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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
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.
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.
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*
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?
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)
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.