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Are MP3 Web Sites Unfair to Indie Artists?
dafunn writes "CNN is running a story [from Salon] about how times have changed, but not really. The new breed of music distributors, the online mp3 sites, are still pulling the same old 'screw the artist' tricks..." This article sure paints a bleak picture. Anyone have any personal experience from the band/artist perpective you'd like to share?
I'm quite ignorant of the production and distribution sides of the music biz, since very little popular music interests me, but that said: why don't more artists simply do more/all of that part of the supply chain themselves?
I am neither a programmer nor a network engineer, but I have the ability to mpeg-encode an audio source, and to create a website to showcase these wares (note the lack of a "z") and sell them, through widely available free or near-free software. A bit of talking-around would find me an ISP capable of hosting my site and handling heavy downloads. Licensing/ copyrighting of work as I understand it can be done directly through BMI/ASCAP by the artists or their managers, no?
The only things that I or any musician would need to net-distribute their music that they are unlikely to be able to do themselves are a) the studio mixing and mastering of the music before it's encoded and b) the e-commerce part of the website. Both of those can be done by hired professionals, along with any other parts of the above plan that the musicians would rather not do.
As far as publicity to draw buyers: a) most music purchasers these days are web-savvy and likely to be able to find their favorites du jour on the web if those artists have a website, and b) a niche would quickly emerge to collect listings of and links to what's available and to direct buyers, just as has happened with shopping-search, airfare-search and similar web services already.
I don't get it. Why are the seven monolithic music companies still a factor at all?
Or you could stop hurting the poor goats.
Bands needs to majorly refocus to fit this emerging paradigm. It's useless to flail and scream against the tide on this one -- look at the incredible resources of the RIAA and notice how inept they are at actually getting anything done.
The brief time in history when people would pay for recorded music is over.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
(Tangent- sorry) A lot of Shareware programs use the "Basic" model you are referring to. I downloaded a program called "PCDJ" which is actually a decent Player if you want to DJ your MP3's. Unfortunately, it also installs, without asking you, an invasive program called TimeSink Ad Gateway which streams ads to the banner area of the PCDJ program. Even after uninstalling it, the TSADBOT.exe program remails as a systen startup file and you cannot remove it unless you start up in DOS and delete it by "hand". Cute FTP also uses this "streaming banner ad" crap- A lot of new programs have it- a small banner window that is always sending and recieving stuff, sometimes people use it to attempt to gain entry into your system- I had several attempts by someone trying to plant Back Orifice into my computer- Through the Time Sink Ad gateway! This wreaks havok with my Firewall. In retrospect, the AMP3 model of "basic" service, is non-invasive. It simply tacks on a small 2 second jingle to the beginning of the MP3, insuring that the artist get's paid a nickel. I can handle that, and there are programs that will remove the jingle for you, it you feel so inclined.
While I fully believe CNN can be a mouthpiece for TW's interests, the article was written by Emily Vander Veer, who is an author of various web books and does not appear to be affiliated with CNN/TW at all.
Why is it a surprise to anyone that most of the music doesn't sell? The sites don't exercise any editorial control. An artist puts his or her music up and takes his chances. The only difference between mp3.com and a vanity book publisher is that you don't have to pay for publishing.
In a traditional setup, the record company decides you have a marketable sound, then they take the risk of paying for promotion, recording, distribution, etc.
I think there's room for a music site which carefully selects the music they would like to host. They would then promote the music they have chosen, both on the web site and off, and make money from sales. However, they then start to resemble the traditional record companies.
Sony, CBS, et al may be screwing the little guy, but in between screws, they are selecting the artists they think are saleable, promoting them, distributing discs, etc.
Traditional media companies are running scared because they think that all they have to offer is buggy whips (printing presses, broadcast studios, etc). What they don't yet realize is that content selection is a necessary and valuable service.
It's not worth my time to sift through thousands of mp3s to find the few bands that I like. I would rather listen to radio stations (online or other) where I like the DJs taste. I then discover that I like Basia, Maria Muldaur, Tuck and Patti, Madeleine Peyroux, and Diana Krall. If I want to expand my horizons, I listen to a different radio station for a while. You might say this is lazy of me, but remember: I am the consumer. I'm allowed to be lazy. If you want to sell to me, it's your job to get your content to me. I'm not going to spend hours looking for a needle in a haystack when there are people out there who will do most of the sifting for me.
pornking
AMP3.com was the first free MP3 site to offer royalties to it's artists.
Here's the top ten royalty earners:
Killer Spam's Comedy Bits, Comedy, Culver City, CA $3314.27
Stargrass, Techno, Rodekro, Denmark $1436.23
DNA Trance, Techno, Brynmawr, Wales $ 789.24
DJ Pye, Techno, Nancy, France $ 748.31
Big Sky, Rock, Minneapolis, MN $ 607.95
Laura Van Der Rhoer, Classica,l Munich, Germany $ 535.80
F.o.N., Alternative, San Diego, CA $ 481.60
Michael Chernen, Classical, Toronto, ON $ 444.65
Fred, Rock, Paris, France $ 427.25
TranceSunDayProject, Techno, Toronto, ON $ 419.00
In addition, 30 aritsts were awarded $1000 each for earning a "pick hit gold" award. Also, over 290 artists have been awarded $50 for earning a "pick hit."
Without AMP3.com, both MP3.com and IUMA.com would be taking your music with no compensation.
Doug Cornell
Music Director, www.AMP3.com
Editor, www.amp3review.com
MC, www.hitsession.com
What about that Quake 3 bus or whatever? :) Or do you mean something more glitzy where you get to touch the developers or something :)
Doug
Yes, if that was the case.
I think the message is simply that *nobody is going to become mega rich from their music any more*. Make new music, give it to the people, maybe we'll pay you a bit, but you're not going to become (insert millionaire band here).
You can still have lots of fun at your live gigs though.
"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Dave Clark, IETF
Without AMP3.com's Artist Royalty Program, both MP3.com and IUMA.com would be exploiting your music without any payment at all.
Doug
First thing, NEVER, EVER give exclusive distribution rights to someone else.. you'll just get screwed..
Exactly, give it to everybody.
I know a lot of local bands, and a friend of mine is starting up an MP3 site (mostly using Icecast, but he wants songs to be dloadable as well..) for them (well, he hopes to expand to more bands later..) he asked me for help in designing it..
umm, saving a stream is a function of the client, at least on my machine. Promote a diff. client than WinAmp.
the first thing is that he doesn't want the artist to get screwed.. so #1, is he doesn't charge for space/listings, and (when he gets the credit card bit set up) he'll charge 30% of any CD's sold through the site.
That sounds better. Running your own site can be like your own radio station. Radio stations exist to promote music, and web sites are great at making it easy to buy, it's a match made in heaven.
Please don't think of listening to MP3s as bad. The laws that make them illegal are ridiculous. I equate MP3 streaming with the radio. If I save it to disk that's like using a tape. I don't see any of this as wrong. My case in point for open music is bands like Phish, who have thrived, especially on the 'Net, by allowing free flow of their music. Yes, it is more difficult to make a living this way, but if you started playing music to get rich, you don't deserve to. It can happen tho, for Phish's new year's show there will be 150k-200k people who paid $150 a piece to hear it live, which, IMHO, is how you should hear music anyway.
Stuff like Napster (which I used for the first time to get a quick and easy Tribe fix last night) will make any semblance of control of music a pale dream. Just open your music up, pass it out, and try to get people to your site and live shows to buy a CD, it's a perfect permanent backup in case your computer takes it on the chin from a HERF gun.
+&x
$200,000 a month is distibuted among all the artists on the site according to how popular they are.
http://www.mp3.com/payback/index.html
several artists got in excess of $1000 and one got over $4000
The rumor is that this will continue indefinitly
Had to post AC because. well, just because.
I know that mp3.com is not the only place to distribute music, but FWIW:
I just copied the following from the artist signup page of mp3.com. I had to sign up as an artist to get to it, but here it is. I don't see any issues with this agreement. I don't see why an artist can't sell their songs to another label and I don't see anything about an artist giving up any rights. In other words, what is MP3.COM doing that specificly hurts the Indie artists?
From mp3.com ->
The following terms apply to both the Standard Program and to the DAM System:
1. Ownership. You retain ownership of the copyrights and all other rights in your songs, subject to the non-exclusive rights granted to us under this agreement. You are free to grant similar rights to others during and after the term of this agreement.
2. Termination. You may terminate this agreement at any time by so notifying us; the agreement will terminate upon our actual receipt of such notice. We may terminate this agreement at any time by so notifying you; the agreement will terminate upon your actual receipt of such notice or three days after we have sent a notice of termination to the e-mail address which you supply to us below. Upon termination, all of our license rights terminate, except that we retain those rights necessary for us to sell any CDs or other tangible goods which we have produced prior to the date of termination which incorporate any of your Material (as defined in section 3 below). Our obligation to pay you amounts due to you under this agreement survives termination. Also, sections 3 and 6 below survive termination.
.... sections 3 and 6 hold them harmless and make sure you have the rights to give the music away in the first place.
It takes more luck than talent to get the majors' attention, so every little bit of exposure helps. While the freeware-music movement may not bring actual $$ to the artists, it does give us a small amount of exposure that we were not getting otherwise.
Methinks that's a good thing.
--Bill
Home: http://bw.org/
home
gimme back my
This is actually so much better than the record company deals it's not even funny. (It's not funny, actually. It's tragic.) Sure, Joe Schmoe isn't guaranteed income as a Rock And Roll Star- when has he ever been? Sure, you have to do ALL your own promotion: guess what, you would in the mainstream industry as well. Record companies _don't_ promote new signed bands. They promote the Spice Girls. In the case of something like Hootie or whatever, you're talking about a local band that had a _killer_ marketing machine and network and did a lot of work without asking the record company to do it for them (which ain't happening).
Lastly, nothing is stopping you from setting up shop as an indie label. Press your own CDs- it'll be about a dollar a CD including labels and sometimes also throwing in cassettes, you supply artwork, you pay shipping and fill orders yourself and keep _all_ the profit after taxes. Nothing in the mp3.com agreement is forbidding you from doing all the work, not to mention you can make higher quality CDs from stuff that hasn't been mp3ed first.
The one thing mp3.com takes is this: everything you put up, they can spread around in any way they choose. Well, duh- that's the point! If they were not going to let people download it, splash your little graphics around, drop your name in their email mailings, do a web-radio station and play your songs all they want, what would you be there for, why would they be giving you lots of HD space? You can back out (unlike the regular industry), it's nonexclusive (unlike the regular industry), it's clear that you aren't losing copyright to your own work... (unlike the regular industry... are we seeing a pattern here? Ever wonder why certain artists 'seem' to be really into selling their songs to crappy compilation album producers?)
Thanks for the link. I made a copy on my HD of the agreement to go over at my leisure- but I gotta tell you, I'm impressed with it. I don't see much of a gripe, compared to existing industry practices. They were supposed to provide MP3-sized HD space to zillions of unsigned musicians for nothing maybe? ;)
Yes, yes, and yes. :^)
Furthermore, perhaps lots of those bands who are bleating about not getting paid for their MP3's are also using HotlineHQ to rip off somebody else's movies...
Perhaps this whole thing just boils down to showing some people the consequences of their actions when they're playing a different keyboard?
"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Dave Clark, IETF
All the tracked music scene has evolved a lot these last years, some of my all time favorite tracks are free downloads, full quality releases. I myself make music and i give it free for non commercial purposes. I suggest you check my group's page and the link section at http://listen.to/quikphix It will show you a handful of the cool sites that carry free music (quality music). Underground tracking scene is really worth a look too: http://bentdesign.com/uts/ xonox / quikphix music
They used to show the top downloads for each genre, at least that way you could see what other people were downloading most, while not a review, it gave an indication of what _might_ be good. But, alas, they have changed the format now and only show a list of artist names.
And this is OK?
Too often do I hear "Well, they're in the business of making money" as justification for ripping people off. Because you make a buck off of it does *not* mean it's OK to rip off small-time bands.
That said, I think it's surprising that no one's actually fufilled the potential for an online cooperative music label. Instead of paying the bands for the CDs they sell, why not give the bands 85% of mp3 sales and use the 15% to run the site?
You could offer the bands all the marketing info, let them keep the copyright to all their stuff, and then sign the really popular ones with your traditional music label.
According to the article, there'd be a fairly large market for this kind of service. Why sign up with mp3.com when you can sign up with music-coop.com (or whatever) and get a much better deal?
What amazing things you could do if you didn't rip your fellow humans off. But hey... if you're in the business of making money...
This idea, BTW, isn't really mine, nor is it special. If you have the motivation to carry through with it, please do. I've got my own gig going, so I'm not likely to go from programmer to music-industry-guerilla.
-- I can't think of anything witty to put here. Sorry.
Basically, if you weren't making much money before off your music, then $3 a month or something isn't bad. I mean, mp3.com gives space, visibility, and a large audience. If you're really good, chances are, you'll sell more CDs. Did anyone think that they were suddenly going to be rolling in the dough? mp3.com allows anyone to post their music up, do you think they should pay all of them? Not really. Sure they make some money off banner ads(visibility I guess, who clicks on those things?), but its not really wrong for them to take a chunk off each CD. Isn't it that major artists only get like 15 cents off each CD?
