
Musicslu's "name your own price" music distribution system - dimarco
http://musicslu.com/we-are-artists
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dimarco
The basics of Musicslu:

How does a community purchase work?

1\. The artists of We Are Artists lists a total amount they would like to sell
their release for, in this case $1,500.

2\. You name your own price, using the "Make a pledge" button above, and offer
the amount you would help purchase We Are Artists for.

3\. If the total $1,500 is raised before Nov 27, 2009, the pledges are given
to the musicians and the album is released under the Creative Commons license
as a download for free sharing.

4\. If the entire $1,500 is not reached, all pledges are discarded, and
everyone walks away like nothing happened. The music is not released under
Creative Commons and you pay nothing.

\--

Musicslu is an attempt to address the problems with pirating music. If some
music pirates could take a few steps out of their trenches, and some artists
take a few steps out of theirs too, this could work.

"A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a
symptom."[<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html> , listed at #1] If not the cure,
at least a solid attempt.

------
DanielStraight
I know I'm going to be slammed with downvotes, but I don't care, $1500 is a
pathetic price for a CD. I think the concept has some cool potential, but an
artist can't possibly survive on $1500 per album. And why the hell are there
artists on here which are already on record labels that are clearly not going
along with this and what the hell does "pending approval" mean. I'm sorry, but
if you want this to work, it's going to have to be reasonable for artists, not
deceive people into thinking music is there that isn't, and make a heck of a
lot more sense.

~~~
dimarco
It's not $1500 per album, it's however much the artist chooses. In this case,
a bunch of artists from reddit.com got together and decided to make a mix tape
and split the $1500. They are all relatively unknown artists who would like
some exposure.

If another artist came and set the price at $10,000, then he'd receive 10k.

The albums on the front page pending approval are just that, artists that have
been contacted. Without those placeholders, the site would be rather empty.
It's no different than how reddit supposedly started as very few people with
multiple accounts pretending to be very many people.

~~~
DanielStraight
Placeholders are shit. I'd greatly prefer an empty and honest site. And it IS
different from reddit if those accounts actually contributed something. One
Republic? Are you serious? Do you think there's a snowball's chance in hell of
getting One Republic on that site? It's a trick. These placeholder accounts
are contributing absolutely nothing and never will.

On the issue of money, I see what you're saying, but the site seems to suggest
that $1500 is a reasonable price one might see on here. $10k is barely
reasonable when you consider that most artists make one CD every 2 years or
so. Not that most artists GET $10k, but it's still pathetic. I'd like to see
some consideration too for the fact that artists get a pathetic amount of
money for their work. The notion of a starving artist is insane in a world
that is so obsessed with entertainment.

I don't mean to sound angry. I'm just frustrated. I think there is a lot of
potential here.

~~~
dimarco
I'm sorry, I must be explaining this incredibly bad. It's not $1500 or
$10,000, it's whatever the artist chooses. This isn't only for Jay Z or the
Kings of Leon, there are thousands upon thousands of artists out there that
don't have record deals or world-wide tours.

"I'd like to see some consideration too for the fact that artists get a
pathetic amount of money for their work."

I couldn't agree more, this is why musicslu.com was created.

~~~
DanielStraight
You're explaining it fine, but when I see prices that aren't even in the right
order of magnitude, it makes me wonder. A reasonable price for a high-quality
CD is over $100k. For a billboard-top-100-quality CD, over $500k. For a Jay Z
CD, over $1m easy.

