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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."
Evil will always triumph over Good, because Good is Dumb.
To the first tinfoil hat owning AC to suggest the RIAA submitted this to get their competition /.ed off the face of the planet. =)
but it still sucks unless its got good music.
50% sounds great. plus to retain creative control ove your music? not bad. this is a meme worth persuing.
-knowles
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
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.
If it works, and the artists use the label, then good luck to them. Personally, I'll buy music if I like it, and the only place I can hear it (and therefore form an opinion on whether I like it or not) is on the radio. A try before you buy is good, but without a radio station, it's useless. Thankfully, they've realised this, and it should be a great success! Maybe we'll see some non-evil bands (like Radiohead) join the label as well! Who knows! Anything can happen in the next half hour!
If you have coke coming from faucet at home, how much would you pay for a bottle? "
Same amount I would pay for a bottle of water, probably.
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
Overheard in a Best Buy or Virgin Megastore as someone reaches for a CD from a major distributor:
"It's Evil! Don't Touch It!"
POOF!
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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
New artists are exactly what they're aiming for. As the label (hopefully) gains ground, they will have more and more of a presence and attract more 'major' artists.
The big labels of today started out pretty small too. (Except maybe Sony, which probably had backing/brand recognition from their parent company...)
=Smidge=
No, no, it should be "I, for one, welcome our non-evil overlords."
You see? Much better.
so how man non-geeks do you know that have an ogg vorbis player. most people just use windows media player or winamp. sure there are plugins but thats just extra work.
sig censored by america
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!
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.
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.
Downloading works fine. Everything plays with open-source Freeamp/Zinf. If you care.
Ok, Here's the big test! Now that all you music copiers have a way to get music at a reasonable price, that you can hear before you buy, where the musician is treated with respect ...
What excuses will you use for stealing the music now?
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
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*
Actually, artists are frequently as dumb as rocks. While smart individuals may exist, as a population they have the collective IQ of a slightly moldy mango. This is why record companies find it so easy to sign them onto expoitative contracts which give it to them hard and raw in every orifice. Most artists just want to make music, not study law.
In any case, it is flat out wrong to state that this model of record company cannot give an artist the same opporunity for success as a major record label. It is certainly true that such a label won't be able to finance the mega-buck music video and media promotion that top pop tarts like Britney Speares have gotten. At least, not at first. (That may come later) However, *very* few artists signed to record labels get that treatment. Most get shelved, with their contract actively preventing them from seeking opportunities elsewhere rather than helping them.
If a service such as this were to really take off it could be an excellent way for unknown artits to find an audience. By making their entire catalogue available for sampling, artists who would otherwise not even be popular enough to be pirated would have their body of work available and easily accessable with little risk to samplers. It's a long shot, but those odds are a heck of a lot better than an artist who gets one CD pressing (and a fat bill for it) from their record label which is immediately shipped to a warehouse instead of stores. In the latter case, live performances are the only way they have to generate interest.
Now here's the kicker: An artist has to be an entire order of magnitude more popular with a major record label than they do with this service to make the same cash. The kind of artist who scrapes maybe 30K a year out of a record contract with a major label could be living very comfortably with 50% royalties instead of 5%. Even Steve Tyler could do that math.
Of course, for all this to work people actually have to check out the service. If you love music, think of it as a duty to listen to every bloody track this label has available until you find something you like. Then *BUY* it. We're voting with our wallets here, and if nobody heads to the polls these guys will die out, and that would be a shame.
P.S. These guys even have WAV's available when you buy. That flat-out *OWNS* any other music vendor out there. The lack of lossless online music vendors has been something that has kept the audiophile community at arms length from online music purchases. This site could change that. However, it would be smart for them to adopt some form of lossless compression to make their bandwidth costs more bearable. Speaking of bandwidth, I don't think they were planning on being slashdotted! There are rough seas ahead, but I sure hope they can stay afloat!
Coke out of the faucet tastes awful... They put so much chlorine in it you can hardly taste the coke. The filters do an okay job, but I still buy my coke in the bottle.
Read this essay by Steve Albini (producer Nirvana)
quote "The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month."
wget -i songlist.m3u
I agree with your point but I just want to point out one thing:
This label splits revenue 50/50 not profits. It's too easy for a label to doctor the books and make the profits disappear. RIAA labels still charge the artists a breakage fee which is left over from the old LP days when a % of the disks broke during transport. Nevrmind that CD's are nowhere near as fragile.
Same amount I would pay for a bottle of water, probably.
:-)
If Evian came out of my faucet at home I wouldn't buy bottled water. Instead what comes out is some foul tasting sludge that only once put through the Brita filter is drinkable and then still tastes off. This is why I buy bottled water. So what's your point here?
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?
You just explained my point. If there's a difference in quality between a product that costs money and an "identical" product that is free, you can get people to pay money for the higher quality item. As you just pointed out, that's how they're able to sell bottled water. Similarly, some people have proposed a music distribution model where low-quality mp3s are free but higher quality mp3s (or CDs) cost money. It's a solution (certainly not the only solution) to the problem of how to give music away so people can sample it, but still make money selling music.
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
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)
You also miss a big point. Convenience. It is convenient to me to pick up a bottle of water out on the road where I don't have access to the taps and don't have anything to put it in anyways. I don't buy bottled water for quality.
