Start going to shows in yr nearest metropolis. Make friends with guys and girls with thight tshirts and leather studded belts. Ya ain't gonna find good (rock) music sitting in front of yr computer screen