I don't really understand this all, what's all the complaining about? More people get to hear your music, and you're about $3 a month better off than you were if you hadn't bothered.
Of course, the selling of rights is kind of worrying, but no one says you have to do it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Has anyone ever heard of a band who has been successfully signed to a MAJOR label by distributing their music on a mp3 site?
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
Now if you want to talk real e-commerce with credit card processing and other fun stuff, yeah, that'll get to be expensive.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yeah they sold just one CD. But did their audience want to pay them? Hey not all of them are good enough to fork out your money for. You don't throw cash at every busker on a street.
So what if only 16K CDs were sold for 26K artists in August. Face it that is the harsh reality:
Not all artists sell (doh!). The Internet will probably make it more brutal if anything. I bet a very small bunch of artists sold a lot of CDs, then a medium bunch sells a few cds, and the rest sell nothing. Probably the media just interviewed artists who'd make a newsworthy story.
What would make things better for musicians, opensource/GNU coders would be this:
Sites to help Joe Public pay money directly to them (with 2% charge to card company and maybe 1% to cover costs). So if someone only likes ONE song, and doesn't want to pay for the entire CD of 95% crap, that person can still pay you, plus add comments. Then the artists could work accordingly [1].
Then in fact musicians/sessionists/coders could even pay each other for help and other stuff. For example X helps Y to write a "device driver" or a chorus, and Y pays X for it, and maybe even gets other people to pay X for a job well done.
I suggested this system to the GNU people. Open Destination Donation. Basically people can donate to the main GNU fund (which goes to "salary"), or donate directly to programmers. Everyone sees how much everyone is getting. If the programmers themselves figure a bunch are not being compensated fairly (low profile but great work), they can go compensate them directly too.
It does seem rather too money driven to me. But that's the world for you.
Cheerio,
Link.
[1] You can still suffer for your art if you want- e.g. if everyone says that they like song #1 but you hate doing that type, it's your choice.
.IT, .XM, etc... lets you see the insides of the tune... for more info, just go here.
Oh, so any electronic, synthesised or dance music is crap? There is a huge raft of quality electronic music made my amateur artists out there. Try mono211.com or noisemusic.org for starters.
The record industry has a lock on distribution channels, so they can force unfavorable contract terms on artists; that is "screwing the artist". But if you make an unfavorable contract with an on-line site, you only have yourself to blame. After all, you could simply post the MP3 on your own site and submit it to search engines.
I'm sorry that you guys got screwed, but it seems you were banking on lots of people going and buying your CDs. Why not just upload a few to mp3.com, post a couple of "Listen to this" type messages on the board, and wait? Of course, you could still do that right now, if you were so inclined, you have nothing to lose. You had no guarantee that you were going to be popular, and nobody does, even if they're good. I hear mp3.com does the pressing of CDs for you when people order, so that's good. There are always people to screw you out there, just don't set yourself up for a knockout.
Right.
There are a lot of very, very lazy people out there. They want:
1. to sell their music for huge money because they saw U2 do it, and
2. not to have to pay for things like marketing, and
3. not to have to learn anything new, like what the Web is all about, and
4. to move to cloud cuckoo land, please.
They are slowly discovering that, guess what, there's no such thing as a free lunch again. As one person said: "...it's all about getting noticed. Imagine that there are ten thousand radio stations out there and you're one of them. How are you ever going to be heard?" Answer: you might, but not by many, and not for long.
Let's also not forget that as well as 'stifling many artists who thought they should get a recording deal', those labels also 'protected the listening public from having to wade through buckets of dross to find a couple of gems'...well blow me down, it's the same thing!
*BUT* it's not all bad news. If they put their stuff out there and some of us find it and like it, we'll tell our friends. If they like it too, they'll tell their other friends. We'll all tend to visit the band's Web site, and when they come to our town, just watch us line up to pay *big bucks* (maybe five, or ten, or fifteen at a time) to see them play live.
For example, I came across the Fantastic Plastic Machine on Emperor Norton, and if he ever plays Marbella I'll buy a ticket, and with real folding money too. I'd never heard of him nor Norton until I happened to read some Web article somewhere.
Of course, TicketMaster will still destroy the band's profits anyway, unless somebody stops them by putting up a free Web site for buying tickets...
"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Dave Clark, IETF
Touring usually is the main source of money for any musician. While you get about 10% of the price of a cd from the label (if you signed a good contract), you get up to the 40% of the ticket price for a show (at least that's how things work here). Musicians go touring 'cause, they like to, true, but non one would spend 6-8 mounths touring if it wasn't his only way to earn his living. (Yhea, touring is funny... the first week).
Seipse "Slave, I've set my life upon a cast, and I will stand the hazard of the die." W.Shakespeare "Richard III", act
We need Opem Source Music!!! That'll put an end to all this "screw the artist" and "priated music" nonsesnse. -Alex the Fishman
As a musician who has worked both on his own website and on some high profile mp3 sites, here's my take.
/., if only the best and brightest were to post, Hemos and Taco would probably have an 800 number that you could call if something went wrong while you were trying to post. But as it stands, if your Microsoft Ruulz post gets eaten in the ethernet, too bad. And by the same token, if your Thinking beyond the desktop paradigm post gets munched, too bad.
/. flame. (Hey my song, "Bill G. ain't so peachy" got turned down because of the the reapeated use of "fsck"...")
/., it's basically structured usenet... Streaming mp3's of latest submissions with a voting tab?? Now each file can be tagged with a quality rating. The list goes on. The tech is always in it's infancy...
The mp3 sites have a very low noise to signal ratio for the indie artists. Most of their indie selections are a) Poorly recorded (and I don't mean in the charming sense) b) Poor songs (Yes, this is a value judgement, but if you can't play the local clubs, why do I need your mp3?) c) crap. (Hey, what is this "Voyetra Jam Box" program I got with my Packard Smell??) This would create a problem for me if I were running a site like mp3.com for the following reasons.
Do I really want/need to cater to the bedroom rockers etc. out there? If all of my submitters are good quality bands with good tunes, sure, I want to give them all the bells and whistles to maqke sure they come back and to help them along the path to stardom. It's just good business. If one big band got their start on friggin-mp3.com (TM), I'd be set. But do I want to deal with the added overhead of catering to "DJ Whimpleteats" and his GW2K Mixmaster? No. So you scale back service to the lowest common denominator.
Consider this like
Now the flipside of the coin reveals this: Who am I to make the decision that what you are sending is crap? Ever had a post moderated down when you didn't think it needed to be?? So how can you challenge the status quo of the recording industry yet turn people away right and left because content is not up to snuff?? (Besides the fact that you would actually have to listen to all of it to make the valuation.) Plus you now get into bruised egos, and a possible
This really isn't the recording industry. Any artist who thinks that they are going to make big money would also believe that the moon is made of cheese. The name of the game is exposure, and that is the best you can hope for with these sites.
Running you own website is a good proposition, but you cannot generate the traffic that these large sites do, and the large sites are also a good way to drive traffic to your individual site.
The mp3 sites have their place, but the indies will need to find a new way to get better and cleaner exposure. Look at
~Jason Maggard
"America is the home of the hypocrite
The American Dream is only a dream"
~The Violent Femmes
I think the major online music portals are of course going to "screw the artist". That attitude is a natural extension of the blatant commercialism that these companies must exhibit in order to satisfy their investors. When a common goes public the ethics/motives of the investors supplant those of the founders. Let's just hope that doesn't happen to /. someday. (Though some might argue it has already)
Anyway, if you are looking for a great indie "label" where the artists are the MAIN attraction, check out NoType
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
--Mark Twain
I mean, go ahead, but that's very much like saying "Anyone with a 486 and Red Hat can write the next Q3test and do serious work on the kernel". To some extent it's the equipment...
Now. Seemed to be a lot going on in that hack, wasn't there? Why would I, a soundengineer hacker with his own music, be giving away secrets like that?Because that WASN'T enough. It'd help. But if you don't know how to make cables that will get as much of your signal to the A/D converters as possible... if you make the mistake of doing a lot of destructive digital changes on your data (it can be better to re-digitize a track than to normalize it over a simple gain change)... if you're using a crap digital mixer working in only 16 bits and not dithering properly, it's not going to be enough! You'll need help.
This is normal for any skilled profession, craft, or art. You wouldn't go out and get some random guy off the street for your drummer- it's no different for the sound engineer. The difference is, the audio geeks and equipment tweekers and snotty audiophile types now have a market value- and there are just as many of them out there as there are unsigned musicians.
Not everybody gets to be George Piros or Wilma Cozart or even Bob Ludwig or (shudder) Bob Clearmountain (if you don't know those names you're not a sound engineer geek. Show of hands? I bet some slashdotters know _all_ of them and why I shuddered at Clearmountain ;) ) but it's just the same as linux hacking- there are countless things to learn, it's a tremendously deep field, and you _can_ put together a 'garage' operation that competes with the big boys just the same as Linux competes with Windows NT.
It might involve a lot of geeky work. My mixing board had over 100$ of capacitors alone put into it. Not wizzy 'audiophile' caps of matching values- I increased values radically, now my board will put out bass on the order of 2 hz >:) there are most definitely audio hacks that can be done with equipment, it's a whole subculture.
I guess the long and the short of it is, at home with your PC or Mac you can _top_ the results of your average industry studio- if you're really willing to spend some years being a mad scientist audio hacker, or know someone who is. I always figure, I've been doing it for nearly 20 years, I can afford to give away everything and I'll still top ya in execution ;) so, here's a list of things to do/use/remember...
- Get serious monitoring. Learn how to place speakers in the right places from audiophiles. Get classical music or classic rock sounding great over the system- the stuff that requires the system to reproduce a soundspace (not synthesise one tho!)
- If you're using bass reflex speakers, stuff a sock in the ports. To mix very deep bass you've gotta be able to hear it. A sock will also provide resistive damping. You can enjoy port thunder later, now you need to hear what's actually happening.
- If you're using speaker wire try cutting the ends off AC extension cords (heavy duty indoor) and using those. If you're using those, try separating them all the way down into two individual wires, getting rid of capacitance effects. Crude but effective in getting more control of your highs.
- Litz wire is better than stranded or solidcore wire at transmitting analog audio in such a way that it digitizes nicely. You can make amazing cables from using all the wires in outdoor phone cable (four little wires rattling around loose in a big plastic sheath) because they'll work as sorta-litzwire and any shielding around the wire has a serious air gap for zilch capacitance over even long runs.
- Running cheap digital multitrack (like an old ADAT) into a reasonably decent analog mixer and then digitizing the result 'dithers' better than crap digital mixing software. (this is actually my next audio move- ADAT used in a hopped-up analog-uber-alles studio)
- Pitch shifting is destructive. Digital EQ is destructive. Normalizing is destructive. As with something like JPEG or MP3 these are cumulative. Don't ever edit things around like mad without backup- keep master digital copies in case you want to do a neatly executed series of digital edits on a clean copy. Screw up on this one, and your tracks will have all the life and interest of Radio Shack Casiotone demo tunes. Don't get track rot.
- Typically you can only afford to have a few sounds be 'big' or glossy or fancy- different genres approach this in different ways. Some great MODs have all the sounds big, but there's only about 2 or 3 tracks going at any one time! Conversely, some great rock mixes have, for instance, really big guitar sounds against a simple direct, dense bass tone without a lot of detail, and a very 'dry' drum tone. Even John Bonham's Led Zeppelin drum tone tended to be pretty 'dry': it just tended to sustain. When it was really wet and dense, the _guitar_ tended to be dry.
- Drum tones only sound right in context. You'll only hear what a bassdrum is doing when coupled with a bass guitar- the weight of it can be way more than you expected combined with the bass's transient attack. A snare can sound clear but boring until it's in context and sounds great- if you add stuff to make the unaccompanied snare sound hot and exciting, when it's in context you might lose most of the actual impact because everything gets muddy and confused. Think of the backbeat as a composite of drums and instruments- as if the guitar or whatever is _part_ of the snaredrum. Mix it as such.
- Never mix over headphones. Any headphones. It's a totally different presentation from speakers- your body needs to feel the sounds (even at a low volume, subliminally). Headphones are for tracking not for mixing over.
- Build monster speakers if you want to make club or house or rock music. You need to monitor over something comparable to what you'll be played on, only more accurate. I run towers with 12" 10" 8" and 6.5" woofers for (infinite baffle) bassbins. No one resonance dominates and the low end is understandably huge when required. Makes it easier to mix really serious bass content, you can hear exactly what it's doing. I also make my own tweeter elements. Audio geekiness is fun
:) also, using them as computer speakers makes games and such more fun. Big explosions, and I've occasionally encountered stuff like this one alpha-quality game in which the guy had made the sounds carry _major_ subsonic rumble for the explosions. Very neat. - Geek out on it. It doesn't take that much money, you just end up very well known at Radio Shack and very familiar with what you can get from MCM, Mouser catalogs et al. It's kind of like Linux in a way- you can DIY, and even beat hell out of the industry's approach in certain areas.
Good luck!This is a business in the business of making money, artists are theyre way of making money. So following business logic theyre going to milk as much money from the bands popularity without causeing alarm with the band/fans.
icq:=22921393;
I would consider that different than open source. I compare the mp3 more to a compiled program than source code. Truly open source music would include written music (whether in the form of tabs or sheet music) that another musician could look at and play. If someone wanted to play a song that they only had in mp3 format, they would first have to figure out all of the notes, chords, etc. I would compare this to reverse engineering.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
If any musicians out there want some help avoiding getting screwed, I suggest getting "Music Law: How to Run Your Band's Business" by Nolo Press. There is a lot of great info in there that can help you avoid getting taken advantage of by anyone. You just need to know how to protect yourself. It is proving to be valuble information to my own band.
