

Can a musician sell their music online? - sevib
http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-02-26-2.html

======
thetable
This is Hannes from Popcuts. What Zed describes ("Competitors Don’t Get It")
actually did exist for a while. Snocap used to offer a service where you
uploaded music and could sell it through an embeddable ministore. AmieStreet
has something similar. And, of course, so do we.

But I think the author oversimplifying a bit. Sure it's technically easy to
sell music online. The stuff that's hard to come by is people's attention.

And while it's true that the Internet lowers distribution barriers, it has
also decreased the perceived value of music recordings. Because access has
gotten so much easier, people tend to think of music less as something you can
own, but rather of something you have access to, be it through MP3s on your
hard drive or streaming. We at Popcuts set out to address that. Because we
think there's a deeper sense of ownership possible than simply having access
to a sound file. And we do think music should have a price tag.

Our site is based on the idea that buyers of a song get a share of the revenue
that song makes in the future. So when you buy a song on Popcuts, it's in your
interest that that song does well. You might tell your friends about it, but
you probably won't seed the file to a BitTorrent site. In addition, we try to
reward the behavior that a lot of music fans already show: They know of a hot
new band before everyone else, and they want to show it off. </selfpromotion>

~~~
sho
_"So when you buy a song on Popcuts, it's in your interest that that song does
well. You might tell your friends about it"_

The huge and fatal flaw in that idea is that as soon as word gets around that
people have a profit motive to recommend songs from PopCuts, and it will, then
any such recommendation becomes suspect. Would you buy a song on the
recommendation of someone who you knew was getting a commission for
recommending that song? Of course not.

Wishful thinking about human nature, I think. Ain't gonna work. People are
ultra-sensitive to that kind of thing.

But you know what, I don't think anything is going to work. Chalk me up in the
camp that thinks there are basically two options now for music sales:
compulsory licensing (ie, $10/month pass to absolutely everything), or no
sales at all.

I think the music industry has a year or two to implement the first option. If
they don't, Oink 2* will be born, decentralised, completely P2P and un-
shutdownable, and then the age of paying for sound recordings of any type will
come to an end forever.

* Oink was a huge BitTorrent site which was basically the best music resource in the world.

~~~
ph0rque
>I think the music industry has a year or two to implement the first option.
If they don't, Oink 2* will be born, decentralised, completely P2P and un-
shutdownable, and then the age of paying for sound recordings of any type will
come to an end forever.

I'm no pirate, but I hope the music industry takes its sweet time.

~~~
endlessvoid94
If that happens, say goodbye to your worldwide tours, and consequently, your
favorite band from australia (or somewhere) coming to montana to tour. Right
now, the labels pay for that kind of thing. Without the labels, the band has
to make a huge amount of money on sales, and we've just described an
impossible situation. A band is not going to make enough money unless they
have funding (not unlike a startup).

Radiohead did this because they'd already been successful in the past, that's
why fans were willing to pay for their music even if it was given away. It
might work for a new band, but if ALL bands are on equal footing, I don't
think the income will be as high per band.

I could be wrong though.

~~~
Cunard2
I've hears the opposite too. That merchandising and touring is where artists
make money, and recorded music is where the labels make money. I wonder which
it is.

~~~
unalone
It's the former. Tours are where artists make music.

That's not necessarily a good thing. It emphasizes musicians who are energetic
over musicians who favor craftsmanship. If that's where money came from, we'd
never have had latter Beatles, or nearly any classical music.

Hopefully a model is found which lets people make money from sales. Otherwise,
music's going to keep plummeting down.

~~~
sho
_"Hopefully a model is found which lets people make money from sales.
Otherwise, music's going to keep plummeting down."_

Sorry to repeat myself but the core problem here is bigger than just "people
not paying for music". There are many other sectors facing this, perhaps most
notably quality journalism. Good news reporting is hard and requires a lot of
effort and resources. And the number of people willing to pay for news shrinks
daily. Sound familiar?

The core problem is the disconnect between the material and the information
worlds in terms of scarcity. Simply put, scarcity exists in the former but not
the latter. This leaves anyone relying on scarcity in the latter to generate
leverage against the former in a bad position.

This trend is inevitable and, while it might not seem like it right now, good,
I believe. Obviously, the best outcome is for popularity to be its own reward
- you can see the seeds of this in the open source movement, but it exists
elsewhere as well. Social standing is a genuine motivating factor. Absent
material necessity, I believe it would be enough.

