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Sir Mix-A-Lot Using Weed To Distribute Music
An anonymous reader writes "Hip-hop musician Sir Mix-A-Lot has made his new CD Daddy's Home available for download using Weed technology. Weed is a relatively new file sharing system based principles of shareware and referrals. You download the DRM WMA weed file and can listen to it 3 times on any computer before deciding to purchase it or not. If you do purchase it (at a price set by the artist), you will receive referral fees (20%, 10%, 5%) for the next 3 generations of people that purchase your copy. The artist always receives 50% of the price. Certainly an interesting approach to distributing music in a world of p2p and iTunes."
Ain't that what the RIAA uses too? ;)
I like DRM and I cannot lie
You other brothers cant deny
When a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist
And p2p in yo face
You get sprung
Wanna pull out ya gun
Cuz the RIAA aint tough
Vonal Declosion
We had weed back in my day, but I had to *pay* for it. None of this referral paybacks. :)
Even more interesting name. I can see the advertisements now. "Weed, the legal alternative to KaZaA"
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
While I'm disappointed that they're distributing DRM'ed WMA files (non-Windows users will certainly be out of luck), I don't want to be too quick to dismiss this. Any distribution channel that gives the artist 50% of the sale is already better than almost anything else out there.
Can anyone think of a better system that gives the artist this much or more of the sale?
For the Weed DRM?
"If you do purchase it... ...then I get the song in a lossless format..."
You know this arguement always pisses me off.
What makes MP3s any less lossless than CDA. Its another format and thats it. As a musician (and more to the point, an engineer and tech for real musicians), I don't think I've recorded anything in the last 2 years where the master wasn't at 24bit 96Khz...that means any CD ya listen to is VERY lossy.
Then again, most of the musicians I've worked with ask me to burn it down to MP3 so they can listen to it on their pods and don't care about the difference -- and neither do it...its not like I'm sitting around a listening room smoking a pipe pontificating about the clean lows and the crisp upper range of the latest f'n Sir Mix-A-Lot cd...
I would like to see digital music come with liner notes though (cover art bores me...the liner is where its at).
My fri/sat night fun job is doorman for a SJ karaoke bar...
I swear to god if I hear that song being sung by a group of sorority girls screaming into the mics at the top of their lungs one more time i'm going to shoot myself.
Its technically not a Ponzi Scheme. Its more like the red-headed step child of an iPod and Amway.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Even with Weed, the record industry still stands a very good chance of taking half the profits, unless the song was never released on a major label.
Technically, a Ponzi scheme is any scheme where you promise a bunch of people a huge return on an investment, and use later investors' money to pay off earlier investors.
Ponzi schemes aren't always pyramidal, though the two techniques often overlap. Ponzi schemes may or may not involve an actual product, but are most definitely illegal.
If I recall, it is possible for a MLM to have a product and still be classified as an illegal pyramid scheme. However, I don't remember the criteria.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
How can this be less expensive as a means of distribution than simply setting up a server and sell direct, like Apple did ? I mean, don't think about only bandwidth costs but:
1) Costs of paying people down the pyramid
2) Fraud Management
3) "CRM" with the huge mass of "distribution partners"
Unless they have some brilliant marketing concept hidden in there, which I may have missed, it seems like just a more expensive way of doing the same thing Itunes does.
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
...but then I got high.
$4.99..................Weed
Deja Vu man. This will be like when I called the hints line at Virgin Interactive. Took forever to explain to my parents that $3.99 to a 900 line called Virgin Entertainment was not a phone sex line.
Honestly though, I wonder if anyone has though about what a tough sell this will be, not to the target demographic, teenagers (they'll love it), but the source of their disposable income, their very uncool parents.
My crystal ball keeps showing me a Chevy Nova.
The term weed has frequently been used in live music trading circles to refer to a method of distributing your favorite phish/dead/moe./sci show quickly. Out of generosity on person seeds the show to two people absolutely free, no blanks, no postage, etc. The only string attached are that each recipient in turn gives it to two more people for free. And so on, like rabbits. peace.
Sir Mix-a-lot is taking some lessons from Cypress Hill...
Heh... They've been using weed to sell their music for years.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.