What is needed is a way to download mp3's, and pay per song directly to the artist, preferably with a discount if you buy a full album of mp3's, imho.
tThen the artist can make more then they're current cut, and we, the consumer, can get lower prices for music. Any ideas on how such system could be setup?
bash: ispell: command not found
This sig left intentionally blank.
Check it:
http://mp3.com/heisenberg/
So far, the support has been great. If it weren't for the internet, hardly anybody would hear my stuff, because I could never afford to mail out CDs to college radio stations. I know I could never get signed, because my stuff is just too weird.
That said, I haven't sold hardly any CDs. But so what? My goal was to get heard, not paid. Besides, I think artist should try to make money by playing live shows. It's a good way to seperate the talented artists from 13 year-old dweebs clicking around on Rebirth.
..Now I ask you, where else can a band attract over-weight white guys from another time zone to come to a club, buy some some bad haiku books, and read it over the DJs microphone untill every last suburban-wannabe screams.
I am sick to death of the way our media, our political systems, our culture, and our education systems are being hijacked by a single minority. For this I'm branded a homophobe. Actually, I'm just normal. And I'd like the chance for my children to grow up normal without being "educated" about "alternative life choices".
Welcome to the curse of the straight white male. The whole "play to the minorities" that North America's (it's not just the US) political system abides by makes me sick.
You can have Black TV. Or Feminist TV. Or Gay Pride week. But if I want to do something along those lines for whites, or straights or males... I'd be arrested.
Mind you we've got another problem in Canada that you guys don't have: the Seperatists. In Quebec it's illegal to have an all-English sign (and in some areas it's illegal to have ANY English on your signs!), yet the rest of the country is forced into bilingualism. What utter bullshit!
AMP3.com has taken a somewhat different model. They tack advertisements to the front of your MP3s and you get five cents a download. I made $25.00 last month.
Advertising comes homes again. I think this is fair. And a million downloads could do pretty well for everybody. Advertising as a revenue source also relies on massive distrubution, something mp3 is good for. Charging directly for the music ain't gonna work.
I think most media will end up in two areas. Basic and Premium. Basic you pay by watching commercials, and the HBO model where you pay for quality content (Sopranos, 1st run Hollywood).
+&x
Well, some friends of mine are running a local band here and got to publish their second CD lately. Up to now, they are pretty happy with the possibility of putting .mp3s on the Net, but their attitude has already started changing.... Funny enough, they are worrying more about "internet piracy" than about how the label guys may screw them.....
No artist needs _ANY_ of these MP3-centric websites. But, 90% of the people on the web really don't understand the power that they are supposed to be able to have, including many musicians.... Ask around, and a good deal of people believe that there should be one central point to the web, and a good deal of them actually think AOL is that point. Musicians, likewise, are told that mp3.com and emusic.com and such are the _only_ way to get their music out. This couldn't be more wrong. It doesn't take much looking for them to find a local web designer (like myself) who can tell them everything that they need to know about music and the net. For a franklin or two, I can easily set up a good (not the best for that amount of money) website that they can distribute sample Mp3s from, and set up little tour schedules and message boards for them. A little more, I'd set up a simple catalog (because, really, nobody buys a bunch of MP3s online when it costs just as much to get the actual, portable, rippable CD mailed). All without the artist needing to fear about getting hornswaggled. No contracts invloved. But, ignorance prevails. And artists are taken in by (music-alikes).com because they are too lazy to learn the simple facts. By the way, e-marketers are starting to suck as badly as lawyers.
That's weird, the ones I've burned on my room mates computer worked perfectly in the car cd player. It's a Hewlett Packard 4x.
Yes, that does sound bleak.
But you can't run away from the changing environment, you just have to make sure that it doesn't screw you in future. There's one very good general principle you can apply to avoid getting screwed, and that is: "Avoid the Middleman".
The way you can achieve that in this context is reasonably straighforward. Set up your own website with an Internet provider that provides download stats. (You get that for free with typical "shell account" providers anyway.) You're buying a networking service here, as opposed to introducing a middleman into your own line of business as would be the case if you hooked up with MP3.COM.
Then develop your online identity and communicate with your fans through all the usual mechanisms: website promotion, search-engine priming, newsgroups, IRC channels, etc. And create merchandise for your growing fandom to buy online. Note that this has to include more than just plain CDs, because the reality of the new online environment is that payment per copy doesn't work: your fans may like you, but they won't pay for replication that they know they can do themselves for virtually nothing. But merchandising gives you a chance to capitalize on the exposure that your free downloads give you. Offer posters and t-shirts and you're into a different ballgame!
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The CNN article missed the point. If people go to mp3.com to sell CD's, they're stupid in the first place. It's never going to happen. What's the point of (traditional) record companies? Making the CD's? Organising the live shows? Rubbish. anyone with a $900 PC and a $300 CD-R can burn their own CDs. There are plenty of gigs to be had just by asking - I should know. My old band got booked by the US Air Force for £350, and we were just a bunch of 17 year old kids at the time. Selling CD's to your friends is easy. The hard part is selling them to strangers. And this requires PROMOTION... RADIO PLAY... POSTERS... MTV... MAGAZINE ARTICLES... which is where the big money comes in.
Let me offer an analogy. If I burn my own CD's and make my own inlay, go down to my local Tower Records, and set up a small stall filled with my CD's, how many people who come to Tower Records are going to buy it? Answer: none, because no one has heard my stuff, or even heard of my stuff. What I'm saying, you're in a 'traditional' music vending environment, but you're stil not selling you're stuff, because the problem is the same. That fact it is online has essentially nothing to do with it. If people havent heard of you, they arent going to pay money for your tunes, online or offline.
mp3.com and similar sites are great for several things:
- going global, and :)
- hopefully getting a bit of a following to your free tunes
- getting somewhere to host all those big mp3s for free (isntead of setting up your own site)
They're no good for selling CDs. Sorry, they're just not. I love discovering music from 'unknown' online artists, I download stacks of the stuff from places like mono211, noisemusic, theralite, tokyo dawn and many more (all of those links are highly recommended, incidentally), but I only went there because they're free. No matter how much the text at mp3.com says "this band is cool", I'm not going to shell out money for it, just as I dont buy 'real' artists' CDs just because the newspaper says "this band is cool".
It seems to me that the same model that is used by a lot of farmers - establishment of a cooperative - would benefit unrecognized artists considerably.
/.
The commercial music does not serve most artists well; we can certainly take that for a fact. Some artists hit it big, but the vast majority do not get fair recognition for their work.
In the days of the internet we have the establishment of a new means of reaching lots of people with a far less investment of capital than was previously required. It is quite possible to bootstrap oneself into national recognition ala
Farmers have long recognized that a single farm cannot gain direct access to distribution channels because of capital and volume requirements. However, by forming a cooperative they are able to provide enough capital and volume to in fact 'cut out the middleman'. Artists now have the same opportunity to take matters into their own hands. Sites like mp3.com are obviously using the same business model that the conventional music industry does, but via a new distribution channel. This business model does not serve the needs of most artists.
I believe that the correct approach would be the establishement of a artist's cooperative designed to use the internet as a distribution medium. The business philosophy could be taken from examination of farmer's cooperatives, and the distribution model from examination of several successful low-capital or bootstrapped internet startups.
One thing I like about the free software economy is (among other things) the "try before you buy nature". ``Do I like Red Hat 6.1? Well, let's see waht software they have... Hrm, looks OK, I think I'll go buy it. Do I like SuSE 6.3? No, it looks like SuSE 6.0 which I already have, except some minor upgrades.'' I use MP3.com as the same thing. I just flung $70 at 3 artists on mp3.com I like (Bassic, Tom Aragon, Uforkestra), even though I already had the mp3s. Why? I wanted to support them. The problem isn't that people don't like them, it's that people are so caught up in the "oooh... free music" mindset that they forget there's people trying to make a living on the other end. Support your bands. Buy their CD, regardless of if you already have the MP3s. (Likewise, pay for free software that you like, even if you already downloaded it.)
Windows 2000: Designed for the Internet. The Internet: Designed for UNIX.
...Now I ask you, where else can a band attract over-weight white guys from another time zone to come to a club, buy some drinks, and pick up a waiter to take home?
Finkployd
No, that's precisely where the rot sets in, when websites want a cut of the action. That's the problem with MP3.COM. That's the old system of signing your profits away. You don't need it.
Instead, just treat the website as a fixed business expense, just like the coffee and milk. You don't give Nescafe and the milkman a cut of your business, and nor should you give a website owner any. Or perhaps a better analogy is that you don't provide AT&T or BT with a share of your business just because they provide you with a phone line.
Make it so also with websites. And these days, that will be a minimal expense or even free, at least initially when you start with a small web presence.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The closest thing I've seen to what you're talking about is the Deadreckoners. The Deadreckoners are a group of artists from the Nashville area who started their own indie label, play on on another's recordings and so on. Most of the artists are country but if you want to hear some smokin' blues check out Mike Henderson and the Bluebloods.
I've got all the affilliate MP3.com charts here. HTH.
The article wasn't anti-MP3. It was anti the MP3 sites becoming every bit as bad as the studios that they're trying to replace.
The moral of the story is that we don't need yet another raft of blood-sucking middlemen. Musicians can have their own presence online without needing any of that old nightmare, without signing away any of their profits, and without being told how to arrange their own promotion. All they need to do is show a little business initiative and go it alone.
You're right though that people won't pay for the music itself -- that's the nature of the beast, and you can either moan about it or ride the wave. In practice what this means is merchandising, ie. offering your fans more than just plain pressed CDs of the music: lots of additional material to go with it, and of course the traditional t-shirts, caps and mugs. And that is something that fans definitely are willing to pay for -- it's a multi-billion dollar industry.
It only seems funny to "give away your primary product" and make money on ancillaries because we've been brainwashed into thinking of music as property. It isn't. Music is a shared experience, shared between the composer and musicians and each listener separately and all the fans collectively. It's a real oddball of a phenomenom, and it fits perfectly in the new environment of online freedom. It is very different from a washing machine.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
It's been suggested that a co-operative would be a good way to provide indie artists with a means of getting 'exposure' and the like. I'd like to help.
I'm a piss-poor, two-buck shyster who has trouble working normal hours, and who sells fairly rudimentary webpages for not very much. I also have a year or so of spare time on my hand, and I will happily sink some time and maybe some money into helping a muso's cooperative get off the ground.
If you're interested, email me directly and we can discuss a more detailed outline. A muso's coop could do for indie musicians what XNot and SourceForge do for opensource projects: provide the hosting service; top to bottom and sideways too.
If this has already been suggested, just slap me :)
be well;
JC.
-- The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the fictional entity who may or may not have expressed them
Hmm, 200+ page views per month sounds low(ish), I bet that you could easily get at least twice as much trafic by having your own website and trying to get it linked to from like minded sites. It's a lot more work tough.
I expect that eventually "Behemoth.Com" and other sites will start to drop artists that don't have a certain number of page hits or downloads.
I doubt this will ever happen, the main cost for them is connection, not the disk space. mp3 just sitting on a disk does not consume any resources. And every page view will bring revenue (from banner ads), so it is worth keeping even very rarely requested content.
The article only mentioned mp3.com - I've had my music on amp3.com, a competing site, for several months now and while like any business amp3.com has had problems, I have had a very positive experience so far. Amp3.com attaches a five second ad at the start of each track that's downloaded (much like sites like Slashdot attach a banner ad at the start of each page) and gives the artist half the advertising revenues (currently 0.05$, however amp3.com announced several months ago they would be starting a 1.00$/download for exclusive artists...but this matter has disappeared and we haven't heard a thing about it since). Even at 0.05$/download I've managed to make about 100$ - true, it's not that much, but it's a lot more than I was making on mp3.com. Plus on amp3.com there is a VERY tight artist community and a better level of interaction with the staff of amp3.com - so before you condemm mp3 sites, check out amp3.com! And be sure to stop by the message boards and say hi...
The whole mp3.com thing is rather interesting.
I had some of my music up there for just under 3 months. We (The Tic Tok Men) went from number "nothing" to number one in our genre in just a few days. We pretty much held that chart until mp3.com removed the music genre "old skool" where we were listed.
MP3.com then added a new genre called "intelligent techno". We placed our music in that genre and BOOM, went to number one there. We held the number one in "intelligent techno" while the music was there, and number one for the state of Oregon several times. I think our peak was 200th most popular on all of mp3.com.
MP3.com then started the Payback for Playback promotion where you received money for a mix of band page views, music downloads, etc.
On November 28th our popular music went away. For no reason. Well,. Sort of went away. They went from "live" to "going live".
For a little background on how mp3.com works. When you first upload a song it gets placed in a "waiting to be approved" que. After the music is verified it is indeed in the proper mp3 format, then it goes to "going live" status. Normally, mp3.com says "going live" can take from 24-72 hours before it obtains "live" status. The music can not be downloaded or be placed in the charts until it's "live".
