You're responding to the guy who stated he didn't think the donating model would work for musicians. He also implied that he got paid for creating open-source code, which I'm guessing was the gist of his suggestion for musicians too, get paid for being a musician, not by monetizing the legal right to restrict duplication.
I've lost track of the music business, but have they even moved past the "making it difficult for people to buy music digitally and randomly suing young music fans while cheating the musicians" stage yet? Maybe they should try just selling music online directly from artist to fan for a while (and sack anyone who's no longer contributing materially to that goal) before moving on to the giving it away for free stage.
It is and has been easy to buy music online for quite a while, so I don't think that's really a problem. The problem as I see it is that musicians simply don't see any of that money. I can say this with confidence because I have two albums on iTunes and just about every other music site and I have never seen a dime from any of it. And my group has a fairly boiler-plate label deal. (this is from a while back, I don't play music professionally anymore)
An app store for musicians I think is a fantastic idea and I don't understand the babarock's distaste for that. It seems some people are just opposed to any way of profiting from digital creative work whatsoever (although conveniently their personal source of income always seems to be ok). I find it hypocritical. It is very, very difficult to be a musician for all but the hugely successful.
> It is and has been easy to buy music online for quite a while, so I don't think that's really a problem.
If you are into mainstream music perhaps, but if you are in the United States and like music from a Dutch group you won't find it on iTunes in the US music store, it will be in the Dutch iTunes store. But you can't purchase the music from the Dutch iTunes store because it requires a Dutch iTunes account.
There are so many times now that I have looked for legal ways to purchase music, particularly music from Europe (where I am from) where the techno/trance/electronic scene is so much bigger and I just can't get it legally. I start searching for various different websites that might sell it to me and there are restrictions because I am in the US. Then I try to find it on Amazon or other sites and get physical copies and I end up on shady looking websites where I am not even sure I want to enter my credit card credentials.
I feel much more secure grabbing a .magnet link from The Pirate Bay than I feel inputting my personal information on various different websites while hunting for the music I want. The worst is when you follow a "Download here" or "Purchase here" link and you end up on yet another website that sends you to yet another website and so on and so forth.
These days pirating simply isn't an option for me due to my job, and I don't like to do it, so I find the music on Grooveshark, or Spotify or hope that it comes by on Pandora again, until the next time when I am in The Netherlands and I can walk into a record store and purchase the stuff on a CD.
I've lost track of the music business, but have they even moved past the "making it difficult for people to buy music digitally and randomly suing young music fans while cheating the musicians" stage yet? Maybe they should try just selling music online directly from artist to fan for a while (and sack anyone who's no longer contributing materially to that goal) before moving on to the giving it away for free stage.