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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.
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?"
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?
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
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.
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.
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)
Hey editors, obviously we need two new mods - (+1, Anti-Piracy) and (-1, Criticizing Me For Doing Something Illegal).
This isn't a troll, and neither are the hundreds of posts that criticize pirates that are also modded as trolls. It's a legitimate comment, because people who pirate music are going to come up with another excuse just as the parent is implying.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
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.