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Online Business Model for a Band?
Backes asks: "I've seen a lot of submissions about P2P, iTMS, DRM, piracy, and the RIAA, lately. Apparently everyone has an opinion on this and most seem think that the recording industry are a bunch of greedy people that stick it to the consumer as well as their own artists. After hearing some of the stories, I'm not even sure that getting signed to a label would be the best course of action for an aspiring musician or band. So what is a better option? What would you, the Slashdot community, do to make it big on your own using the Internet?"
"What kinds of features would a site need? Would you pay for downloads of MP3s from a band's site or not? At what price? Would donations work, or would everyone just freeload? How often would you need updates or new songs to keep you coming back? If downloads were free, would you then buy a full length album from the site just to get the CD? What special features should the CD include? How would you get your name out? What do you think is the best course of action for a band that wants to completely circumvent the whole music industry process and do it themselves?"
Check out Magnatune. Motto: We're a record label. But we're not evil.
Illegal? Samir, This is America.
Well, I am not famous, yet.. but I am working on exactly what you speak of, and here is a simplified version of what I am doing:
I have a living room studio where I record all of our practices and jam sessions to firewire harddrives. I use 24 channels to mix down about 6 different sized diaphram condensers and a few 57s here and there. There's all the gear we need (amps, bass, guitar, two keys, and a trap set), effects, a PA, and we have and now own the only copies of all our material. We all learn and teach each other to engineer.. play.. compose.. we all treat it democraticaly when decisions are to be made about lyrics, composition, song selection, mastering, mechandise, etc. With all this in our own hands, we all sell CDs and merch at our gigs and in our spare time (running to local record stores and getting things on consinement), and reinvest certain monies from band oriented sales into necessary things like legal docs or advice.. expensive promotional materials such as ads, cds, etc. Repeat.. profit. we've removed the need for a label at the expense of not having everything all at once. But with a bit of work, the band can work like a sucessful startup company, and we're having one hell of a time while we're at it!
pego the jerk
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
I'm currently considering being my own label and selling CD's through CD Baby. My experience with them has been positive so far.
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
A friend and I set up a web site for my wife's music and did some basic advertising with SingingFish. Her top download song last month had 13,336 downloads (lo res mp3's), second place 2,450 plus the samples. We've started getting several inquiries a week about the due date of her next CD. And we're not even pushing it that hard. This was spending less than a hundred bucks on advertising.
I'm not at all certain you'd be able to make a huge amount of money just on the internet, but we're satisfied enoough with the initial results to spend some money on taking it to the next level.
The way record labels calculate expenses on a CD, most artists don't make squat on CD sales. Getting a CD professionally produced, if you do the mastering yourself, isn't that expensive. The break-even sales figures are fairly modest and I do think we can turn a reasonable profit if we hold expenses down.
Getting back to your original comment...if you have some business sense and access to the creative talent, I don't think it's at all foolish to be skeptical of signing with a record label. The more you're able to demonstrate success without them, it would seem at a minimum one could negotiate a better deal. And at some near-future point in time record labels will no longer be necessary.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Register with the US copyright office. It's not expensive. Its $30 to register a whole album worth of music and lyrics.
http://www.copyright.gov/register/sound.html
There you will find Form SR (Sound Recording) and instructions on how to register.
Sinch
It's called a poor man's copyright, but you need to mail a copy to yourself via the us postal service and make sure to leave the letter unopened. This basically will establish ownership through the date of the postmark.
Make sure to note the outside of the envelope with its contents if you're planning on doing this more than once.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
Copyrights are fine when used properly. It's when giant corporations own them and the artists ignorantly sign their rights away b/c they feel it's their only option that it becomes a problem. But yes... make sure you decide what kind of copy rights you would like to retain and then have it posted on your site along with your music downloads. It's just as valid as any other printed media. I'd suggest looking through your options at the creative commons first too.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Well, the web hasn't been totally utilized as an asset for bands, in fact many underestimate the power of it. For years i had my bands music up on sites like Angelfire back in the mid 90's. Now in the world of broadband, I decided to start my own online Music Store http://ind-music.com/ because I wanted a way in which I could sell my music online, and still be able to make some money. At this point, we have over 20+ bands that have signed up, and we also work to get them gigs here in Nashville as well as feature them in commercials for our site on local radio stations. The artist doesn't get charged for it. The site takes a commission on the song sold, but the numbers work out so that the artist makes more per song sold, than they do on other competing sites. They set the price for their songs and the bands also earn more money as they sell more downloads. Best of all the accounts are free, and when someone purchases a song, it stays in their account for two years. None of this 90 day expiring DRM stuff. Also, the band doesn't have to give away their creative freedom. They can make the music that they want, without fear of being dropped. The bands choose when they want to close their accounts. We really try to do as much for the artist as possible. I am as frustrated with the Recording Industry as the next person. That is why I created my own.