Well,. Our songs went from live to "going live" and were instantly removed from the charts. We found the whole thing a bit upsetting and attempted to ask mp3.com what happened. Pretty much the only response from mp3.com was a form letter type e-mail telling us it takes up to 72 hours for a song to go from "going live" to "live". Our calls to the mp3.com offices only resulted in voice mail boxes or forwarded to a recording telling us to check out the FAQ online.
In the meantime, mp3.com extended the Payback for Playback promotion. Which of course we totally lost out on.
Out of 6 songs on mp3.com, only two remained. These two where NOT the popular ones. In fact,. Of the six,. The two that were left were always the least downloaded. Oddly,. These 2 songs were also listed as "going live" but were still available. As a test, I downloaded one of these songs and checked the stats the next day. The download was not recorded.
I think we were one of the few bands on mp3.com that were actually selling cd's. (12 in November alone) A visit to the mp3.com message boards reflect many upset musicians complaining that they haven't had any downloads and never sold a cd. Sometimes you hear from a musician that is ecstatic because he had his music and CD available for almost a year and finally sold ONE CD!
MP3.com also has an interesting "scam" going where to make a CD available, the artist has to buy one to make it active. So,. You shell out $5.99 or what ever and you get 50% of that. Sounds ok right? Here's the scam part. MP3.com will only issue you a CD commission check if they owe you more then $50.
Think about all those musicians that have only sold one CD, and THEY bought it. They will NEVER receive a commission check. In fact, really, they loose money.
Another common complaint is people getting upset at mp3.com and removing their music, only to find the songs, for some reason, remain for weeks or months on the mp3.com site. Mp3.com says "you can cancel at any time" but don't respect the musicians when they do. (We, in fact deleted our "going live" music from mp3.com several days ago and the two that remained are still there.
Check http://www.mp3.com/tictok and you'll see what I mean.)
After being at mp3.com for just under 3 months, selling quite a few CD's and getting a number of hits and downloads (which added up for the November Payback for Playback promotion) I haven't ever seen a check from them. They owe us well over the $50 mark.
We used to have our music at mp3.com but moved it over to besonic.com. Besonic doesn't offer any money for your music, they don't have cd's available yet, you just put it there and people can listen to it. Looks like the only money they make is from advertising. That's ok with me. Seems like I get a place to house my music without feeling overly exploited.
So,. Here's a shameless plus. Take a listen to us at
http://www.besonic.com/tictok
and hear some really great electronic music in the vein of Kraftwerk.
If you like it, please write a nice little note to mp3.com telling them how they lost a really swell band. Heh heh.
My studio - www.graylands.ca
Despite the hype, mp3.com (and others) are just places to to put music so people can find them, they are NOT a record label.
Then perhaps what we need is a way to make it easier to sort through the crap.. Maybe a review system of some sorts?
Another idea I had: If we had a standard for packaging mp3s and a web page together and the player suported it (maybe just a tar file with a button to spawn a web browser) then artists could include visual art and information on how to purchas their CDs in the mp3.. it might make the whole exposure through mp3s thing a little more practical.
Jeff
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
My band hasn't even been around for a year. We recorded a three song CD for $200. Sold a bunch of burned copies to local people and decided to put our stuff up at Mp3.com. Over the past three months we have sold over 50 CDs and made about $150. This is definitely an exception to the rule, but for good reason. Our music was recorded well in a real studio and we heavily promoted our Mp3.com site. But the $150 is not all, we have had people from all over the world (well Europe and the US) write to us and ask if they can get an interview for a magazine, play our works over the radio, and a bunch of people just wishing us good luck. Those are all things that would not have happened if it wasn't for Mp3.com. The only other option for this kind of exposure is to employ a manager, which costs $$$, something a band like us (or any band on these music sites) doesn't have a lot of. And you can cancel the contract anytime, so what's the big deal? It costs nothing, but you have the possibility to make tons of money. http://talk.to/underglow (my band's official site)
this guy is obviously a stooge from mp3.com
Ever wondered why those totally copyright-free mp3s on free mp3 sites produced by artists themselves sound so crappy? They are like demo tapes, they just miss "that one thing" (or sometimes bunch of them :). It's because they're missing the producer.
This is one of the things that record companies (ok, not always them) provide the artists with and his job is to kick the artists' butts so that they FINISH the music and maybe even make them to change music so that it appeals to more people (no, it's not "faking it", it's actually making it better). And I am not talking here about some Britney Spears' etc. crap producer who makes all the music and hires guys to write the lyrics.
While I have heard some good indie music (but even then there have usually been one of those "big" names behind it doing the producing) I really don't think most of these "free" bands could attract the producer just with the music and talent.
But MP3s have gotten me interested in genres of music I haven't previously listened to, and I'm much more likely to go to performances of music that I would otherwise not have considered going to.
Sony CD-R's have been good to me, I think it depends on the brand of the CD-R (media, not the drive) you use to make it listenable in the car.
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
Discuss
...Now I ask you, where else can a band attract over-weight white guys from another time zone to come to a club, buy some drinks, and pick up 1/2 the bartending staff to take home?
I posted three songs on mp3.com (check it out), about 2 months ago. We've gotten aprox 120 "page views". I think mostly from the email I sent to everyone in my address book. Pretty crappy. On the other hand, I can't figure out any other good way to promote us, without spending the equivalent of a 3rd world countries GNP. Oh well, I guess it's a good thing I love to play, cuz it sure don't pay!
Dive Gear
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
Music = Art/Entertainment
Medical Practice = Science
You dont need a license to be an artist.
I think real artists wouldnt care who downloaded their music as long as they get heard. The ones who want to do it for a living would probably want to get signed to a major label, and thus exposure is good for them.
_joshua_
I've been using them for about a month now, putting up some lame freestyles I've done... So far I made $1.50 ($.10/download i believe, although it may be $.05), it's not much, but it's more than I made on mp3.com with about 40 or so downloads ($0) in the same timeframe...
90% of what is on mp3.com is crap anyway (my stuff probably falls into that, but hey, it's for fun). Lots of it is just dance mixes and synth tunes that some kid programmed into a shareware MIDI sequencer. You really have to search for the gems,
the actual bands that put together some good songs.
I totally disagree with you. I think its when people have the taste of your average top 40 or commercial radio listener that they dont find anything. I myself do not listen to mainstream music and mostly buy stuff that is on indie record labels. Mp3.com is so great for me because I can put in an artist I know I like, and it comes up with similar artists. That feature alone makes it so much easier to find the good music. In the indie world, you would not list an artist as being similar unless you know their work and you just get more credible results this way. Genres like electronica are usually flooded by a great deal of this garbage which you probably found. If instead you liked a particular genre which wasnt so broad and had some other artists in mind you would get better results. I know when I put in something like Sebadoh, I am going to get similar artists and most of the tracks I hear I like... and I dont even have to download to listen it just streams in. Also, if something is good enough there is a change I might purchase the CD. I like having CD's. I don't want to mess with files and downloading and piecing together an album. I like having the lyrics, song credits, artwork all in front of me and it makes me feel good to know that the artist is getting a couple bucks from it so they can continue to make more records.
_joshua_
There aree organizations like Musicians United http//www.musicians-united.org, Artist Launch Network httP;//www.artistlaunch.com, and others. These two were started by indie musicians to help each other succeed. Check 'em out. Theo Theo's Thang http://amp3.net/TheosThang
The only problem with this is that it costs money to make a good recording, whether you're gonna press CD's or upload MP3's for the "new audience". Where does this money come from?
Let's assume that a "good recording" by a modern rock band takes one month and $30,000. YMMV, but most of the indie bands in the Chicago scene would be able to put out a great record for that.
Let's also assume that you play 4 gigs a month in a big city's nightclub district, and 4 more out in regional clubs, whether in surburbia, or on mini-tours, or colleges, whatever.
Let's also assume that each gig takes 10 hours, from load-in to load out. Multiply by 5 band members, two of whom (let's assume) are supported by their girlfriends/mommy/daddy.
You've just spent 400 man-hours away from three good money-earning jobs, plus you've bought equipment, a van, and beer. You've pulled in an average of $150 per show, if you're playing originals at Metro - $500 per show, if you're willing to play Third Eye Blind covers for the chicks in Delta Delta Delta.
Guess what? You're broke.
I don't care if the new distribution system exists or not - you need to prime the pump with money before you can use that system. The best way to do that is to not suck, get played on radio, get signed to a label, take advantage of the economies of scale involved with major label marketing, hope that you've got enough points on your deal, and put out your record. Once you've got your record, you'll want to be on MTV anyway, so the new distribution system is (currently) just gravy...
The same problems facing all other web sites (seperating oneself from the chaff) face indie-rock and/or MP3 distribution sites. On MP3, you're lumped in with everyone else. Actually, going it alone might be better than signing up with MP3.com or CDbaby.com or whatever - as long as your site is cool...
The question for all wannabe creative types is still "How can I be famous tomorrow, so that everything else becomes easy?"
Before I leave, here are my tips: 1) Get cool shoes. 2) Get a cool haircut. 3) Date international sex symbols. 4) Or just quit.
AC
He (Chuck D) seems to have a lot of interesting opinions about online music distribution and the like. He tried to give an entire album away over the internet, since his label (def jam) was holding back on releasing it. There was a big fight w/ the label, and Public Enemy ended up leaving the label. His website, http://www.public-enemy.com has a bunch of mp3s and stuff, as well as essays written by Chuck, about this kind of stuff. Pretty neat.
There are lots of models one can set up for distributing independent music, and obviously the models are really the issue here, not the file format. I run an mp3 site (www.mirrormusic.com) that has a totally different model, at least for now: we're not _selling_ any mp3s, we simply distribute them. Artists upload for free, listeners download for free. The only people paying anything are us, who pay to have the site hosted. We're not selling ad space either (yet, anyway).
We plan to offer artists a way to charge for their music if they want to, but so far nobody's really asked for that kind of service. People just seem to want distribution.
One interesting thing about the site (we do this just because it's interesting) is that we impose no genres on the songs. Songs are associated with each other by comparing various people's ratings of various songs to come up with correlations between songs.
Also, the technology we're using is pretty fun - Apache, mod_perl, HTML::Mason, CVS - the stuff I like.
My friends are in a band and got an mp3.com account. It really helped them out and they got a lot of downloads. They aren't on mp3.com anymore... I believe its listeningroom.lycos.com or some such... It got them notice. But, it didn't get them money. They are still in the same situation as when they started. Not one person has contacted us with a request for a CD as all their music is up there in mp3 format. If you are interested check out i.am.seemless (note how the site automatically sucks because of the URL, I can admit that because I made it... note the hit counter stuck on "1" :P)
Anyhow, I kinda got off topic there for a minute: these places are great for getting free music but I agree, it does sort of fuck the artist.
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit.
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit.
jdube is who I am
If you've got an indie band, just burn some songs to a CD and mail it to greenwitch.com. They run multiple audio streams for all different genres of music that you can listen to with most mp3 players. You can't really sell or distribute music through them, but you at least get some exposure.
I've been thinking about this too. The main ways for OSS developers to make money from their products (not that they always want to) are training & support. It seems like the parallel in the music industry is that artists like to play live, and distributing your music for free is a good way to keep people interested in you and get them to show up for the concerts.
It's really not so different from the hugely popular tape-trading networks that bands like the Grateful Dead have been using for years and years, except in that case people _do_ pay for the music (they have to buy tapes, stamps for mailing, etc.), but the band never saw a dime directly. Most people agree that tape-trading is something that sustains the life of the bands, though - Dead shows sold out every time.
In the Internet age, as music is distributed quickly over the world, it can be difficult for people to make it to concerts, if only for reasons of proximity. So there's a little incongruity between the distribution & "support" methods (if you will), because most people can't take advantage of the support. That's why I think we'll see a lot of effort put into the creation of "virtual concerts", which people will pay to see if the show is good enough.
Most of the music on MP3.com is music both recorded and performed by groups that do not exist in the 'classic' commercial music industry. That is, the music is not recorded on large desks by trained engineers, nor is it produced by the latest visionary...
You and I don't care, sure, of course we don't. It's all about the music, right?
For the majority of the music-buying public, production values and major-label safety net backing are as important, if not more, than the quality of the music itself. Since these MP3.com types make their music with a portastudio or, if they're lucky, with a home-protools setup, and since it's not sold in a rack next to other CDs, no one places any real value on it. "It's not worth buying, really. I'll download a few tracks and put it on my harddrive along with all those crappy MODs I got that one time..."
I've put out a record - a real honest-to-god record here! Sold in real stores with worldwide distribution! It sold out. Had this been on mp3.com instead, I probably would have sold 5 or 6 copies. That's the truth. I know because I also have an mp3.com site. No one goes there. Is my music bad? Depends on your viewpoint, I guess, but the bottom line is specifically because of the medium the music exists in, no one thinks it's important.
Why?
This is MP3.com's biggest marketing problem now: getting rid of the 'bad music' stigma. Until then, people will still rely on normal music stores for their commerce.
...I don't know if you would classify it as "indie", but the contemporary a cappella community has been using the internet more or less since day #1.
:-) has become a strong community with a lot of support for each other worldwide. Sounds cheesy and pathetic, but it's true...
