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They Might Be Giants Open Their Own Music Store
slothdog writes "They Might Be Giants have opened their own music store, featuring "highest quality" (256kbps LAME) un-DRM-encumbered mp3's. There are only two CDs currently available (at $0.99/song or $9.99/album), but presumably more will be added as time goes on. Looks like a great way to directly support the artists."
Hey, if I can download particle man, then all is good in the world.
Will they be available to customers in Istanbul (not Constantanople)?
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
Some day middlemen will die and I'll get the money...
I also reply below your current threshold.
They've got some intersting old stuff on it.
Dial-a-Song
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
Music Store man, Music Store man Doing the things a Music Store can What's he like? It's not important Music Store man Is he a dot, or is he a speck? When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead? Nobody knows, Music Store Man Music Store man, Music Store man Music Store man hates Napster man They have a fight, Music Store wins Music Store man I-Tunes man, I-Tunes man Size of the entire universe man Usually kind to smaller man I-Tunes man He's got a watch with a minute hand, Millenium hand and an eon hand When they meet it's a happy land Powerful man, I-Tunes man P2P man, P2P man Hit on the head with a frying pan Lives his life in a garbage can P2P man Is he depressed or is he a mess? Does he feel totally worthless? Who came up with P2P man? Degraded man, P2P man Music Store man, Music Store man Music Store man hates P2P man They have a fight, Music Store wins Music Store man
I haven't purchased a TMBG album since FLOOD (a lifetime ago, I know), but was ready to purchase both the albums just to show support. The little help window mentioned specific browser versions needed on Windows and Mac, and I would have preferred to either see Linux mentioned in that window, or some explanation as to why specific versions were necessary to download. Not sure what would happen with Mozilla, so I figure I'll wait until someone posts here.
I also didn't like the '6 hour time window' in which to download my purchase... I'd like more time to resolve any issues that might come up doring download - in fact, I'd like them to create an account for me, and let me download them at any time - and possibly again in the future if for some reason I lose them.
Clicking on the "You dont have flash - click here for the text version" pops up a TMBG guy telling me "Get flash you hippie"
Way to shame me into it.
Just like most of the world, people tend to cater to the majority. Most people do not use Ogg. Most people use MP3. Fact of life.
In fact, I suspect that there are a huge number of MP3 hardware players compared to Ogg. I only know of one or two dedicated hardware players capable of playing Ogg files. A few more that do WMA, and I could list probably twice as many MP3 players. Do the math. You want to sell to the most people, you give them the format that's used most often.
Currently, only two TMBG albums are available. "NO!", their children's album, and "They Got Lost", a collection of rarities. But I'm going to assume that they will eventually have all of their albums available. Of course, I already have all of their albums on CD (and several on vinyl).
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
I realize that simplicity in pricing is their goal, but it seems odd that little between track oddities lasting 34 seconds are priced the same as a 'real' song.
TMBG put on the most entertaining concert I've ever attended. The skit with the puppet heads in the spotlight 15 feet over the stage was a scream. And lugging the glockenspiel all the way to Colorado for one note during one song was a nice touch.
My band has given away online tunes free for a couple of years now. At least you can play it through the site, you can probably figure out how to save them with a bit of geekery and craftiness, I am sure.
Despite giving away the music, we get at least a couple of CD sales through the internet every week!
Karma seems to be working in this case, because people often email in and say they heard the band on the radio, loved the music, did a web search, listened to a lot of the tunes, and wanted to own a copy for themselves or as a gift.
Not sure if this will work in 5 years if people don't buy CDs any more, but it's working for us at the moment.
Shameless plug - go to www.oninvisiblewings.com to see what I mean. If you listen to some tunes and decide to buy the album, then you will have proved the theory! A good intoduction the music is A Formidable Marinade.
Regards,
The Baron von Babyface
(with the face of a boy on the body of a middle-aged man)
baron@oninvisiblewings.com
They Might Be Giants were one of the first artists years ago to release an album ONLY in MP3 emusic.com which, while it's not as cool now, for a little while was pretty nice, it was cheap, DRMless and available in multiple formats at multiple bitrates.
Beyond that though, they regularly put songs up on their website, including exclusive unreleased songs (similar to their dial-a-song service where you call up and hear a new song on their answering machine).
TMBG has been around and "making a living" for literally decades. I doubt you need to worry about Them. They'll be okay.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I have to say the one major hurdle that has steered me away from downloading music from the iTunes and others has been the DRM. I'm sure there's few among this crowd that would disagree. I realize, I could still burn my downloaded music to a CD and do what I please with it, but it's really the principal of the fact.