Still, here we are in a world where we still have to pay actual money for our
rent and food. We need a stopgap measure. Elsewhere I've proposed that
governments establish "patronage funds" for artists, distributed by
popularity. Basically take 1% of revenue and distribute it to artists/authors
according to (reliable) measures of how useful their population finds them. In
the current economic climate, however, this kind of idea is kind of unlikely.

It's a problem that needs to be solved, though, and it will be solved,
somehow.

~~~
unalone
Not to disrespect your theory, but basic profit on usefulness or popularity is
a very, very, very bad idea. Art is not necessarily useful, nor should it have
to be popular. That encourages groupthink. That means that if you're an artist
with a brilliant idea that's never been done before, even if you're blazingly
ahead of your time you won't get anything unless you cater to the masses.

You mention open source, which is a perfect example. Open source projects are
rarely good. Firefox is perhaps the fourth best browser on the market, after
Chrome, Opera, and Safari. OpenOffice is _terrible_. They're popular because
most people lack enough knowledge of usability to understand just _how_ bad
they are, but they're not very good. At most they're functional.

Patronage does _not_ work in the public sector. That's what private sectors
are best for, actually: the people with money to pay for musicians are much
more likely to have good taste in what they become patrons of. That suddenly
makes it a matter of personal taste, which is a more effective model than
relying on the masses, who are almost universally wrong in their choices.

------
prateekdayal
This is Prateek from Muziboo.com, listed as one of the competitors who doesn't
get it :)

While Zed has excellent points, here are somethings I find kinda moot

"Even if these companies open things up for musicians to sell their music,
you’d still be stuck at having to sell through another company that doesn’t
really add value." I don't think this is entirely true. The company is giving
you a distribution channel, helping you accept payments and lots of other
things in general. The very popular musicians with a dedicated following may
be able to sell on their sites easily but I am not sure about the other 90%. I
think these companies provide a lot of value to them

* They don’t ask you to prove you’re the author or that you’re “signed”. I agree about the signed part but I don't think its a good idea for the sites to allow people to sell whatever they put up and assume they are not selling someone else's stuff.

Another problem that I have certainly seen in places like India is the fact
that bands really crave for an audience and give out their music for free a
lot of times. The same music is also available for purchase on some other
sites. I feel thats cheating the guy who is buying music. He should know that
he can get the same music for free elsewhere and then pay if he wants to. I
think this is where the companies providing such services will have a lot of
overhead and they do need to take a cut out of the sales.

------
ilamont
I had high hopes for mp3.com in the late 1990s -- they had a system that was
kind of similar to MySpace, but also let artists produce and sell on-demand
CDs, and take a cut (50%, I believe). While the downloads and CDs were never
big moneymakers for artists I heard of one local band in the Boston area that
managed to build up a respectable fanbase thanks to the service. The on-demand
CD pressing arrangement was also convenient for creating and selling limited
numbers of CDs to sell at shows.

That iteration of mp3.com's business model didn't survive, but I really think
that has more to do with the power of major labels and existing
distribution/sales channels. In my opinion, it's hard for Band X to make it as
an indie artist without the backing of a major label's marketing budget and
arrangements with Apple, Amazon, Walmart, etc.

~~~
blackguardx
As I recall, mp3.com was doing fine until they were bought just for the domain
name. The site was shut down and nothing useful replaced it.

~~~
greendestiny
I was an mp3.com artist back in the day. It was truly the independent music
revolution that people cry out for - basically it was good enough that normal
listeners came there to find music - no alternative has successfully provided
that marketplace since. It was killed by a $200 million settlement against
them for allowing streaming of copyright content that had nothing to do with
the independent artists.

------
mileszs
I think <http://amiestreet.com> might solve a subset of Zed's problems (or,
perhaps just the "you can't charge for your music" problem). On AmieStreet, a
song starts free or cheap, and rises in cost as its popularity grows (capped
at 98 cents per song). AmieStreet has a "REC" system that is similar to
PopCuts' fan-revenue-sharing model that "thetable" mentions in these comments,
somewhere. On AmieStreet, when a fan recommends (RECs) a song, and from that
point on it continues to rise in price (and in popularity), they put money
into your AmieStreet account. The site also suggests music based on your
previous choices, you can preview everything, it has a player widget built in
that will allow you to start previewing one album while browsing to other
artists on AmieStreet, etc.

AmieStreet is a really great experience, for the fan. I cannot testify as to
the experience for the musician. I could see not being able to set your own
price point as annoying. Artists do keep 70% of the proceeds after $5 (so,
AmieStreet is still a middle man), paid quarterly.

AmieStreet's Wikipedia entry is short but interesting.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amie_Street#cite_note-
ForArtist...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amie_Street#cite_note-
ForArtists-19))

I have not used PopCuts, but I'm checking it out now.

EDIT: For the record, I have no affiliation with AmieStreet, other than being
a user. I do have a bit of an infatuation, though.

------
pg
<http://www.popcuts.com/>