:-)
Really, we've been using the net for our own advantage very effectively. Thanks to the net, this small group of outcasts
We have a newsgroup dedicated to our music (rec.music.a-cappella), we have an organization (CASA) that works by 80% through the help of online media, there are internet mail order shops for a capella albums that were online before amazon.com was such a hype it is today. Most vocal bands have been among the earliest to set up web sites long before the mainstream music biz discovered it.
And of course, most of these bands have been using digital audio files to promote their albums from the very beginning. (I may be wrong, as I don't use Be-Os, but one now-professional group called The Housejacks is featured on the Be-Os install disks...)
So yes, MP3 (and Realaudio) have been a MAJOR factor to help contemporary a cappella find a larger audience.
I myself don't think that online music distribution is unfair. To the contrary. My own group's album had a few additional sales only due to the fact that people had a chance to hear snippets from it online.
BTW, if you happen to visit a record store, check out an a cappella album! Rockapella, Housejacks, m-pact, Nylons - you name it!
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You may like my a cappella music
I hate to paint a bleak picture... but the end of Music as we know it is upon us. First lets take a step back to the beginning of the century. The way most musicians made their money was by performing for audiences and selling sheet music. Then came recordings which the music industry took with open arms as they could now charge people for having their own recording. The 60's and 70's saw major money being made with additional things such as T-shirts and other stuff... but now Music as we know it will die. Why the bleak picture? Its simple. No one will want to pay for music when they can download it for free on the internet, or get copies from someone else. Musicians will suffer, and the music industry will never be as powerful again. I tried to get into this industry, and I can tell you one thing, they are fools because they do not want to embrace technology, and their blindness, and eliteness will destroy them. Recording studios are closing left and right because now you can make music on your computer... I guess I should feel sorry for the industry.. but I do not. They have been abusing artists since the beginning. In a way its good that the evil that the recording industry represents will soon be over. In my opinion the Artist will have to once again go back to the performance to make big money...
I'm not going to pay $3+/song, in fact I have a hard time paying $15+/CD right now. I'd like to listen to music for free, or perhaps buy yearly subscriptions directly from the artists. I'd pay the Tragically Hip $100/year for a subscription to everything they record. I'd pay 13 Stories (popular on MP3.com) the same if I knew the money was going to artist so they could fulfill my subscription and not to some middle man who doesn't add value to my consumer experience.
I think its also worth saying that the "payment" solutions address a "property" problem. I think that the problem is with the very notion that music can be sold as property not how the "property" is managed. The real problem is that artists should not be compelled by law and economy to sign away any of their rights. Music publishers and resellers should compete for the right to distribute artists work; after all who offers more of value to the consumer? The artist or the suit? Artists and consumers should have choices.
Sure the bands aren't seeing much money doing this -- what the Salon article fails to mention is that the distributors are also losing money hand over fist. IUMA/Emusic loses about $100 per hour, or $14million last quarter. I happen to work for one of these companies. *Any* opportunity we have where we can compensate the artist, we take. We don't make them sign away their rights -- they can take their music down at will. We don't eat most of their profits from anything they sell. We provide them tools to market themselves. We give them a shot to get their stuff heard. That's a better deal than any of the major, or even minor, labels will do for them. We do keep the advertising money, but to be honest it isn't enough to pay a quarter of our engineering staff. And we're even talking about splitting that. But of course, that side of the story doesn't get your article picked up by CNN....
To some extent this argument is weakened by the fact that the story is from an on-line (and MP3s are an on-line phenonmenon) publication of CNN, however I doubt CNN's website's managers are mature enough in the positions to see themselves as part of the on-line revolution and not part of the 'broadcasting' revolution.
Ask yourself this: "How much money doesn't Sony pay CNN each year?" and this: "How much of CNN does Sony own?" I leave it as an excerise to the reader to answer these questions.
I played in a heavy rock band in Detroit area during the late 80s/early 90s. Our guitar player was phenomenal (important for big-hair heavy rock bands!). We would have had a fair level of prominence on the local scene had girlfriends, wives, children, and internal strife not taken their toll.
But what's going on in music right now is way overdue. Had this technological revolution been happening then, the sleazy producers who then had the studio knowhow and took our $$ for it wouldn't have held us back; the local radio stations wouldn't have prevented more people from hearing us. It would have been more efficient. And that's what technology is all about--efficiency.
I have a vision of a time when middlemen no longer exist in the music industry--or are much reduced in their roles. Bands put their music on the net and fans learn about it through genre-based sites and download it. A standard EULA for music allows personal usage for free, but commercial usage requires payment to the artist. And artists who are particularly popular and ambitious can gain additional revenue by going on tour. The notion that touring will not make $$ is wrong; current practices simply need updating.
The gross windfalls that many popular artists have received are often a curse. Elvis, Aerosmith, Kiss etc. etc. etc. all have been victims of their own excesses. Good music is not written for $, it is written to express emotion. Now Aerosmith pumps out insincere crap because they are status quo establishment artists. Tom Petty was quoted as saying when his music gets old, he promises not to "hand around and suck." Aerosmith, are you listening?
Slashdot: Liberal News for Nerds. Liberal Stuff that Matters.
My own feelings about MP3.com are that they suck... I was going to put some music there, but after reading their terms, I pulled a 180 in a big hurry... I've also never downloaded anything from them, because of the hassle of having to 'register'... MP3.com is a scam..
I think the problem is that you were overenthusiastic, and it led you to make some bad decisions..
First thing, NEVER, EVER give exclusive distribution rights to someone else.. you'll just get screwed..
I know a lot of local bands, and a friend of mine is starting up an MP3 site (mostly using Icecast, but he wants songs to be dloadable as well..) for them (well, he hopes to expand to more bands later..) he asked me for help in designing it.. the first thing is that he doesn't want the artist to get screwed.. so #1, is he doesn't charge for space/listings, and (when he gets the credit card bit set up) he'll charge 30% of any CD's sold through the site.. also, there is _NO_ obligation to the artist... you can pull out whenever you want, and you don't have to give him any permanent copyrights.. it's a win/win situation for him and for the artists...
The URL is http://wmp3.net/
The bottom line is that not everybody involved in the MP3 scene is out to rip the artists off..
If i were to release some music to mp3.com (which i have been considering doing), it is because i think that maybe a few other people can enjoy something i have created and mp3.com is a nice established central high-bandwidth public and free place to do it. Anybody who thinks that they're going to "make it big" after they post on mp3.com is smoking too much crack and has delusions of how great they are. Sure, it will likely happen to some artist at some point, but don't count on it happening to you. Maybe i'm naive, but i believe that most artists are posting because they want to share their music, not because they think its going to make them lots of money and they're going to be *cough* discovered.
My challenge to you, Emily Vander Veer, and anybody else that has a problem with the online music sources to which anybody can submit music as an artist, is to get off your ass and do something about it instead of complaining! Start up your own version of mp3.com and stick to the ideals you treasure....or are you just a whiner that prefers sitting on the couch trying to make yourself feel better by tearing down the work of others?
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools
You mean sort of like praticing medicine without a license?
I mean, who really cares whether your doctor actually went to med-school or saw a documentary on surgery on Discovery, as long as he can hold scalpal!
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Exactly! It would need to be independant from mp3.com itself to keep its integrity, and perhaps use some collaborative review system since different people have different tastes.
MP3 sites fix the distribution problem and review sites can fix the marketing problem.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
What going to a studio and recording gets you is a) your landlord doesn't get complaints about you playing too loud (grin), b) better acoustics than the typical garage (but you can alter the acoustics of the typical garage to be suitable by, e.g., hanging drapes over all the walls and draped across the ceiling to muffle the echos), and c) the expertise of the recording engineer. Having attempted to do some recording myself, I can attest that it takes a LOT of work to make it come out right... e.g., a typical problem is "too hot" miking (clips your input) or, more insidious, "too cold" miking (ends up sounding muffled because you lose some of the dynamic range). The problem is that the "heat" varies depending upon your playing style, placement of microphone, mixer settings, and sound card input settings, and getting all of that right is a pain in the @%@!. Then getting a good mix at the end is important. You want the sound to be similar to what they'd hear live, for most music. The worst mix I ever heard was for a South Louisiana band called "The Bluerunners", which played "accordian grunge" (my best estimation of what they played). I'd heard them live at the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival and loved their sound, which was hard-driving, distorted, and mixed to perfection -- think grunge before grunge was cool. Then I bought their CD. *BIG* mistake -- the mix was clear, put the vocalist up front instead of as a background to the driving guitar and accordian (he was NOT a good enough vocalist to be up front!), and it would have been a great mix for Simon and Garfunkel but *NOT* for the BlueRunners, who needed a grittier, grungier mix to duplicate their live sound.
Anyhow, the expertise of a good recording engineer, as noted above, is probably the only thing you can get by going to a studio that you can't cheaply do at home with your PC, but as the BlueRunners example shows, it doesn't always result in a good mix (grin).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
AC
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So by that token Hidding Warez in obscure songs will be all the rage. Watch the Hits go thru the roof!
Perhaps you are so naive as to think the author of any article you read has full control over the content? Ever heard of editors? There's more to this topic than meets the first draft. I'd be willing to wager that Salon took out some of the more juicy details for fear of offending those online music hubs.
What privacy violation? Ever hear of "registering"? You type in your e-mail address & demographic info, and you get to download stuff.
There will always be a place for labels as they can provide a valuble promotion service. The Internet supplies the artist with an alternate distribution channel giving them more leverage in their relationship with their label.
I ran a label, even pretended to play an instrument in several bands. Would have KILLED to have a way to give people our music, so easily. It's hard getting known when you're 15, PunkAsFuck and totally-stuck in Alabama..... I did it for 3 years and wanted nothing more than to release me & my friends loud music. Some of the bands actually did exist only on their music (and day-jobs) by touring/selling buttons/stickers/and those strange, interestingly engraved vinyl circular items, etc and when they were well known enough to get someone like ATR, Fat, cletus, etc interested in them, I was happy to let them go, because I had no interest in music as a business, hence the eventual CS degree (C.L. if you must ask). Think of all the thousands of extra FUCK THE POLICE, FUCK GOVERNOR HUNT, FUCK THE KKK, etc songs there would have been!!!!!!
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
There are plenty of places to get hosted besides mp3.com. I almost started a service myself, but didn't have the bandwidth to do so, or the resources to ship band CDs. However, there are lots of places like mp3.com which will host your music and some will sell cds.
CD Now is starting a program much like mp3.com set to open shortly.
CDuctive hosts indie artists.
eMusic may be able to help you, but they're pretty big.
Live365 will host 365mb worth of mp3s (in 56kbps encoding) and stream them 24/7 for you. Who says it can't be your own stuff..
Cruch Music is for British dance/techno musicians
Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) will definetly sign you, for a slight fee, but they can sell your music per track.
MusicMatch might sign you
WorldWideBands for those musicians around the globe.
For more info, check out a backissue of WIRED magazine, entitled "I Want My MP3". Right now it's a musicians market on the net.
"In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." -Nietzsche
No, it would be wait-person or server or some crap like that. Perhaps generic non-specific gender food service specialist :)
You'd pay $100 for a yearly subscription??? Bands rarely release more than 1 album per year, that means you're paying between $50 and $100 per album... that's a little out of my price range. Subscriptions aren't gonna fly either.
audioSurge.com
BuyMP3.com
Unlike the sites listed in the post above, audioSurge and BuyMP3 are not backed by slick CEOs and millions of dollars. These sites are run by people who are actually into music. By music I don't just mean the billboard top 20. I mean real music by independent and underground artists that will never sell a million copies of their latest CD.
Also, BuyMP3 has recently started letting ANY artist sell their music in the MP3 format on BuyMP3. In my mind this is a great idea.
So, if you're an artist and potentially want to get screwed, then the sites in the above post are OK. If you're looking for an environment where there's no bullshit, then check out audioSurge and BuyMP3.
In other words, one reason online services are getting worse is because of investment by the very establishment she's defending.
I have about 5 different CDs I'm planning to buy from MP3.com. . .
If we like the sound of an artist, we should buy their CD. Duh! It's a question of simple morality. It's our choice whether or not to support the artists we like. If we choose not to, there's no guarantee that they will even be around, much less release any more music in MP3 format.
Certain CDs from MP3.com are definitely on my wish list this X-mas.
...encoding your songs, putting the full name of the band, website, phone, etc into the ID3 tag. Then lurk on irc and upload the sumbitches to every FTP you see. The web(ftp)master goes thru his uploads directory and says, WTF is this? Gives it a listen and if its worth a damn, he may just p1mp it for ya.
All a band has to do is get popular enough that they can go on tour. Then they only have to fight the much scarier monopoly that is Ticketmaster.
Now, if only software developers could go on tour.
Would it be a help to the musicians if, say, the companies that produce MP3/whatever player software voluntarily put a little doojie in each program that would tally up the plays for a given song and send them to the equivalent of "Billboard"...and if concert venues used this information to book concerts and tours. If they're getting a lot of play, then people like them, and they be given the opportunity to do concerts based on that merit. It makes money for the band, money for the venue, and enjoyment for the audience. And it's based on an objective standard -- the number of times they're played. The exposure sites then would really be doing a good thing for the artists by letting them be seen, whether they SOLD anything or not. Maybe the "Billboard" thing could be a non-profit org on behalf of the artists, not a company that'll just end up being as greedy as any other. Let the artists go as high as how good they are will take them, I say. The money is in the concerts and tours, not the record sales. Not for the artists, at least. --- Rhi
...Now I ask you, where else can a band attract over-weight white guys from another time zone to come to a club, buy some drinks, have a sex change, shave their hair off, and join the underground lesbian impressionist sculpting scene?
