New artistic paradigm?
p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- As everybody here probably understands by now, I don’t think the existing major-label ‘recording industry” can — or should — survive the digital age:
1. Copying is extremely easy, and every ‘copy’ — in principle — is identical to the “original”.
2. The corruption and general “screw-overism” endemic to the major-label recording industry is too well known for people to actually believe that ’signed’ artists are actually getting anything resembling a fair deal.
3. Milli Vanilli showed us that the major labels weren’t adverse to simply manufacturing acts, rather than cultivating existing talent.
4. The Sue ‘em All campaign indicates their complete indifference, if not outright hostility, to the very public who they claim to value so much.
5. The RIAA member-corporations are hell-bent on destroying the Public Domain through a process of starvation (Remember kids: the Eldred decision basically means ‘perpetual on the installment plan’.)
6. The RIAA member corporations continue to show flagrant disregard for the “fair use” and “first sale” exemptions to copyright monopolies, which is frankly unacceptable to a large — and growing — number of people.
Having said that, I do believe that a new — and infinitely preferable — artistic ‘ecology’ has already started to emerge.
So, as a change of pace from my usual snarky “We hate the RIAA and they deserve to burn” type of fare, let’s take a tour of the emerging artistic paradigm:
1. Magnatune
http://www.magnatune.com/
This is truly a beautiful idea:
A. 50% of what you pay goes to the artists (as opposed to the pittance offered by even the most ‘indie’ of RIAA member labels) with the rest of it going to site-related expenses.
B. Listening is always gratis, but there is a charge for downloading. But never fear, friends — they’re extremely flexible about pricing, so you get to decide what you want to pay the artist.
C. If you don’t want to pay separately for each and every album you download, you can pay around ten bucks a month for an “all you can eat” subscription, which gives you access to more music than you could possibly go through in a lifetime. Every album is available in multiple formats (NONE of which are DRM-corrupted), and — wait for it — Magnatune is not merely tolerant of sharing, they actually love it!:
According to their website:
Give 3 Free Copies to Your Friends
While other record labels are busy suing their customers for introducing their friends to great music…
At Magnatune, we want you to copy our music for your friends.
Yes, at Magnatune you can legally copy any album you buy for up to 3 of your friends.
Why do we do this? Because we know you’ve discovered great music through your friends. It’s always been this way: from mix tapes, to CDRs to Peer to Peer. People fall in love with new music by being exposed to it by others. It’s such an obvious point, and everyone knows the truth of it, yet the music industry has always fought it (despite the fact that you’re actually trying to help them!).
What, specifically does our policy mean?
* When you buy an album (whether a download or CD) you can pass the download URL and password we’ve given you, to up to 3 friends. Pass the download information on by email, instant messenger or telepathy: whatever works for you.
* Or better yet, just forward to your 3 friends the email we send you when you buy, which has the download instructions in it (just remember to give us your email address when you buy!).
* You’re also welcome to email the mp3s themselves, or burn a CDR of the album as a way of giving it to your 3 friends.
* In short, use whatever mechanism you prefer to send them the music!
Why are we doing this?
——————————————————-
(Magnatune quote begins here):
* We know that if you’re buying Magnatune music, that you loved what you heard, and chances are you’ll want to play the music to others who might like it too.
* You’re going to introduce people to Magnatune’s music, why would we want to prevent that?
* Despite all the “We are not evil”, we-want-to-change-the-world stuff that we rant about, we know that in the end it’s all about the music, and that people will only visit and buy from us if they find out about it, and think what they hear is amazing.
* And finally, because we wanted to reward so many of our customers who emailed us asking if it was ok to make a copy for a friend. We always said yes! so we decided to make it official policy.
Aren’t you worried I’ll abuse this?
* No, because you’ve always had the capability to copy anything you bought from Magnatune: we don’t believe in copy protection and we think you’re honest, otherwise you wouldn’t be bothering to read this!
* Dishonest people can always abuse the system. Rather, we want to reward all the honest people who truly want to do the right thing.
* If you abuse our generosity, we’re not going to break down your door and throw you in jail. We just want you to feel a little guilty about it <grin>.
We’re trusting you to do the right thing, and introduce new people to the music you love.
You’ll feel good about it, your friends will thank you, and you’ll help Magnatune prosper. “
(Magnatune quote ends here):
——————————————
http://magnatune.com/info/give
That’s right folks: they admit that copy ‘protection’ doesn’t work, and understand that the best way to build a fanbase is via word-of-mouth.
They really aren’t evil.
As to the quality of the music they offer? Infinitely superior to the top-40 ear-rape that passes for major-label ‘music’.
(Did I mention that their stuff is under Creative-Commons Licenses?)
2. Jamendo
http://www.jamendo.com/en/
In many ways, Jamendo is the European answer to Magnatune, with the following differences:
A. They don’t charge for downloads. Instead, they rely on a mix of voluntary donations, and some kind of advertising-driven revenue thing that I Don’t really understand. However they’re doing it, they seem to be doing just fine with it.
