Slashdot Mirror
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
play shows.
:)
:D
That's all.
The "recording artist" is becomming something of an anacronism - or will become so IMO.
We are returning to a time when musicians get payed to actually perform their music, not just record it.
Ask a signed band, and the record company always, always gets the biggest cut of the money from record sales.
the band just counts on the sales driving concert attendance...but it's not really SALES driving the attendence, it's the people hearing the music.
and that hearing can now be achieved without the expenses of distribution from a decade ago.
that's truely why the Recording Industry is going to the toilet. The fleets of trucks driving to the stores and the warehouses of duplicatation equipment are already outdated - and that was really all that we needed those guys for. They didn't MAKE artists, the found and held them - like a zoo animal.
Give your music away, if you love it set it free. They will come to see you play if you rock
and I hope you do
link to your bands website?
Give the music away for free, with URLs embedded in the MP3 ID3 tags etc. Sell the things you can control access to, like concert admissions, copies of CDs for people who want that (many still will), t-shirts and other merchandise. Try to license your songs to people selling other things, if you think that's cool. If you sell the songs, there's a cost to sales, and you'll wind up spending lots of other money on other promotion and marketing. With the Internet offering so much free distribution, the music itself is the most effective, cheapest promotion available. And the primary idea is to get as many people listening as possible. So help the music get to the people who want it, and your audience will be more interested in paying for the rest of the package.
--
make install -not war
Don't be stupid. If a label offers you a contract take it. If your career goes anywhere, you can renegotiate a better contract after the terms of the first have been completed.
I agree, don't be stupid. But that's all I agree with.
90% of signed bands never release a second album, because their label dumps them first. Meanwhile, just about all bands make negative money from their first contract. This is important, if you sign with a label, you will end up in debt, you will also end up not owning your own work made while on contract. Standard label contracts are really that abusive. They get away with it, because prior to the internet, they were the only game in town.
You know why Prince changed his name for a few years to that weird multisexual symbol? Because his label owned his name. We got to hear all those jokes about it, when it was really a creative way to escape a hideously abusive recording contract.
Don't be stupid, don't sign with a major label. You never win the lottery, you ain't going to win the label lottery either.
If you are good, you don't need the labels anymore (and chances are they don't want you because "good" does not usually equal "easily packaged up as sex symbols for young teenagers").
Make your own way.
Release your current work to the net with a Creative Commons license. Promote your live performances, sell doodads.
If you are good, you'll gain a following after a while (years probably - so don't quit those day jobs just yet). With a substantial fanbase you can start working on commission. Here's how in a nutshell:
1) Set up an escrow account that people can deposit money in via paypal, credit cards and electronic checks.
2) Name your asking price for the release of a new recording - a whole album or just a track or somewhere in between.
3) Make sure your fanbase knows about your offer, publicisize it every which way you can.
4) When enough people have pre-ordered your new music (via the escrow account) to reach your asking price, release the new performance with a Creative Commons license, and take your money.
If you continue to make good music, each time you release a new track to the public, it becomes advertising for your next commission. If you get popular enough, say just 1 million fans (out of the possible 1 billion or so people on the net), you can really start raking in the bucks on the commissions - ask for a cool $1M to release your next album and all it takes is just 10% of your fans to pay $10 and you are now a very well paid artist. Your fans are happy because unlike with RIAA music, they really will own the music they buy from you, no guilt, shame or jail time for sharing copies with all of their friends and strangers too.
Everybody wins, except the RIAA and their old guard distributors, and nobody will shed a tear for them.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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
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."
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
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