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Not to mention that I've DEFINITELY heard "bad" mixes off of studio labels -- mixes that in no way properly represent the band and its sound. Unless you're Garth Brooks or some other big name, you'll probably get the bottom of the barrel at any major label to mix your album.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Internet hosting for an individual has rocketed in price over the last 3 years and it's become more necessary to provide high bandwidth content through a corporation.
Nonsense. My ISP charges $30 a month for an account with a 400Mb/day bandwidth allowance. They have "starter" accounts for $5-$8 a month that allow 200Mb/day.
Furthermore, mp3.com isn't the only game in town. The MP3 phenomenon has spawned any number of sites willing to host your wares. Search 'MP3' on Yahoo.
Also, I was able to buy a run of 1500 pressed CDs for $1700. I'd say both electronic and traditonal production of music is well within the hands of the amateur these days.
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Life if possible, art at any cost.
Well, that's all great but...what's your point? Yes, we all agree that the recording industry execs are greedy bastards. But yours seems to be a rather long-winded complaint for what little was said. I'm very proud of you for having discovered your thesaurus--but if you have something worthwhile to say, SAY IT and don't easte my bandwidth with something like this.
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Practicing medicine is, for the most part, not on a par with either of the two things being discussed. Medicine is largely a scientific discipline, whereas law is almost entirely handwaving, and replicating music involves no relevant mental activity whatsoever.
But since you mention medicine, it might as well be said that the medical establishment uses fairly similar tactics to hold on to its own power base, limiting what pharmaceutical chemists can prescribe over the counter despite the fact that more than a few GPs are old dodderers that are well out of touch with modern medicine compared to a well-trained specialist in Boots. And also let's not forget the power they have to marginalize alternative practitioners even in areas where "scientific" medicine has nothing better to offer. The picture is not as black and white as one might think.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
More power to your roomie, but OTOH to get up to the level of a Clapton or Perlman or Watts or a Hedges requires dedication--if you don't do it for a living you can't afford to spend that much time on it. Do you suppose that programmers are only after the bucks? (So far I personally haven't found much in the way of chicks or fame from it, but maybe that's just me.)
Oh darn. I have a login for here but can't remember it and I can't find it. I knew I wrote it down somewhere.
Anyways.....
This is from my band's web page. It has been there since August. It took Salon and CNN to find out about this only now. Well, The mainstream media is always 6 months or more later than the rest of us.
So....
The MP3 Music Site Revolution (or how I was suckered)
I was posting the band's music on several sites between October 1998 and August 1999. No longer.
I first started with MP3.com in October of 1998, I joined AMP3.com in June 1999. These two sites had been my mainstays. Then in July I looked for other venues. I was hoping to get more exposure. Ha Ha. I was invited to one: Riffage.com, and decided to post to UBL.com and join Rollingstone's MP3 site.
I couldn't get any traffic to these sites. And the sites were no helpful either. You would expect them to post your song with other new songs/ new arrivals. You would expect to be listed in the new artist arrivals. These sites did none of this. Very disappointing. I've now abandoned all of these sites. They have been nothing greater than a disappointment. I figure if you are interested enough in my music you can get the CD quality songs or the CDs directly from me (or HotBands.com).
It seems these sites are not interested in artists with a small {miniscule} fan base. They go after the head liners, the artists that give them the big downloads. I became nothing more than a number to boost their egos:
"We have xx thousands of bands. We have xx thousands of songs."
Woopie flipping deal. They don't even bother to promote the bottom 98%. I have to use my resources wisely. These places offer no help and less traffic.
MP3.com has become the worst with this. Since they went public, MP3.com has given no care or attention to the lesser artists on their site. It has become so vast with bands and songs. They're boasting over 100,000 songs and over 10,000 bands. Who cares when only 2% get 98% of the downloads. I used to think it was a great place for me to be. But, there is no chance to get any type of exposure through them any more. Any traffic I have received to my songs there was through my own initiative. If I'm going to spend my energies generating traffic, I'll do it for myself and not some uncaring song site.
So I'm on my own. I'll still work with link sites like Free Music Archive. But the posting of my music on other MP3 sites is finished.
Zero Factor.
http://members.home.net/zero.factor
email: zero.factor@home.com
I haven't felt ripped off by mp3.com. The only other alternative is not to use the internet at all. Internet hosting for an individual has skyrocketed in price over the last 3 years and it's become more necessary to provide high bandwidth content through a corporation. Not that the technology hasn't gotten better but the demand for bandwidth and the illegal mp3 witch hunts have made it impossible for most individuals to host mp3s unless they do it through a corporation.
"Despite attempts to cultivate an image as a grassroots community dedicated to helping struggling independents, the average online music distributor's business model is enough to make any red-blooded record executive blush."
This one paragraph in my view basically sums up not only online distributors but the music business in general. Its all about money, the artists want some, the distributors have some and we the people have to pay through our ears to get the music.
Someday, we'll look back on this, laugh nervously and change the subject.
I guess I have a different take on all this. I've uploaded some of my bands songs to mp3.com and I've been happy. No, I haven't made any money to speak of, but that wasn't my intent.
I figured I do so my friends can download some songs and maybe some new people will here them. I never looked at mp3.com as a way to make a living.
90% of what is on mp3.com is crap anyway (my stuff probably falls into that, but hey, it's for fun). Lots of it is just dance mixes and synth tunes that some kid programmed into a shareware MIDI sequencer. You really have to search for the gems, the actual bands that put together some good songs.
Bottom line, if people are encoding mp3's with the hope of "going big time" it's probably not going to happen. Despite the hype, mp3.com (and others) are just places to to put music so people can find them, they are NOT a record label.
If they didn't pay out AT ALL, I'm sure that people would still be uploading songs.
Like open source coding, most of us are just doing it for fun and to see what we can do, not money.
Finkployd
I'm NOT talking about mp3.com, and all those scumbag's, I mean about being able to encode music into a file small enought to email it to someone, or run unauthorized ftp servers on the schule's network, etc.
I've check out various mp3 sites, and all I've checked have turned out to basicially be MLM scams (like freakin Amway)
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
As an online artist, i am not looking to make money. I know enough about music to realize that i am not especially good- but someday i hope to be. I post my music on my personal home page and riffage.com for the same reason one would go into a chat room- to meet people from russia or uganda or soemthing who have soemthing interesting to say. There aren't more than two or three peopel at my high school who are interested in techno in the indie stages, so it helps to go global to get exposure.
the bottom line: I don't care if i am getting screwed by riffage; i'll have the last laugh, becasue i'm not a "starving artist," i'm a future computer science major, and perhapse soem day i can help make what they claim as fact to come about as reality.
That's all i have to say about that.
It's good to see a little support here of this great site. I can't believe it wasn't even mentioned in the article... as far as I know, it's the only site out there with such a model-- paying the artist royalties for every download. You have to deal with a 3 - 5 second advertisement at the beginning of the song, but at least you get some thanks from the website for your hard work. Where would any of these sites be without the artists? MP3.com wouldn't have all those millions to hoard away,that's for sure.
Anyway, the only way to not feel like you're getting screwed is to not look at these websites as record labels. I don't think anyone's going to get rich from their music on the internet anytime soon. Use them to expose your music to the hundreds of thousands of people online and put it as many places as possible. If you get signed, it won't be only from internet exposure but it can't hurt.
JahNericMC
http://amp3.net/exiles
Yes, so no name artists aren't compensated for sales of their work over the internet. This doesn't seem to be a huge lose for most of them (average of 1/2 a CD per artist as quoted in the article). They are effectively selling the rights to their music in return for exposure. This is no differnt then the relatively common practice of submitting articles to magazines free of charge or with very little recompensation.
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
I have downloaded tuns of mp3 files and more often than not i have gone to a music store and bought the cd from the band it came from. To have a quick and dirty way to listen when I am not around my computer. Yes, I do have a CDR drive but not much time from work to stop and burn CDs. I have discovered tuns of new bands and styles that I never would have know about if I did not hear the MP3 first.
Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. -Thomas Carlyle
We had a 'thriving' local band.. we could sometimes do 4 gigs a month, and had a fairly good following. We had pressed our own CDs, and could sell a few, but we wanted the almighty exposure. We figured, hey, if more people heard our work, we could sell lots more CDs
So we signed up with a 'service' (that will rename nameless as long as I remain named). Mistake.
Here's the picture: we paid for top billing for a week, and had over 6,000 downloads. One of our songs was on a 'sampler' CD. Great, right?
Nope. we made exactly $0 from all this, and only sold 43 CDs. The profit we were paid lost us money over OUR costs to press each CD (our profit was about $.45 per CD, had we sold them all at that rate. But since we didn't we lost lots of money on the CDs we pressed in anticipation)
We were not told anything about the demographics of the audience downloading our CDs (I'm sure 'service' sold that information to someone else, though), and we made no money. We now have two songs that we can not ever put on CDs (at least we can play them live.) that are not sold through the 'service', and life generally sucks.
Now, even though we had a small local following, we are broken up. Could we have been contenders had we sticked it out? Probably not, but who knows... if a traditional label had signed us, we would certainly have sold more, made more, and still be playing...
Moral of the story: The record industry screws artists. The e-music industry is much worse, however, and should be avoided at all costs. Hell, I'd rather have had our mp3s pirated.
when i signed my band up at mp3.com long ago, i didn't expect to see any CD sales.. in fact, i expected to be screwed at some point some how. But to me, these sites serve as central repositories of indie music. Yea they're using artists to sell ad space. But the artists are using them to promote thier music. My band has sold one CD in a year, but we've enjoyed hundreds of song downloads. for us, it's just good to have our music circulating, regardless of the compensation.
Really, I just can't get that worried about all this. Not everyone can be a full-time entertainer. So long as orders of magnitude more people want to than can be, all but the most successfull will get sour deals.
.. there are other options, now that distribution is so mindnumbingly cheap.
I think MP3 technology allows people more leeway. You don't HAVE to sign over the rights to anything to get your music out to a lot of people. You CAN still, as this article proves, but
Another impact it seems to have is that the people previously making a quick buck off of someone else's work are now making a quick $0.08.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
I'm quite aware of the potential probs with online music distribution, but it's definately not as bad as this article portrays...
Also, the article misses the major point that having your music on the internet does not eliminate the need to promote it effectively... After all, if anyone can make a CD, (which has now happened since the likes of mp3.com started their DAM CD programme last year) then every artist is going to have to convince surfer that theirs is more special than your average Joe Bloggs CD... Talking of which... Check out Adrenalin Sound Machine's music here and here!!! ;)
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Old Fart!!! Of tha SENIOR DADS!!!!!
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Old Fart!!! Of tha SENIOR DADS!!!!!
http://surf.to/seniordads/
As a member of both mp3.com and amp3.com, and whoever else I can get to let me put my songs up, I can say that mp3 is merely copying trends, not setting them. I have to agree with the article's claims of mp3.coms false advertising. People who believe that they have to pay to have their stuff featured in order to get some good exposure online need to have their head examined. Just since I've been surfing here, I've found out about Live365 and Greenwitch, which look like promising exposure devices. In addition, mp3.com's "payback for playback" is only worth anything to the artists who get a staggering amount of downloads and sell CDs. I haven't sold any CDs on mp3.com, I don't really care. I sell CDs on my own out of the trunk of my car and make enough to keep making music. The purpose of mp3.com is for the exposure and networking with other similar cool artists that I might not have met otherwise. Oh yeah, amp3.com payed out $50,000 to its artists a month or two back, the first major payout of an mp3 site to its artists. Garageband has a contest ending soon that will award a 250,000 dollar contract to the winner, decided only by the reviewers (like you and me!) Seal got a guy signed to a publishing deal a couple of weeks ago. He heard the guys techno music on a webcast and called him up. This is the first big online signing, and I'm sure there are more to come. It's barely started. Jimmy Iovine of Interscope recently announced Farmclub, an online A&R that starts in Dec. As an artist, I am learning to promote offline as much as online (radio, manager, etc.) into every possible avenue I can think of to get my stuff heard. That's the goal, isn't it? To get as many people as possible to hear the music- at any expense! Long live the funk-see my website above and below
Got me bonin'!
My friend and I make music under his alias of "Pimp Daddy Welfare". I should note that it is vulgar, offensive, awful music. But we're doing this for fun, and care more about having listeners than having CD buyers....
...
We've had our own personal webpage for almost 2 years, and early on during the summer of 1999, we signed up with mp3.com. At first it was great... our songs were rapidly climbing the charts, we were getting lots of exposure. Even a few CD sales...
until one day, our song "I Fucked Her" broke the top 100 on the charts. It made it up to #87. We were very pleased with ourselves for the next few days until MP3.com had a sudden change of mind about censorship over musicians. They decided to remove all songs listed under the "Hardcore Rap" section from the listings in all the other charts. (which includes ALL of Pimp Daddy Welfare's music)
"I Fucked Her" dropped from 250 downloads per day to 40 in one night. We've emailed MP3.com about this, and they wont reason with us at all. We tried to re-upload songs into different categories, but the watchful vultures at mp3.com quickly deleted them. They've been deleting songs ever since, and last time i bothered to look there were only 3 of our songs left.
our own personal site is doing better than ever though. We probably sell between 10-20 cds per month, and get around 150 hits per day. Not too shabby for a couple of white boys from Ohio.
so yeah....screw mp3.com. it's good for exposure, but you're better of doing your own thing, or dealing with a down-to-earth mp3 site such as the wonderfully non-commercialized Free-Music.com.
ok...i'm done venting now....whew...
if you'd like to see our crappy little site, then come check it out. =)
hdj jewboy
...