But my complaint comes out at lossy codecs. Maybe I'm just being too picky, but the less compressed the better. A few years ago I put my whole CD collection in MP3 format for my computer/portable listening enjoyment. All at 160K CBR using XING. Of course, with the availability of an ogg player for my handheld PC, I have converted again much of my CD collection to ogg format for my computer/portable listening enjoyment.
If I hadn't had the uncompressed quality of the CD, I'd be stuck with my older MP3 encoded files. I had heard of a project earlier put forth where the company/band was releasing tracks in multiple formats, including FLAC (curious if anyone has a link or knows what I'm talking about?).
I personally wish that others would go this route--more choice.
I'm done complaining though. Seeing artists walk away from DRM is a great thing. Seeing them recognize the importance of the higher bitrate is also very encouraging. I hope this causes more of a rift between the good bands and the strong arm of the RIAA. It can only be a move in the right direction for consumers.
"God is dead!" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead!" - God
Sadly this is more often than not the case. Recording contracts are generally "contractual work" and due to recent changes that were snuck into U.S. copyright law this definition is now binding. If the artists did this for a record label they'll never own it, and have to pay to sell their own music. Which would be such a horrible shame.
I don't know what sort of label TMBG played under, so this may not be the case. They may be free to sell their music whenever they want, and are just starting slowly. I sure hope so.
The Cheese Stands Alone.
Makes a lot of sense to get rid of DRM since people can already buy audio CDs anyway which are DRM free. And might as well sell it in a format currently most popular amongst consumers, mp3, although I wish they'd also sell it in AAC format (comparable audio quality takes up less space on my hard drive).
Regarding other artists that also give away free mp3s, I find a lot of artists on the Kill Rock Stars label give away free full length mp3s, especially Stereo Total (factsheet) and DeerHoof (factsheet, Puzzling Music Archive).
The last line proves that Terry really does know about the music industry. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
http://www.livephish.com/
They have both MP3 and FLAC of their shows, and they are available within a day or two of the show. They have "every show Phish has played since 12/31/02" along with some other shows too.
I just bought it for a few reasons:
1) I like TMBG.
2) It helps support the artist very effectively.
3) If enough people buy it, it will send a message to the RIAA that selling unencumbered MP3s is a better business than selling all these DRMed tunes.
By the way, no problems during the download process. Very easy, but not as seemless as iTMS. Still fun, and I was happy enough spending the $10.
The change of the "work for hire" definition was snuck in via a technical amendment to The Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999.
AFAIK, it has not been struck down.
Fortunately we have independent artists like TMBG who do own their own music.
Independent...as in...they don't have a label.
They're not just starting to release their music. They've been doing it for a while.
The RIAA doesn't represent the entire music buisness. Go check out cdbaby.com where other indie musicians are releasing their own work, without a contract.
You don't need a label to sing a song. (or be good at singing a song.)
And while we're on the subject of labels and contracts and stuff, let me just plug this now famous document in case you haven't read it: http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
You suck dude.
If an artist requests that you don't file share their music, don't. If they support filesharing, then fine, thats where most of the good music is anyway (even though i am a HUGE fan of TMBG).
If they're giving you (trusting you with) good-quality non-DRM mp3s (mp3's yeah yeah ok ogg is better), don't abuse that.
With Weed, musicians always get to set the price of the song (usually about a dollar, of course) and get 50% from every sale. Weed publishers Shared Media Licensing, Inc gets just 15%. 35% goes to the people buying then sharing the music. (20%, 10%, then 5% commissions) And sites like ShareNewYork.com make it very easy to buy Weed files, upload them, and review why it's and great song, why you chose it. Whatever the cost of the song, if 5 people buy it, the song has paid for itself. It's also a great place to look for new songs, because most songs are posted with a few words from a fan.
Weed files are legal to share, and will play 3 times for free (on Windows Machines. Macophiles, I feel your pain) They are ideal for new musicians, since it is usually free to get your music in this format, and the music must be original. Now that CD Baby has endorsed Weed, 65,000+ musicians can convert their files by oping in to Weed as part of digital distribution, again for free.
Oh, and Heart's new Album, Jupiter's Daughter, is available in Weed.
For some reason, this Weed - CD Baby deal is completely below the notice of the media. I think it's the biggest deal in OMD since MP3.com went public, but the media doesn't get it. Anyone see anything about it here on /. ? What's up with that? CD Baby gives that needed catalog of 100,000+ files. As a whole, CD Baby represents 230,000 songs, but it remains to be seen how many will opt in.
With Weed files, there's actual potential for income for everyone ... musician, distributors, and even fans! The better each does their job, the more everyone will make. Music becomes a capital investment. it makes new business models of music possible. Now is the time to get involved.
- Future Founder of Pagans for the Buddha