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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."
I've been trying this site for the past 48 hours. Their music selection is limited, but its a starting label...its a chicken & egg scenario i think -- Need customers to attract musicians.
;)
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.
Slashdot users -- this is probably THE busienss model we've been biatching for. If this venture fails, lets try to make sure its not because of lack of demand.
NOTE: I have NO affiliation with this site whatsoever. I can can barely read music.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Nice. Between this new label and cdbaby, maybe the artists will start to actually make something off of their CDs, and make me more apt to buy as well.
Depends what you consider good music. From what I can see, the RIAA and cronies tend to be pushing mass-market pop and "easy listening", so they can get their money back and much more.
This way, good music can get to the top so much more easily, if it's all word of mouth and independent of mass-marketting, rather than hyped.
jer
We may be human, but we're still animals
- Steve Vai
One feature I think is extremely unique is that people can choose what they pay. From $5-18, and the recommended amount is $8.
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
there are some bands that get big from writing songs and touring. the 50/50 split is nothing new, and has worked for many labels and artists for years. Labels like Dischord, Lookout!, Kill Rock Stars have used this model for years with bands like Fugazi, The Donnas, Greenday etc.
It works well for small labels and bands because the label and the band split profits 50/50 and in the early days the bands and the labels both have a real reason to make the records sell. when the bands get huge, the bands make a lot of money this way. that's a better percentage take than any major label could afford.
no, labels like that won't dreate the next brittnany spears, but how many of them exist, and who really want to sell their soul and suck that much anyway.
I will not buy music before I've heard it. Bt where can I hear stuff outside the mainstream? Not on the radio (they won't play them), and not in the record store (too damn inconvenient to ask to listen to more than a few CDs there). Being able to download songs or listen to streamed music is a big help in selecting artists who have not been previously 'marketed'... so now we can continue to give the RIAA the finger and put our money where our mouth is.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The gurus at Slashdot devised this really clever little distributed moderation system that works quite well to sort these posts by genre and revelence. I would think that Slashdot itself may provide an example of a ranking paradigm to help moderate the music at Magnatune. Statistics will evolve which show the more meaningful parameters of the music offered.
If I were working on their system, I would probably try to configure the radio streams so I could detect if the stream was aborted. That is a strong indication the guy on the other end was not much interested in that one. I would maintain statistics on which song of an album was downloaded first. Knowing which track was downloaded first probably will generate data for which tracks are the best ones of the album, based on which spawned off downloads of other tracks.
The album gets modded up for selling a track, a major mod if the entire album sells.
Its a brand new site, a brand new paradigm. But they will have the same bugs to work out as CmdrTaco has worked out here. Maybe they can look over here and talk to CmdrTaco for some insights on handling a torrent of data of various quality and how to set up some sort of moderation system similar to the one working here.
We are evolving. They will too.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
they don't want to release something really new, cause it's risky.
It's risky, because sometimes people "experimenting with interesting sounds" just plain suck.
The fact is Music IS a definable thing, though taste is subjective. A lot of music now days very barely falls into the definition of music. This goes for some pop music, but a whole LOT of indie music.
Indie music, on the whole, DOES suck because the people either lack talent, lack recording skills, they lack the funds to get proper equipment, or maybe they just really really universally bad taste. Whatever their excuse may be...
But when you really dig into what makes music, uhm, musical, you'll notice there are human biorhythm connections. Some things work really well, some things don't work at all.
Music that incorperates some or all of the basic principles tends to be more easily received by the listener. Random, disjointed, haphazard noise tends to irritate the body until it gets used to it, but even after becoming used to it (the same way you get used to city traffic, the sound of airplanes passing by, or the sound of a train station down the street) your body is still never really ready for it.
Some people will jump in here now to defend new and interesting sounds, or things that "break the rules" because it's cool or interesting, but most of the time it really isn't either. There are exceptions to every rule though, and that's what seperates the true artists from those who are just wailing away without any talent, which is as common today as the tasteless masses that enjoy it.
A serious music fanatic that I once knew told me that the best way to test if music is true to the nature of music is to try to hum along, clap your hands, and tap your feet. While some music makes one or more of those things difficult, as a general rule I noticed he is right. Things that do "make sense" as music tend to be more easily accepted by the senses.
He then pointed out to me that those songs that "make sense" stand the test of time. We can hear them 10, 20, or 30 years later and still enjoy them. Really, really, bad stuff from the 90's is already forgotten, probably never to be aired again (thankfully).
Back to the topic -- This Shareware Music thing hasn't any more or less potential to create good music than the current Music Business. It just has more of a chance of exposing us to the stuff that REALLY SUCKS (irrelevent of tates). Now even the really shitty artists will have some exposure, where they had only a small chance with the big lables that were afraid to bank on the masses of people with no taste at all. (People probably accepted the crap because they've been exposed to way too much hectic noise and insanity their lives and the music doesn't grate their nerves like it should...)
We're definately going to have less "quality control". Some of it is really going to stink, but some of it just might be really good. And that's why I'm so much for this idea. It gives everyone a fair chance, and if someone really wants to listen to total shit, they have that right and now they have that chance.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
yes, but mp3.com got bought, so "mp3.com, originally" no longer exists. In addition, "mp3.com, originally" had an additional problem: artists could provide recordings only in 128 kbps MP3 format, which is capable of nowhere near the fidelity of pristine 16-bit 44.1 kHz stereo PCM audio to the good ear.
Will I retire or break 10K?
http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/
All they offer is a website to listen to the songs and then buy them. If I need that service, I'll use CD Baby, where I don't sign the rights to my music away. And boy do they have many artists already!.
Additionaly, CD Baby takes a flat amount of $4 (CDs) or 9% (iTunes music store), all without signing my rights away. I think I know which one I'm choosing :-)