I think the author has neglected to point out some key things about the numbers given in that article. The fact that "In August, MP3.com sold 15,600 CDs on behalf of 26,700 artists listed" means nothing. My friend has some song of his on that site .. I downloaded it .. and I hope he doesn't read this .. but the song sucks !!
A better metric to guage how effective the mp3 sites would be to remove bottom 10-20 % artists and then look at the per artist number and also to look at the top 10 artists selling. As far as I know, the way these sites work, you can see which is the top selling artist and check them out. This seems to be something everyone would do if they came to the website for the first time.
Another thing that everyone assumes is that consumers are so net-savvy that they will download indie artists from these websites. This is the hardest part; the mp3.com type websites have to portray that David vs Goliath image to get people to actually visit their website and check out the artists. This will take time; its almost a social revolution. Traditionally, people always like to take recommendations for their music and movies. Also, only a percentage of net-savvy people are interested in indie-artists in the first place !!! Most prefer mainstream music.
Sumit
So none of you have a problem with your privacy being violated, so long as it's being done by a starving artist?
-cwk.
Ha!
"Practicing law without a license" comes from exactly the same stable as "replicating music without a license". They're both empty handwaving, the product of institutions of yesteryear desperately trying not to lose their power base in an environment where it is the individual that has been empowered by technology rather than they.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Hahahaha open source music? Already exists, my roomie has his music on mp3.com and he could care less if someone wanted to buy his CD. He's not in it for the money, he just doing it because he can. Only the folks who do it for money, chicks, fame, and to snub the record industry will find out that their crap doesnt sell well, hence their foul bitching.
One of the few things I found impressive about Win98SE was the cool music that played when I first booted it after installing it. Also, games like Diablo, Rainbow Six, and Starcraft (just to name few) use music to enhance your experience.
My point is that there is a lot of room for music in the "open source experience." Alot of musicians could gain exposure if their music was distributed with open source software. The music could be part of the installation program, the documentation, or even the app itself.
There is a lot of effort made to make open source software visually appealing (see e.themes.org.) But there is another sense to be tapped.
Adding music may seem like useless overhead, but is it really if it adds another dimension to the experience of using your software? Bandwidth will continue to open up and after a while adding a couple tunes and musical cues to your tarball/rpm won't make a significant difference.
If you find an unsigned band you like on mp3.com, e-mail them, see if they want to be involved in your project. Maybe you can work something out. Or, if you're a musician, find an open source project that interests you and offer to work with them. If the project takes off, then everyone benefits. If not, nothing really has been lost.
Just a thought...
numb
After reading the CNN article it seems that there's a lot of bands on the on-line MP3 sites, but very few of them are seeing a lot of downloads or CD sales. At least I know that my band is typical. My band is posted on one of those sites, herearfter called "Behemoth.Com" just to keep it anonymous. Last month we got 227 page views, and 150 downloads. Total CD sales: $0.00. (That's in US dollars, by the way).
I can look at this two ways. My "Behemoth.Com" site is a complete failure, and I should pick up my toys and go home. Or, I could look at it that 50 people hit the site and liked a song enough to download it to their hard drive. Similarly, I've found a few bands that I really like on "Behemoth.Com", bands that I probably wouldn't have found elsewhere.
Yes, it's simple to set up a web site and server -- I've done it many times myself -- but I like the fact that "Behemoth.Com" deals with the hard drive space and maintenance. So it seems that the people that really benefit from this type of service are the garage bands or "weekend warriors" who just enjoy the exposure but aren't necessarily looking to make money.
Most people, however, are interested in music from music professionals. That's not to say that some people don't like indie music, but I think it's a fair bet to say that most people like established, professional musicians. So this means that that these online sites are designed to cover a niche market filled with players who have little desire to earn money. So how long will this last? I expect that eventually "Behemoth.Com" and other sites will start to drop artists that don't have a certain number of page hits or downloads.
You know your favorite music genre is dead when it's played during a GAP commercial. Sig altered so this post won't become a commerical.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
"I've sold a total of one CD online, and I think that's pretty typical," says Woodaman, who first began uploading tracks from his self-produced Brain Transfer Project to four online music distribution sites nearly a year ago.
Well, I don't suppose the reason he's not selling very many cds is THAT HIS MUSIC SUCKS and no one wants TO BUY THAT CRAP. No, no. He's just a victim being taken advantage of by the system. And I suppose he believes that if he puts a tooth under his pillow, the tooth fairy WILL GIVE HIM SOME FUCKIN CASH for it.
The best geek tunes ever http://www.gamh.cx
The problem with this is that a band can have a website all they want, but without marketing, no one's going to know about them.
Hell, I have a hard enough time finding music I like as it is.
no offense to artist (im a performance artist and visual one myself) but if they keep giving their work to people who will supposedly take care of anything there setting themselves up to be screwed. this doesnt happen all the time in fact on the internet, right now there are a lot of sites out there just trying to help the artist. but if they want to really not get screwed they need to do stuff like making their own site and doing everything on their own. that way the only person that can screw them, is themselves. -fleeky uptown.flint.com/flee/contor2.html go there if you want to see some of my digital work and contrortion.
...you're getting screwed. But I just write music as a hobby. I don't really care if I get paid a cent, but mp3.com is graciously hosting a lot more MB worth of files than your typical free internet hosting service. And if they want to put my stuff on a cd (heh, unlikely :) then that's just fine by me.
F0 07 C7 C8
maybe cuz there music isn't that great? When you are an artist (or an artists friend) it tends to sound better to you then it does to the general public :). You can't just post it on there and get instant explosure, you gotta figure out how to get hits to that site.
I own a small record compnay and in the interest of making things open sourcey, unofficially, we have no prolems with the free distrubution of any kind. in fact, I do my best to get bands music out on free, probably not so legal, indexes of mp3's... This works very well at getting people to know of our bands.
keeping the free distribution looking illegal, influences honest people to buy the actual cd. dishonest, cheap, people would probably not buy the cd anyway.
this stance, i understand would not work for major labels... but for indie music, where the biggest difficulty is getting people to know of the existance of a band, this strategy has worked very well.
lexicon
Yes, I mean the recent, 1999 stuff, not the aged tarball at the end of the code hyperlink.
/. CGI code hidden is more Andover's desire than Rob's.
One could speculate that the decision to keep new
Don't get me wrong, it's their right not to release source code - it's their code! It's just that for such a big open source advocacy site not to do so is a little hypocritical, and for them not to do so in violation of a long standing statement of intention ("It'll be out someday. Maybe. I hope.") is a little disappointing.
On the bright side, as far as I can tell there aren't any other negative consequences of Andover's investment, so if it's keeping Rob & Hemos supplied with food, beer, and silicon, it's an overall win.
No, not vocal-filled rock tracks, just mood-inspiring MIDIs and MP3s that people can use in their software. I remember working on a couple amateur games a while back where eager programmers were a dime a dozen, but finding inspiring background music was next to impossible. The World Forge project currently has some music up, for instance, but not as much as they'll need.
The nice thing about public domain (or freely redistributable, anyway) music is even if a software project using it fails, and code written for it becomes useless, all the music is pretty much 100% salvageable.
You write: The problem with this is that a band can have a website all they want, but without marketing, no one's going to know about them. Hell, I have a hard enough time finding music I like as it is.
That's a very good point you make, but it needs closer examination.
For a start, "without marketing" almost seems to lead us back to the bad old mega-studio system, but it doesn't have to: they don't have a monopoly on marketing, and in any event, the mechanisms of marketing are totally different in this new online environment. Secondly, "marketing" to whom -- is it the same ol' kind of audience as before, or is a new audience being formed, one to whom old-style marketing may no longer be quite so relevant? And finally, the whole idea of "market" may be slightly off the mark here, because we're certainly not talking about business as normal.
Well I think your second sentence itself hints at what the main problem is, and therefore at the solution. It's not that "marketing" as such is needed. The problem is that the new audience simply isn't being offered a means by which it can find the online music that it wants. The closest thing we have so far are well-known sites like MP3.COM, but relying on such single points with vested interests just takes us back to the bad old days.
And then there's Napster. Looking beyond the specifics to the wider implications, there is a general solution ready for the making in this area: a distributed, investment-free, unsponsored mechanism for distributing information about music available online.
If that were available, you would know where to find the music you want, and the indies wouldn't need a traditional marketing machine behind them, and new musicians would have the same audience as everyone else.
All we have to do is create such a system, and heck, that's merely programming. In fact, it may already be being built as we speak. And then, bye bye for good to the old blood-sucking marketing collosus, it'll be totally obsolete.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The problem correctly identified by the CNN author is a problem with an organizational model for the label, not a problem with MP3's per se.
For some reason, CNN, and to some degree mp3.com, seem to think it is possible to create a great big label, represent tens of thousands of artists, and just sit back and watch everybody get rich. I don't understand why anyone is suprised when this does not work, but it represents a problem with current label paradigms and not a problem with MP3's.
What they are quickly discovering, and what slashdotters know intimately, is that without community, identity, and good old fashioned hard work, you are going nowhere.
What is the future of mp3? I think it will be a hybrid of sites like slashdot, complete with news, discussion, and moderation, that then point to particular label web sites. These web sites would have clear identities and missions... personalities.
For examples of labels with personalities, check out Blue Jordan Records and Paste Music . These are both labels that have a clear identity, and if you like some of the artists you have heard of, you will likely enjoy some of the other bands on the label that you have not heard of. The labels did a lot of work finding an identity, and brought together a community of like minded talents for people that share their tastes (sound like slashdot?).
Where MP3's will really fly is when these labels give the customer the kind of flexibility, low cost, and speed of delivery that online delivery of MP3's can provide. After buying one too many really BAD CD's for $15, I am getting pretty loathe to take any kind of gamble on an artist I don't know pretty well.
But online delivery of two tracks for a buck, for a band on a label that has given me three or four artists I really like, with songs that are getting great reviews from people with gobs of karma on www.slash^h^h^h^hmusicdot.org, that I can have playing on my desktop 5 minutes from now? Sure... take my credit card number. Heck, just give me the whole ten track package...
Bill Kilgallon
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
The article does not talk about any artist that has been harmed by this agreement.
Recently, I had buisness in Orlando, and was packing for my trip the next morning. I went to MP3.com to download some songs for the plane ride, and I found an artist that I kinda liked. As it turns out, the band was from the town I was visiting the next morning.
[click] over to the bands home page . .[click] over to there schedual [click] over to the bars home page [click] over to a mapquest link to get directions, and boom . . I'm there! I'm seeing them live!
Now I ask you, where else can a band attract over-weight white guys from another time zone to come to a club, buy some drinks, and pick up a CD to take home?
This kind of report doesn't surprise me in the slightest. It was obvious that things were going in the wrong direction with MP3.COM as soon as details of their contractual arrangements emerged, because instead of merely offering a distribution system for bands, they were putting themselves on the same throne and in the same position of strength as the big studios.
The revolutionary thing about Internet distribution of music isn't that there are new institutions to replace the old. It is that there are no cartels nor power brokers at all, so that each band can reach out to its audience on an equal footing, without spending much money, and without signing rights away to anyone.
As has been pointed out, it verges on the trivial nowadays for a band to set up its own website and marketing machinery, and if they don't have the tech ability or desire to do it then there are countless others that will be glad to help for a very small fee.
You don't need MP3.COM guys! Go it alone, and be your own masters.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Did some one else note that too?
Screw the Artists [yeah I know they are but] who is going to tell the investors they have been Ripped.
Just how much business savvy does it really take to understand that by putting music on the site, you grant the site's maintainers free distribution rights?
I just took a look at mp3.com's Submission Agreement (conveniently mirrored here), and it is fairly direct about what you're agreeing to. The meat is all in the first part, and it's not overly long.
If people submitting to the site are so blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes that they can't read the agreement before clicking "I agree", it's a problem that no amount of education will fix.
The people who have posted (for the most part) already disagree with the idea that the sites are ripping off the artists. I personally think that with the huge amount of crap on those sites, half a CD per artist is an incredibly high rate of sales. What do I know, you say? Tell me, then.
------
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
giving mp3.com distribution rights is giving yourself an opportunity to go global (for some, the first time).
there is, like anything in the world, a good and bad way to go about it. some artists can choose to spend all day encoding and getting their entire first local release just right for the web. your music site gets half. ~most of the time,~ that's acceptable. i hate having 950 out of 1000 cd's sitting in boxes anyway.
mp3.com makes sign up a snap. i would ~love~ to get screwed by mp3.com. oh damn, my song is being played on the radio in baltimore, and here i am i texas. there is no downside to that for the hobbyist or indie label. have you heard of OneTon records in dfw, tx or Last Beat Records? all of the local musicians have. indie label showcases occur. the luckier ones get to tour. nothing like paying $5 for a cd and then special ordering the bands other cd over the phone. well, briefly, don't put all your songs up. make your mp3 cd's cheap. if use of one of your songs really chaps your behind, that song is being listened to! i can imagine only ~wild~ situations where the exposure is not worth it. everyone has to credit the artist anyway, period. so don't worry. Y2K threat:slashdotters::online audio:serious or smart musicians. the best music? Gropius and that's not even my band.
neopets.com
A rock and roll band needs money. Point at just about any instrument these days and it's gonna take some money to maintain it, in the form of strings, pickups, batteries or whatever. That stuff can add up, especially if the band plays a lot. And it's every artist's dream to be able to quit their day job and live off their art. Can't really find any fault with that.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It's interesting that the mp3 discussions sound almost exactly the same as those that crop up every couple of months about radio play, pay-for-play in clubs, major label fronting, etc.
