Audio Lunchbox: Music with no DRM

An anonymous reader writes "MacCentral just posted an article on Audio Lunchbox, an online music store dedicated to music by independent artists and labels. ALB offers all of its music in DRM free MP3 (192 kbps) and Ogg Vorbis (Q6) formats with iTunes style pricing and a completely web based and platform independent delivery system."

Comments

Electronic Music Delivery

[myownkidney]

Music Labels are there to CREATE musicians, not to find true talent. Hopefully, electronic music delivery, getting rid of the middlemen, should enable good artists to come out.

In case you've forgotten, the record Labels are evil, because:

1. They rip you off
2. They rip the musicians off
3. They want to block new technology (eg. P2P)

Re:Electronic Music Delivery

[uqbar]

I own a small label. We don't create musicians - we find musicians that are good and allow them to focus on what they do best - make music. Many of them don't know or want to focus their time on getting loans, finding engineers, booking studio time, finding graphic artists, booking tours, manufacturing cds, marketing their release, etc., etc. While kudos go out to the "Our Band Could Be Your Life" exceptions that actually manage to pull off a complete DIY business, there is still a need for what we do.

Most of the bands on my label would never see a studio if it weren't for the fact that we took and interest in recording their music and selling it. Our profit margins don't exist - few of our records break even, most lose and I unless I get lucky or sell out I will continue to work long hours at my day job.

All profits at your typical indie label are split 50/50 with the artist. This is hardly a rip off.

As far a new technology goes - well consumers are at least half the problem. Why would you want to lose even more money? That said I always release free songs even though this often irks the bands. I'd rather people hear the recordings I've worked so hard to bring into the world.

Please don't apply your mostly true observations about the majors to the thousands of indy record labels. We need your support to survive and thrive and that means being honest and even taking a few (gasp) risks...

Good deal

[192939495969798999]

Let me help those of you who may not know... it costs a lot of money to write and get a good recording of a song. If I were to only charge 25 cents for a recording that cost me $500 of my time, it would take me 2000 copies, versus perhaps 500 copies, to get at least to a gross return on my investment. What makes this website cool is that the artist doesn't have to sell as many tracks as they otherwise would, because the artist is getting a bigger payout than pretty much anyone offers. Considering that this is the case, is it worth your 99 cents to get the track? Yes, because that 99 cents goes a lot farther towards helping that artist than it would for say, Britney Spears, who probably gets a tiny fraction of that sale and could really care less. Oh yeah -- she doesn't write her music anyways, so it's kinda moot to discuss her, but you get the point.

Re:Good deal

[sqlrob]

Why don't people think in volume?

If you cut the margin in half and triple your sales because of it, where are you with money in hand?

Plus, cutting the prices would allow you to market with "cheaper than iTunes/Napster"

Re:Lets see now....

[GeorgieBoy]

Keep in mind that

a) they are being slashdotted now, slowing down their site
b) They are INDIE artists, you won't be able to search for things that are "mainstream" and expect to find results. The idea is finding new artists here, rather than massively promoted RIAA ones.
c) Music isn't cheap to produce. I think their pricing structure is really quite fair, and they probably can't afford to lower prices. I'm more than willing to pay $1 a song for music I like. Music is music, is doesn't matter to me if it comes from a major label or not, if it's actually good.

Maybe this service isn't for you, but for a lot of /. readers this is a nice place to find new things to listen.

Re:$0.99 ??

[orthogonal]

Am I the only one not busting a nut at the chance of paying $0.99 to download one song?

Precisely!

The problem is the same one that kept me -- a fan of classical music -- from ever making many impulse buys of classical music in record stores.

It's difficult to tell a good CD from a bad CD without first listening to it.

With Indie music, the problem is compounded: a bad recording of Bach's The Goldberg Variations is still a recording of Bach's The Goldberg Variations. A bad recording of a bad Indie composition called "Crumpetty Crumpetty Bug-a Lug-a Bomf" is an irredeemable waste of 99 cents.

Back when eMusic.com allowed unlimited downloads, this wasn't a problem: I could try out an artist I'd never heard of, and if on listening I didn't like his work, I was out nothing more than the time to download that album. Now that eMusic.com limits me to 40 tracks per month, I'm stuck with the same problem as in the record store: how do I apportion my limited resources without getting burnt?

The safe answer to this quandary is to only purchase music that you know well, or is popular, to some definition of popular. "Popular among listeners of folk music" doesn't result in my getting pablum as bad as "popular among 15 year-old girls", but using either definition of popular means that newer, less knowm and Indie artists won't even be considered for purchase.

The other answer is to spend a lot of time reading reviews, asking advice of other listeners, and otherwise doing research; the problem is that that's costly, in terms of time, too. How much, exactly, is getting good Indie music supposed to be worth to me?

So when I see stuff like Audio Lunchbox or MagnaTunes, well, I like the idea but I'm inclined not to part with my money, for fear of buying bad music. Since I already know that anything by Bob Dylan or Pete Seeger or Wilhelm Furtwangler will be good, my inclination is to spend my money on CDs by these well-known artists.

As a consequence, I'll avoid the bad Indie music but I'll also miss the good Indie music.

But I'd be far more willing, as the parent poster suggests, to take a risk on Indie music if the risk were smaller: at $2.00 per album I'd be able to get five albums for $10.00, as opposed to one for $9.99. If the odds are that one of those five would be good, then I'd have the same number of good albums for the same price: one good album for ten bucks.

And having found a good album, I'd be willing to pay somewhat more for another album by that same artist -- though I still probably wouldn't be willing to pay what I'd pay for Bob Dylan.

Re:$0.99 ??

[Zardoz44]

Please don't bring books and intellectual property into this. Of the $40 for a new hardcover, you're paying about $3-5 for the author. The rest goes to the publisher for actually printing the book with good paper, good ink, etc.., and shipping the books to the bookstores and so forth.

The reason people download music and not books is that it is cheaper and easier to download and burn to a CD. If you buy a hardcover for $40, you're paying $35 for the medium, not the content.

With peer to peer, the medium has been made enormously cheap. Why are we paying $.99 for a track (equivalent to store prices) when their distribution costs are all but eliminated (bandwidth + servers are much cheaper than stores, staff, shipping, and packaging).

Um, bullshit..

[msimm]

A) Most of the independent artists that will be available through sites like this are NOT RIAA artists.

B) While $.99 may be necessary to cover the cost of Marketing Blitzes, Big Budget Studio time, Advertising, Printing and Distributing an album to your local record store, I think its feasible that independent artist spend considerably less on promotion and 'the machine'. If everyone adopts prices that don't reflect the actual costs involved in bringing the music to market we just end up with a new version of the old system. A lot of artist still are focused on GETTING THEIR MUSIC HEARD so this whole money argument is marketing talk as far as I'm concerned.

Industry music may be a different story, but I love and am VERY familiar with independent music and artists. I've got no trouble with sending 10 bucks off to support an artist I like, but I usually get a fancy printed album and what-not that added a little more value. If a download (of a 192 bit track?) is going to cost some money, fine, just don't charge me as much as you would for a CD, after all, its not the same thing.

Re:$0.99 ??

[the_consumer]

You are a cheap bastard. For fucks sake, it costs at least 50 cents to listen to a song on a jukebox, and you only get to listen to it once! This way, you own the song forever. You can make copies for your different devices, share 'em with your friends if you want, and you can buy whole albums for $9.99, which is a bargain compared to the cost of CDs. Plus, the artists aren't getting screwed.