~~~
unalone
I don't like the looks of that. It doesn't thrill me. I want any music site I
go to to be alive and in love and above all passionate. Perhaps it's a good
technical solution, but if I were an artist who was pouring his life into
creating music, I wouldn't want a site that feels generic.

(Perhaps something like muxtape.com? Though Zed marked it as a site found
wanting, I'd say there's a chance it moves to letting musicians sell their
music directly, considering the people involved with its direction now.)

~~~
pg
Believe it or not, the site looks that way on purpose. It's supposed to be
coolly bleak-looking. I don't love it either, but its not an accident.

~~~
unalone
"Bleak-looking"? For a site that wants to sell people things? I'm curious what
the strategy behind that visual concept was - doesn't it fly in the face of
what most sales sites are supposed to achieve?

------
lyime
This is exactly what Mugasha ( invite @ <http://www.mugasha.com/signup/hack>)
is doing for electronic dance music. EDM genre is all based on promotions.
Promoting music through live sets, DJ sets, and weekly podcasts. The problem
is how these sets are distributed. iTunes is a great source for podcasts but
they way it distributes these live sets is inherently flawed in terms of a
good user experience.

As a EDM fan you want to know what track is playing, so you can come back to
it on a later day and listen to it again. Or perhaps you want to buy the song
you are listening to on a set/podcast. What we have done on Mugasha is built a
player that streams these long (1-2 hours) podcasts on-demand and allows the
user to listen to them as if the set was an album.

Embdeeded in the track listing for each set is a buy button (through amazon
[iTunes and Beatport](coming soon). We are partnering with Bandsintown to
provide live event(tickets) information for the artists that you are listening
to i the set. This is not the best way to monetize (for us), but it is great
for the artist (thats the goal). We are here to promote EDM in a more
effective way and make it easier for users to enjoy this kind of music, as
well as for them to easily buy and support the artist.

So if you like dance(including trance) music, please check out Mugasha.

~~~
fortybillion
Interesting site. My biggest issue with listening to DJ sets/podcasts in
iTunes is the lack of trackname visibility and accessibility. I really wish
iTunes supported an Audiobook chapter-style interface for these types of
tracks.

I really like what you guys have done with the interface, and have a fairly
good selection of sets. I think the biggest problems are portability and
integration. Whenever I'm listening to a streaming set through a browser, I
inevitably tap the "pause" media key on my keyboard out of habit, setting off
a nice random mix of streaming audio and whatever happens to be cued up in
iTunes. I also tend to download sets to my iPhone and listen to them in car.

I wonder if down the road you could address the portability issue with a
iPhone app that mimics your site's UI, and the integration by providing custom
streams to iTunes (or winamp, or whatever) that include tracknames in the
stream.

Do you have any plans to support user-submitted DJ sets?

~~~
lyime
All good questions.

Our whole philosophy behind mugasha is accessibility and portability. So
Mobile apps including streaming iPhone app are next steps. Our main focus
right now is to get licensing worked out so we are in the green area.

Keep watching our blog and/or @mugasha. or find me on IM if you want to chat
more. dodeja - gmail.com

------
latortuga
It seems like you could easily step into a huge spider web of having to ensure
that everything uploaded to be sold is legitimate and not restricted by other
copyright holders.

~~~
grandalf
this is a very good point..

also, one purpose of the "gatekeeper" is to ensure a very minimal level of
quality... not the best approach but one that is used often in retail...
exceptions are sites like youtube and zazzle...