;-)
I think there are a lot of positives about mp3.com, but likewise, it ain't the right choice for every band:
1. It isn't an exlusive contract, it works more like giving your music to a radio station and waiving your airing royalties - if you have the audience to justify serious national rotation you would lose real money, but if nobody has ever heard of you, then the exposure of airplay is worth a lot more than the $0.006 in your pocket. The trick is to have the right contract at the right time in the band's career.
2. The same logic applies to their CDs vs. making and selling your own. I don't think this is a conflict at all. Bands sell CDs at concerts to concertgoers and usually make cost plus a little profit. However the intent of concert cd sales is to feed the fans' jones for your band. You hope they will play it for their friends, dup it (in small quantities), and attract more FOF and girlfriends to the shows, where you sell more CDs, etc.
On the other hand, mp3.com CDs are unarguably a much bigger distribution channel - the swedish just aren't going to fly to new jersey to see you at the house of rock, so if they buy your CD from mp3.com it is income you wouldn't otherwise have had, exposure you wouldn't have had, and of course it lays the buzz groundwork for that future european tour you dream about
I'm sure eventually there will be online services that do work like radio stations and pay artists per-stream, etc. This is where the fight will be between the giant publishing houses and the micropayment crowd, and again it isn't clearcut whose side you should be on - to unionize or not to unionize? Maybe BMI can get you $0.008 instead of $0.006 per play - do you get played enough to cover the overhead? If so then it is a good deal, if not then you probably would be better off with micropayments.
My (feeble attempts at) music is on mp3.com
(http://mp3.com/noodleshop - no, it doesn't sound like sinatra) because I:
1. Currently don't have a band, gigs, the time to get a CD pressed (nor the songs!), or the energy to distribute that potential CD to consignment bins in the local stores.
2. I want to get my music someplace where people can at least check it out, but it wouldn't justify paying for a big fat download pipe (I can occasionally hit 50k from mp3.com, of course sometime it's also 5k)
3. I'm not counting on that $0.45 for my next meal.
Bottom line, mp3.com surely isn't the be-all end-all of music distribution - there will still be a place for all of the existing music business models online, as well as some new ones (IMO mp3.com is a great way to find the websites of small indie labels where you can then place catalog orders). Quick tip: if you want to find actual interesting music, ignore all of the mp3.com charts and browse your local geographic area first. If you care about music, go to the shows!
One major source of problems stems from the fact that there is a grossly unequal power relationship between the musicians and the corporations who market their work. Whether it's the traditional form of exploitation (RIAA) or the new one (MP3.com) doesn't really matter. In both cases, musicians feel they have no choice but to give up all rights to their work to these companies on the faint hope that they will be rewarded a little in the long run.
I realise that the idea of progressive Copyright reform might seem impossible right now, but it's still worth thinking about what kind of system we should have. What I'd like to see is a copyright system where the copy-rights of an author are inalienable. That is, the state refuses to enforce agreements which assign copyright in a work to another person (read: corporation). The author of a work should always be able to do what they like with their own music, etc. This would mean that if a musician signed a contract with a record label giving them the copyright, they could honour that agreement if they wanted to (if they felt like they were being treated fairly by the company), but could at any time choose to market their songs themselves, or sign contracts with other labels who might do a better job. For the corporation, the law would still recognise a joint copyright with the author to the song, etc. and could sell or otherwise transfer *their* copyright, but could not effectively limit what an artist does with his/her own work.
Copyrights were supposed to be a reward to authors for the creation of original works. Why should the government allow the corporations to use this law against the authors themselves?
However, there's a major difference between the freedom offered by the MP3 format, and that of "free exposure" as offered by many MP3 sites. Which is that because of the ubiquitous nature of the Internet, there can never be the near monopoly power that the record companies have managed to pull off in the retail CD market. If the major sites work against the artists, those artists will move their music elsewhere, to sites which truly respect and take care of (financially and otherwise) their talent base. MP3 can't market 26,000 new artists -- so why in the heck do they sign them up with such horrendous contracts?
Well, dad's old rules apply: (#1) don't expect to get something for nothing, and (#2) read the fine print before you sign your name. Then walk away and think about what you read, and finally, if in doubt in reference to #2, consult someone who can help.
Just my $.02 worth.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
"Half a CD per month is pretty standard among the top three [online music distributors] in the indie space (IUMA/Internet Underground Music Archive, MP3.com, and Riffage.com)," admits Antony Bryden, general manager of IUMA, which was acquired by the digital download site EMusic.com earlier this year. "Per band, that works out to about $3 a month." ... Revenue streams in from music fans buying CDs and digital downloads, from advertising and from the artists themselves, who split revenues from CD sales and sometimes pay for placement on the sites. And all of this revenue is based on inventory the online music distributors obtain free.
So, they aren't selling but half a CD per month, and yet the 'revenue streams in'? Gimme a break people.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
We've encountered a very similar thing. Our songs are quite likely being played in war-torn bar rooms in the Balkans! This thrills me!
Thanks to mp3.com, music that we worked hard on is being heard. Prior to that it was gathering dust on a shelf.
We also got a 'gig' getting a couple of songs in an independently-produced surf video. Whoo hoo! We didn't get paid 'union wage'. We agreed to barter for copies of the video and promo materials. That's cool by me. If it wasn't, I was free to refuse the deal. Fsck that. I have a day job to pay the rent.
**>>BELCH
Most CD players require that the CD be burnt in a single session. That is, you have to copy all of the tracks to your HD, then burn them to the CD in one fell swoop. You won't be able to add anything later, as this 'locks' the disk, but at least it will work in all CD players.
I'm going to live forever or die trying.
I basically agree about the 'bad music' stigma, and would love to have access to a sight that 'judges' songs by various critera (production value and what not). Such a sight would be judged harshly by many as 'Nazi's' for imposing their judgements on other people's work, but so long as alternatives exist (they do) and it was voluntary, I'd be MORE than willing to bet that our music would stand up to criticism.
As far as mp3.com, tho', I don't look a gift-horse in the mouth. They haven't taken over the rights to my song, and that's really all I'd be worried about.
**>>BELCH
I know you're just having a little joke...but there' something a little disturbing about the assumption inherent in the joke itself: is it necessary to be *queer* to be politically correct?
Warning: this is an off-topic rant appended to an already off-topic thread.
I am sick to death of the way our media, our political systems, our culture, and our education systems are being hijacked by a single minority. For this I'm branded a homophobe. Actually, I'm just normal. And I'd like the chance for my children to grow up normal without being "educated" about "alternative life choices".
OK, flame away. If anyone's still here that is...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Listening to our local college radio station, every band interview features the "what's your web presence" question, its seemingly replaced "what's your favorite color?". This is especially effective since so many people multitask (i.e. are at the computer while listening to the radio).
And yes, total unknown bands with self-produced and self-distributed record get interviewed on our station (kalx.berkeley.edu) regularly -- they even set up concerts in the studio with unknowns every Saturday night.
Actually as far as I am concerned they are holding up their end of the bargain.
Yes we have sold very few CD's. However MP3.COM does pay 50 percent od f the sale price AND swallows the entire reproduction and art costs themselves.
You can upload CD covers, inserts, booklets etc. You can operate an events calendar, you can operate a "internet radio station" from there.
And of the last two months they have been paying artists for thier downloads...
( we got 29 cents woo woo! )
But the top 5 or so got a couple thousand bucks.
AND contract-wise, you can end it with a click of a button. This is a non-exclusive contract that can be ended at the artists or mp3.com's disrection at any time.
The thing that is frustrating is that there are so many artists on mp3.com that it is easy to be missed. It is like being a drop of water in a swimming pool. And it is getting worse because the swimming pool is getting larger.
I also believe that a lot of people don't really want a CD of mp3's reconverted to redbook.
Anyway if any of you are curious my mp3.com address is:
http://www.mp3.com/robertrude
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
Yes, electronic duplication and distribution over the net costs virtually nothing, but surely that's not the point? Surely the point is that each of use might be willing to pay a little *to the artists* to help them to keep creating? (Note to artists: but no big bucks to go skiving off to California, OK? :)
To that end, I agree that the way for them to go is to set up their own site--it's cheap enough after all. They wouldn't need a frabjulous T1 with all the trimmings, up 24 hours a day; just a humble PC with a domain name, maybe a free ODS one. When they're up, we can buy; when they're not, we can't. Cheap and damned cheerful, and may all the recording companies go straight to their master. EOS.
"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Dave Clark, IETF
If you plan to be an online artist your intents probably shouldn't be to make any money. If they where you all ready screwed before you recorded your CD.
When you're trying to get a record label through the music industry you're just trying to fight agenst other new emerging artists. Online, though, any Joe with a Kazoo can make a CD and put it out there to be sold. That means you are competing with thousands more artists then you would with the record industry. You're never going to make any money no matter how good you are.
You should instead just have fun with it, and enjoy the limited amount of exposer you get from it. The only way you'll ever make in musically is how everyone made it in the past; just with pure luck.
-D0n'+ h$+3 M3 b3C0u5e 1'M 4 1337 Hax0R!-
I can't help wondering, after hearing her defend the big record companies, if Emily Vander Veer perhaps "has a dog in this race." In other words, does anyone know if she has some connection to the old-line record companies? It sure feels that way when you read the article.
I, for one, am glad mp3.com came along, as I have discovered a lot of great music that I would never have gotten to hear otherwise, if I were stuck listening to the mainstream drek pushed by the major labels.
CNN says an artist can create his own web site for about $20 a month, but if they're going to be selling CD's and accepting credit cards, it's going to cost considerably more. If all you want to do is promote your band, a $20 a month web site might be OK, but if you do things like goat sacrifices on stage you might want to pick an ISP that won't bow to pressure from the FBI, religious nuts and assorted other riff-raff...
Another potential issue of running your own site is that you lose the one-stop shopping that sites like MP3.com gives you. Although I suppose a yahoo category or something similar would get pretty close.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Payment per copy is the old distribution system, developed at a time when only multi-million dollar plants could stamp out recordings. The new environment recognizes that electronic duplication and distribution over the net costs virtually nothing, so demanding payment per copy isn't going to work. People aren't stupid.
If you're a musician, I think you'd be better off creating your own website, developing a recognized online identity for your band, and using a system of patronage by your fans, ie. marketing stuff for them to order online (not just your music in CD form). You'd be your own master too, and that's worth a lot in its own right.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I've had a page on MP3.com for a while (since early this year) and more recently on AMP3.com. They both have a lot of problems, but one has more advantages than the other.
MP3.com, before it went public, talked big. The president would talk about how MP3.com was a revolution in music against the big industry players. He'd talk about how they were breaking the old model and giving artists a chance to be heard directly. And he implied, heavily, that people would be able to make a living using their D.A.M. CD system.
He was wrong on all counts -- but it's still useful, to a certain extent.
MP3.com talked a big game about being for indie artists but at the same time it was doing all sorts of favors for the "big name" artists who would grace their site. That's understandible, it's a business decision, but they wouldn't acknowledge or even mention the contradiction.
They had (and still have, as far as I know) some real problems with the way they sold and made the artists web CD's, but weren't interested in fixing them quickly or even acknowledging them. And so the primary way for artists to make money on their site was very, very underutilized.
It's quite impossible for someone to wander in and notice your band... because there are thousands and thousands and thousands of artists on that site, and you're just one.
Still, MP3.com is useful, because your music is out there.
AMP3.com has taken a somewhat different model. They tack advertisements to the front of your MP3s and you get five cents a download. I made $25.00 last month.
AMP3.com isn't perfect either, and they're sometimes slow to respond to artists demands. They're a bit disorganized (they'll start up new ideas, contests, and that kind of stuff and have to postpone them halfway through because they didn't cover all their bases) but as far as I can tell they're following through on their core promise -- pay the artist.
Some people might get very angry that AMP3.com is putting commercials (five second commercials) at the start of all the MP3 files on that site, but really -- it's five seconds, you don't pay for the MP3s, and the artist gets five cents every download. That's not a bad model, as far as it goes.
There are lots of other sites out there. MusicBuilder.com has a very nice CD-making program, even Rollingstone.com has MP3's on line. MP3.com and AMP3.com are the ones I have the most experience with, though.
The Baptist Death Ray
http://www.mp3.com/baptistdeathray
http://baptistdeathray.amp3.net
http://www.baptistdeathray.com
IBM's been mumbling about micropayments lately, that might just fit the bill. You don't want to bill a bunch of $.50 charges to your credit card, after all. You'd have to put some logic into this to catch things like downloads that died and other assorted glitches. Also, I find the "Free samples" on MP3.com very handy in determining whose CDs I'm buying.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?