Posts in music
The PBS Model for Music

After getting a bunch of email over my micropatronage post the other day, I've been giving some more thought to Kottke's micropatronage concept as it relates to music. I think we can all agree that the Internet has blown music distribution wide open and that physical CDs are rapidly being replaced by digital downloading. It's also unlikely that DRM or legal threats will do much to stop the flow of music on the net. If these things are true, musicians are going to need a system of making money that doesn't rely on controlling the distribution of music.

THE MODEL

Think about PBS. PBS is viewer funded television content. When you donate X amount of dollars, you get an over-priced tote bag, but it's understood that the tote bag is a gift for your donation; you're not actually purchasing it. Thanks to donations, PBS continues to exist and make programming that everyone can enjoy for free, regardless of whether they contributed or not.

What if music were to switch to the PBS model? What if we replace tote bags with actual CDs by the artist?

THE APPLICATION

How it might work: the musician gives up on selling CDs via retail and gives his music away losslessly (FLAC/ISO) and for free on the Internet. Anyone can download it. Fans who donate, lets say a rough amount of $30, receive a "free" (as in tote bag) physical copy of the same CD, with real packaging, liner notes, etc.

PROS

Assuming this could work, here are some of the up sides:

  • It lets artists distribute their music freely. All artists I know would love to do this. They all want new fans, and charging for access to the art is counter-intuitive.
  • Internet trading of music (including net radio, podcasting, mp3 blogs) would directly benefit the artist as it would increase the possibility of getting more supporters.
  • Allows artists to be directly supported by their fans. No RIAA, no record labels, no corporate interests, no middle-men, just keep your fans happy.
  • Lower overhead. If you stop trying to sell CDs, you avoid retail chain gouges, record label fees. More money goes directly to the artist.
  • CDs are less and less useful as a music distribution method, but still have value as a permanent physical copy of the music and also for things like the artwork and the liner notes.
  • The system benefits artists that have good will from consumers, disposable pop music might not do so well.
  • You can still sell the music digitally via iTunes, etc, to casual music consumers.

CONS

There are also some potentially negative aspects:

  • May be a difficult mental shift. Will people think it's a $30 CD and be outraged?
  • It means you cut out the possibility of retail sales or else you devalue your CD gift and anger the people who paid a premium to receive it.
  • I assume only a small percentage of people would opt into this, so a large fanbase would be required to make a living.

SUMMARY

All in all, I think the pros far outweight the cons in this system.

If it could work, I'm pretty sure you'd wind up with a more logical and pure music system, where artists are supported by the goodwill of their fans, where Internet distribution benefits rather than harms artists and where CDs are still created but are used for what they're becoming -- a boutique item with more sentimental than practical value.

business, musicBrad Turcotterant Comments
More MP3tunes.com details & nitpicks

Got an email from Derek Sivers at CD Baby regarding MP3tunes. Turns out MP3tunes was listed as "Lindows" on the companies my album had been shipped to, so that explains that. Also it looks like the catalog is exclusively CD Baby artists and Derek says the artist cut is "the usual 65 cents per song, $6.50 per full-album", which is higher than it says in the FAQ and would be as high a cut as iTunes despite the purchase price being lower.

A cool feature: "All music purchased at MP3tunes remains in the user's "Music Locker" so they can enjoy unlimited download access to their MP3tunes music library from any web browser at anytime. There is no additional charge for users to re-download their music from their Music Locker."

Express URLs are handy AND dandy: http://www.mp3tunes.com/BradSucks

I played around with it a little more and here's my list of usability complaints:

  • Titles and artist names are truncated too heavily, widen it up. (As ranted a bit more about here.)
  • The horizontal sliding browsing thing, while cute, isn't user friendly. It's annoying to look through large lists. And combined with the tiny title length, I can barely read a full title anyway.
  • When I click on preview links in Firefox I'm prompted to download the 30 second mp3 clip and then need to go open it manually. It shouldn't be hard to make this stream automatically.
  • Severely limited number of CDs it shows me on genre pages, unless you count ones you see when you horizontally browse, which I don't because it's annoying.

All of those points make for a pretty crummy browsing experience and seem like easy things to change.

business, musicBrad Turcotte Comments
MP3tunes.com rundown

MP3tunes has launched. It's the new DRM-free music downloading site by Michael Robertson, formerly of MP3.com. The site is painfully slow under the load right now so enter at your own risk. Songs are 88 cents, albums are $8.88, which are both lower than iTunes. The about page says artists get almost 60 cents a song and almost $6 an album. (Then subtract the digital distributor's cut before it gets to the artist, which can range tremendously.)

My album I Don't Know What I'm Doing is in there here. I have kind of a morbid fascination with what genres music services jam me in. MP3tunes puts me in Pop / Quirky, which seems as good a place for me as any.

Since the site's swamped I haven't gotten to look around much, but dudes, what is up with the heavy truncation on artist names and album titles? On the front page I see "Theme Fr..." by "Elias K...", "Figures...." by "Two Ton...", Serenade..." by "Rachell...", Capricor..." by Mark Ha...". When not a single artist on the front page can fit their full name or album title, it's time to shrink the font or widen the screen or something so visitors can read what the hell they're supposed to click on and buy. And mouseovers on the truncated titles would be nice.

It'll be interesting to see if MP3tunes catches on with the anti-DRM set. Will they accept it as a good way to get media in a format that's useful to them or call "too expensive" on it and keep downloading music for free? Guess we'll see.

business, musicBrad Turcotte Comments
Tiny Mix Tapes

Tiny Mix Tapes is a fun idea. Submit some words, a concept, anything, and they'll try to come up with a mix tape tracklist for you based on what you submitted. Here's part of one:

High Voiced-bastards that play rock and roll.

01. Pixies - "I've Been Tired" (Surfer Rosa & Come On Pilgrim) 02. The Dead Milkmen - "Punk Rock Girl" (Beelzebubba) 03. The Flaming Lips - "Kim's Watermelon Gun" (Clouds Taste Metallic) 04. The Beatles - "Wild Honey Pie" (The Beatles aka The White Album) 05. Danielson Famile - "Good News For The Pus Pickers" (Fetch The Compass

The bizarre requests are the best part.

musicBrad TurcotteComment
Distributing Music Over Telephone Lines

Left-Hand Side of Distributing Music Over Telephone Lines is an article from a 1909 issue of Telephony magazine describing the groundbreaking music via phone service:

Wilmington, Delaware, is enjoying a novel service through the telephone exchange. Phonograph music is supplied over the wires to those subscribers who sign up for the service. Attached to the wall near the telephone is a box containing a special receiver, adapted to throw out a large volume of sound into the room. A megaphone may be attached whenever service is to be given. The box is attached to the line wires by a bridged tap from the line circuit. At the central office, the lines of musical subscribers are tapped to a manual board attended by an operator. A number of phonographs are available, and a representative assortment of records kept on hand.

Back then I guess you didn’t need DRM because everything sucked. (via JB)

musicBrad TurcotteComment