~~~
gills
Quality is important if you are the gatekeeper trying to sell other people's
music. But if I am an artist, and I record something that everyone thinks
sucks, so what? The only consequence is a low rank in the aggregators, just
like low-quality submissions here on HN.

~~~
grandalf
Well there is the "cost" of having an unwanted item clutter up the aggregator
(or store, etc.). Things like collaborative filtering help with this, but are
still (shockingly, really) not used, even by HN.

------
Cunard2
I think labels will continue to play a role, if only for the legacy that they
already control. Also, I don't think artists want to have to or should have to
be their own record-store-managers. Handling all of that daily grind artist-
by-artist is contrary to the fundamental principle of specialization in
economics. Lastly, I feel that even if an emerging artist wants to self-start
and promote using a blog (which worked just fine for Lily Allen), will they
want to handle t-shirt distribution in Australia ten years from now? Is that
what guitar-players are struggling to get to?

Incidentally, my startup is all about solving this problem by disengaging the
license from the file. Let's see if it works. I have to get it built first.

------
cvinson
There are tons of places bands can sell their music without a middleman or
fees. Our site, Bandzoogle.com is one (if you want a full blown website), but
you can also use one of dozens of widgets like Bandcamp.mu if you already have
a site.

In terms of paying the middleman to be on sites like Amazon and iTunes -- this
is really just based on the policies of those stores. They make you go through
a middleman because they don't want to deal with artists directly. Because of
this, someone has to track royalties, encode the tracks in proprietary formats
etc, which does incur a bit of work, which is why they are all fee-based.

------
jamroom
Jamroom pretty much allows artists to do this - they are 100% in control, as
they run the software on their own site:

<http://www.jamroom.net>

We've been selling and supporting Jamroom for over 5 years - it really began
as an alternate to mp3.com, but has taken off from there.

------
redrobot5050
Wow, Zed Shaw basically described what my friend I wanted to build and applied
for VC from. Except we had (independent) labels on board to give us a catalog
of about 200 (minorly) successful artists and a fanbase.

Too bad we got rejected. =(

~~~
jasonkester
Why didn't you build it then? Because you had a single meeting with a VC and
they didn't offer to give you tons of money?

That seems a bit of a silly thing to say to this crowd, many of whom have
built bigger things than this article describes without any funding or
support.

Go build version one this weekend, launch it on Monday and report back here so
we can give you some feedback!

~~~
redrobot5050
We are building it. And we were rejected by 3 VC firms, not just one. =)

On the other hand, we do have to compete against both SoundCloud.com and
BandCamp.com, both of which accomplish some/most of our idea.

Its should be an interesting year for music.

------
vermontdevil
One problem it seems to me is that once a site like this becomes successful,
RIAA will enact stealthily measures to screw the site.

I can see them flooding the site with copyrighted music and then suing the
site in court for copyright violations, putting demands that music gets
screened for copyright, etc.

That will drive up the costs to a point where it's not profitable anymore.

That is unless there's technology available that can accurately screen any
uploads for copyright violations.

------
omouse
_This is absolutely fucking retarded. We are in the age of the internet where
I can communicate directly with someone who likes my work, and yet I’m still
paying some middle man to do nothing other than move some bits around on a
piece of plastic._

That's the most important part. There's a lot of stuff that should be made
quicker and easier by the Internet, but nope, there's still the middle man
waiting to delay the process and make some cash.

------
ulf
This one is located in Germany: <http://justaloud.com/>

------
tjogin
I think "selling" is the wrong model to begin with. Spotify is the kind of
model you're looking for.

~~~
micahphone
Agreed! Selling downloads is a very short-term business model. iTunes and
Amazon know it won't last forever and are just making what money they can
while waiting for streaming everywhere to become commonplace. I'd say we're
about three years away in terms of mobile phone technology before streaming
becomes the dominant business model. Early adopters right now are using
Spotify, Pandora, Slacker Radio, etc. and not looking back. When all music is
streaming artists will be paid royalties funded by either subscription or
advertising. At that point downloading an mp3, paid or otherwise, will seem
like a chore.

------
klon
I work with <http://www.klicktrack.com/mdt/> which is a turn-key download
store for artists and labels. We also offer a widget for integration with
Myspace and blogs.

------
blurry
A friend of mine makes sells a decent amount of his music on beatport.com.

~~~
simianstyle
Beatport is mostly an outlet for electronic music, thus satisfying a
particular niche. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, as I've bought music from
Beatport before, however I think it's a bit harder in the general sense to
sell music online.

~~~
sachimartin
jhhkhloo

------
coolnewtoy
What about TuneCore? <http://www.tunecore.com/> Their prices don't seem that
bad to me - nothing like what a label takes from you.

------
jonursenbach
With someone like Zed, I'd of thought that he'd know about CDBaby.

~~~
rs
Think he does mention CD Baby (few paragraphs into the article)

