I just wanted to give a shoutout to thesixtyone which I got hooked on to recently. It seems to be a somewhat similar approach: the user is rewarded with karma points for speculating correctly on the future popularity of a song. I suppose step 2 could be to make points redeemable.
FYI: I am not affiliated with thesixtyone nor do I know the founders.
It might work better with karma (and games) instead of money.
All those accounting figures seem out of place with cool new music... but I don't know the profiles of indie music lovers - maybe they like numbers :)
EDIT I think startup founders (myself included) are comfortable reasoning in financial terms - but many people don't, and don't want to. They can even be offended and upset by it. I think this startup might need to find a niche market that is comfortable with it.
It might be better to disguise/hide the money somehow (but that defeats the pitch)... or, possibly extend the underlying microtransaction technology to other subject matter that is already financial oriented (or, has a financially-oriented audience).
I think that this is without a doubt one of the more promising models for music. The whole concept of the listener and artist getting paid is pretty innovative and forward thinking.
It seems to me that Popcuts is not so much a pyramid scheme itself, more of a platform which makes it trivially easy to start one if you are so inclined. It will be interesting to see whether that becomes the typical use pattern, or whether the discovery and reward process ends up being more organic than pyramid-like.
It seems to me that Amway is not so much a pyramid scheme itself, more of a platform which makes it trivially easy to start one if you are so inclined. It will be interesting to see whether that becomes the typical use pattern, or whether the discovery and reward process ends up being more organic than pyramid-like.
I liked the comment which suggested the yc startups always try to get tc converage, since tc stories are likely to be upvoted on hn, leading to hn coverage. :)
The whole key to this idea will end up being the music, and not the 'getting paid for downloading the music.' If the site does a good job of promoting quality artists who you may have never discovered otherwise, then that's reason alone to buy Popcuts. When a band gets big, people will buy the music off of ITunes anyway, but if Popcuts identifies a quality band early, then it saves hours of internet search and digging to find good new stuff. And that's something worth paying .99 for.
I think getting cool artists on the page is one of the key factors of success. Therefore I'd suggest you'd outline the process for artists a bit better - simply give the "artist signup" page a little more love (e.g. mentioning how payment works etc), everyone who's about to sign up knows exactly what happened.
FYI: I am not affiliated with thesixtyone nor do I know the founders.