Well they're still around but they no longer have hold of the royalties business. For those of you who don't ASCAP was the only company collecting royalties for artists for a long time. Till one day they decided to double their fees. NBC thought that was crap and started their own royalty company: BMI. The primary difference was (and I think still is) that there no dues to pay with BMI it's a flat percent rate.
Why is this relevent to: but it still sucks unless its got good music.?
Because ASCAP said the same thing about BMI who basically opened the flood gates. Sure, many people that were BMI members (Read: could not afford ASCAP member dues) had NO talent (in singing and music) whatsoever and many indeed suxored a lot. But BMI's open invitation also hit gold. Such as Frank Sinatra who went to BMI to apply.
It may take time but I believe Magnatune will get some really genuinely good artists. Now the only trouble is keeping MTv from saying they suck.
You know, I think in the near future we may have "Fark Superstars" - Where an artist rides an Internet meme to stardom by targeting popular link sites like Fark and Slashdot.
The Internet does have the potential to short-circuit the recording industry's promotion machine. Just look at popular memes from "all you base" to Strong Bad. So far it's really only been done for fun, but even this has made some money selling shirts, mugs, and so on.
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?
>> ....we, as a society, have confused well marketed with "good."
I doubt that. You're assuming that, given free choice, people will always buy "good" music. That's not true. People will buy music they like, whether or someone- even the buyer -- thinks it is good.
That's why the books at the top of the bestseller lists are usually not at the top of anyone's "Good Books" list. When people want to be entertained, they buy something that entertains them. When they want to read a "good" book, or listen to "good" music, they'll do that, too. We're all capable of making that distinction. Businesses are smart enough to know that most of us want to be entertained more than we want to spend time pretending to like "good" music.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Your argument is as old as time and it is eternally on the losing side. You could say the same thing about the impressionists. Oh, the true test of a good painting is if it is a perfect incarnation of man's splendor via realistic modeling / rendering. Well, let's get rid of Monet, Manet, and all art made after the neoclassical period. In fact we can apply this to every period of art history! I don't have any problem with your taste, you're entitled to it, just as I am entitled to mine. Let's not forget that it wasn't so long ago that the Beatles weren't considered music by many, and now they seem quite mild.
I like experimental music. You can rant about it all you want, and that's fine. Just don't try to impose your unenlightened views upon me. Almost ALL experimental musicians are classically trained before they decide to try something new.
Photos.
Where this goes is that with the large volume of bands out there that can be so readily distributed, the value of critics and editors will increase. You find somebody who seems to agree with your tastes and follow their recommendations. Right now, the opinions of certain power brokers determines the fate of bands.
The adventurous listeners can go out there and try all kinds of new things and then bring back what they like to the masses. Word of mouth will become a far more powerful engine for generating popularit than RIAA marketing. This is already true for many who've grown sick of pop radio.
To speak from personal experience, I don't listen to the radio (except for NPR). But I listen to lots of music that never gets played on the radio. I've got a friend who's in a really good local band, and I've got some friends who are really into music that always point me towards new things. So I get their recommendations, and I find that I like a large portion of what they recommend. Finally I experiment a little, usually finding crap, but occasionally discovering something new that I like.
That's the future of music. The RIAA is screwed.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I'd just like to say I bought an album off Magnatunes after finding the site from Fark late Saturday night. I emailed John with some words of support and amazingly enough, he emailed me back an hour later. Nice to see he took the time to read his email while watching his site get slashdotted.
http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/
If anything could be considered music why do we have a seperate word than sound or noise? All music is sound, but not all sound is music. Experimental "music" is most often just sound and not music at all. And thats okay, but its not music just sounds.
I do find it interesting though, that in a follow-up post you yourself make a value judgement on what is or is not music. Long live musical elitist hypocrisy!
They (and a bunch of other indie labels) have been doing this for quite a while, so I don't see why this is such a big deal. Of course, nothing wrong with some variety.
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 :-)
People in Zurich have better water in their faucets and city fountains than Evian. They do in fact drink water from fountains and sometimes fill the bottles from them, but AFAIK they also buy some bottled water.
People like free stuff, but they are also comfortable with paying for stuff. Hell, some people will even pay for land plots on the Moon, surely you can find some customers for your music.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
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
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.
Magnatune seems to be onto something... I would also suggest that people buy local. I've been going to a lot of small concerts being held in basements and living rooms lately. Totally Unknown bands. Usually these concerts cost $3 to $5 and there are 2 or 3 bands (a great deal). Now some of these bands totally suck - when that happens people just walk out into the backyard or the porch until a better band comes up. But some of these bands are very good and very different than the music that the RIAA is shoving down our throats - some of these bands are actually innovative. Most all of them offer their CDs for sale - usually for less than $5 (sometimes for only a buck!). It's great: I can spend lots less than I would on an RIAA artist concert and get their homegrown CD's for MUCH less - AND all of the money I spend on them is actually going to the artists. In most cases these local bands don't give a rip about ripping their CD's (some even have copylefted their music and encourage you to copy). So buy local - find bands in your area that are selling their own music. Sure, when someone asks you what you're listening to, they're not gonna recognize the band's name, but why listen to what everyone else is listening to?
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