I have nothing clever to put here...
- If you have to sue somebody for infringement, you have more remedies available if you did the registration.
- It proves that you really were the author, and that you wrote it first.
BTW, point #1 can be important for OSS. If you don't do the registration, and someone violates the GPL, you can only sue them for actual damages. But your actual damages are likely to be zero, since it's open source.On a different topic, I have some exeprience with bypassing the traditional book publishing industry with some of my own free-as-in-speech books. Here's some advice:
Find free books.
Have your promo pack on the site. Only one of my Clients does, but that gives them an advantage over the competition. Make sure the promoters know who you are, what you play, and what you need on stage for plugs and boards.
And photos! Fans love em. Promoters need em. Find yourself a good PHP type package like yappa-ng and smile for the birdie!
My $0.05 about music online: consider it your radio play. Release a few "singles" to your website (and wherever else you can) and don't skimp on the quality. The promoters are listing to a dozen MP3s a day and if yours doesn't stand out, then you won't be on stage.
-AD
Shameless link to my own template
basically the buisness model is, ,good songs which anyone can share, you are asked to give performances, where you pass out free cds (for a donation ofcourse)
1)put out your songs in (cc) licencing with your choice of rights
2)Make it availble through your website by torrent (not much server fees)
3)Advertise your site and licensing method (in your local-bands website etc.)
4)Ask for donations
5)As your popularity grows due to heavy usage of
6)Profit
P.S to the readers when I was reading the article it was at 270 comments, so if this idea was given before, I apologize for the added garbage.
Calm down people, its a religion not an operating system.
http://magnatune.com/info/terms
:
WRT Royalties
"50/50 gross revenue split on music: our main revenue sources are selling your music to consumers (at a price between $5 to $18 per album) and sublicensing your music for things such as games, ads and the web. We split the amount we collect 50/50 with you."
and
"50/50 net profits split on merchandise: for physical goods (Posters, T-Shirts, etc), we split the profits (i.e.: sale price minus expenses) 50/50 with you. Physical goods are a split on profits because we have to invest money in creating them."
Much better than what most record labels give their artists
I've taken copyright law classes specifically for the music business. The 'poor man's copyright' was brought up several times, and although it can be used as partial proof, it really doesn't stand up. In fact, it can hurt you.
If you sue someone for infringement, you can use your dated envelope for evidence (although not proof) that your story is what you say it is, but damages can only be collected from the date your work is filed at the library of congress.
If you were to file properly instead of going through the 'poor man' routine, you'll make out a lot better in an infringement case.
Also remember, Copyrights are given for 'original' works. They don't have to be 'unique'.
It is very possible that two people can come up with the exact same song. lyrics, chord progression, etc.
At that point, the owner of the older work (who is claiming infringement) must show that the infringer had access to the original work.
Anyhow, I'm in an independent band, keiretsu. As our members have a lot of side-projects, we started an organisation d:art recordings to oversee things. However, the name is a con really - we're not a record label, it's just a device for common publicity and branding.
How do we use the internet? Well, many different ways:
- Mailing list - obvious, but essential. Harvest email addresses on a clipboard after gigs, then you can remind people who liked you when you next return to that city.
- Gigs listings - let people know when they can see you
- MP3 downloads - we've had tons of listeners from people thousands of miles away, where we have never and maybe will never do a live gig. Although nothing has come off yet, we have even had promoters contact us about tentative international dates.
- CD Sales - We provide free MP3 clips of every track of our album, and a full download of one of the tracks. I also share this album preview pack on P2P clients like Soulseek. If you like what you hear, you can buy it, via Paypal (or the good old fashioned of snail-mailing me UK currency). I've despatched dozens of CDs across the pond to America.
- Running a forum so fans can chat with us.
- Getting interviewed on genre-orientated websites, and getting our downloadable tracks featured on genre-orientated websites and MP3 Blogs to further boost our online profile.
It goes hand in hand with the real-world, of course. Our CD booklet prominently features our URL, as does the large banner we display behind or above the band at gigs, wherever possible.My overall verdict: the internet is an invaluable marketing tool, and you can't neglect the online facet of operations when trying to push an independent music act. It's too big these days. On the other hand, you have to be very unique and special indeed to turn "the internet" alone into a profitable business model. Without continuous gigging, which is still the most effective way of getting yourself heard and building up a fanbase, our online CD Sales would probably not amount to much.