B. Unlike Magnatune, Jamendo is more solidly integrated into the p2p ’scene’, making extensive use of Bittorrent both to leverage bandwidth and it’s possibilities as a distribution method.
3. Emusic
http://www.emusic.com/
True, they don’t use Creative Commons licenses, but they were one of the first online music stores to offer mp3 downloads, and their refusal to DRM-cripple their files has made them pretty unappealing to the RIAA member labels. This has turned out to be a blessing in disguise, since their catalog contains vast amounts of the most ‘indie’ stuff you’d ever want to discover.
A friend of mine bought me an Emusic subscription a while back, and I had a lot of fun exploring. Not as ideologically “with it” as either Jamendo or Magnatune, but definitley no friends of the RIAA, either.
4. CDBABY
http://www.cdbaby.com/
CDbaby is probably the closest to a “traditional” record label, in that they primarily serve as a sales-portal for physical media (CD’s), with digital downloads a fairly recent addition.
Quite a bit of integration with stuff like Itunes (as if anybody in their right mind cares about Itunes, but I digress.)
Overall, they don’t seem ‘evil’ in the way the RIAA member labels are, although they are nowhere near as progressive and cutting-edge as Jamendo and Magnatune (No CC-licenses, really skimpy, low-quality track previews, etc.)
One plus is that they seem to have a really good relationship with the folks over at Emusic.
All in all, they seem like a viable option if you’re an indie musician or band or something, but don’t want to ‘risk’ using other, more “free-culture” style alternatives.
So, you might ask yourselves: Why am I hawking these sites?
Have I suddenly completely ’sold out’? Am I becoming just another example of crass commercialism?
Hell, no. As far as I’m concerned, the more viable alternatives to the corporate nightmare masquerading as a ‘music industry’, the better.
So go visit one of the sites I mentioned, and show some love.
Henry Emrich p2pnet
[Ermich says he's, "just some guy," sometime musician, wannabe writer, sporadic blogger, and (hopefully) good-natured person. He and his wife live in Pennsylvania with two cats, and, "entirely too many record albums".]
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
September, 2009
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September 21st, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Some additional information: AFAIK Magnatune doesn’t release all the music in their catalog under a CC license, only some of it. Otherwise the sharing wouldn’t be limited to only 3 buds. They also financially support free, open source music player applications with no DRM crap which is worth to be mentioned.
As for Jamendo, they indeed do rely on donations but they also have a commercial program: if artists agree to relicense their music under a separate, commercial license (CC licenses remain, it’s the freemium model), this music is sold to companies which can then use it for their events, multimedia projects, as a background on their phone services and so on. They charge much less than the mafiaa and artists get 50%. See http://pro.jamendo.com/en/ for more information.
Both Jamendo and Magnatune are featured in Rhythmbox which is the default music player of the GNOME desktop environment in many GNU/Linux distributions, including Ubuntu.
There are also a few other sites that are worth mentioning IMHO:
- http://www.dogmazic.net/ , which is very much like Jamendo except that it’s a non profit organization. And hey, they do offer .ogg files in addition to mp3s.
- http://www.gkoot-electronic.com/ which specializes in techno/house/electronic genres, and all songs are offered under Creative Commons By-Nc-Nd (which is, IMHO, a shame especially for that kind of music since this license doesn’t allow to share non commercial remixes).
- http://www.frostclick.com/ : they regularly offer free music, most often under a CC license. This music is featured on the main page of FrostWire (an open source P2P application) and can be easily downloaded with it, instantly seeding thousands of copies on Gnutella. A great way for artists to introduce themselves to their fans. Users just fire up their P2P client and see what they can download and share, with new stuff almost on a daily basis.
So yes, the mafiaa’s days are indeed counted. Good riddance after all.
September 22nd, 2009 at 3:27 pm
“AFAIK Magnatune doesnât release all the music in their catalog under a CC license, only some of it. Otherwise the sharing wouldnât be limited to only 3 buds.”
The “only 3 buds” thing is a RECCOMENDATION, and all the music is licensed under the CC Non-commercial, Share-alike 3.0 (both according to Magnatune and the wikipedia article.) Hate to be a stickler on this, but you might give potential users the wrong idea about Magnatune.
That’s pretty much my only complaint with your response, and it’s not that much of a complaint.
Thanks for the other sites. Someone should probably compile a list or something.
September 22nd, 2009 at 6:26 pm
“50% of what you pay goes to the artists (as opposed to the pittance offered by even the most âindieâ of RIAA member labels) with the rest of it going to site-related expenses.”
And who are the artists when there are many artists, for example an orchestra member?
Are songwriters among the artists?
Who decides what is the share for each artists?
Who audits the books?
What is the penalty for stealing the royalties?
The plan has no chance of working without good answers.