Comments on Why does everything suck?: The Free Music Success Research Project

Giving away your music is certainly a good way to ...

2008-10-08T04:53:00.231-04:00

Giving away your music is certainly a good way to start out, and seems to be a popular new route for big bands too and why not?

Thanks Mike!!!!! )

2008-09-17T18:45:48.146-04:00

Thanks Mike!!!!! )

What do you mean?

2008-07-31T13:49:28.247-04:00

What do you mean?

Kevin Kelly has does some very similar anecdotal r...

2008-06-03T02:19:21.119-04:00

Kevin Kelly has does some very similar anecdotal research on this subject.

Here are some of the posts on it - he calls it the "1000 True Fans" model. he might have some data that could help you out.

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/04/the_case_agains.php

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/04/the_reality_of.php

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php

Hank, this blog is plain super. I really am very c...

2008-06-02T14:30:27.129-04:00

Hank, this blog is plain super. I really am very curious about your data / web development project that will change humanity as we know it. :) Would you please tell us every little detail about it?

I do not qualify for your research project, but I'd like to comment on a few things.

I work with a new age pianist. We don't exactly give away his music free (like a CC mp3 download), but all his music is available as a 320Kbit/sec stream from his own website. Our business model doesn't count with traditional CD sales any more.

People download (steal) music, but they cannot steal a live show. So we decided to reserve all rights, but don't care about piracy too much either (we have no choice really). We reserve all his rights to his compositions, performances - but we also let anybody listen to them without any limitations.

It works, he does make a decent living. How?

1. concert tickets
2. people DO buy CD's after concerts, and then, they're not price sensitive.
3. sponsorship, corporate events

Now, having said this - I totally agree with you. Stealing is not ok. *Something* must be done. Web 3.0 (whatever) must be different. Something totally new must come, and it must come soon.

---

I think, that the key to this huge problem is to create a very good alternative to stealing - in parallel with all that we have now.

The disaster is, that legally buying content sucks. It's much *easier* to steal. If I want to watch Dr. House, season 2 will (probably) be available on DVD here at a Media Markt. But I can p2p season 4 on 720p HD easily. This leaves me with no other option really. If I want to legally buy some content, it will be much more *difficult* if possible. I can watch 2 seasons fresher content on HD if I steal, I can watch 2 seasons older stuff on SD if I pay a LOT of money. Now this sucks almost as much as www.whydoeseverythingsuck.com going server error 500. :) I know, it's Google's fault, that's why it sucks so much.

It turned out a long time ago, that micropayment style business models don't work. Nobody wants to pay for a piece of content. Advertising doesn't work alone either. Subscription to a whole lot of content does work.

I pay 50 euros for a fast DSL connection, and another 25 for HSDPA mobile access. Why? Not because I fancy these beautiful geek acronyms. Because of all this fantastic content on the web. Like this blog.

Cable TV works, with all the packages.

The solution could be something above www. Let the www stay whatever it is today and will be later on, but I can't see why another layer for premium content would hurt anybody. Let's say, there's zzz.supercontent.com that I would only have access to if I subscribe to it at my ISP.

People could still steal anything from it, and play this silly torrent game, whatever. But I would have another option. Subscribe to legal content, without viruses, without slow downloads, with perfect quality.

I know, net neutrality hippies freak out, but I still think this would be a good thing - if it's done right. I am optimistic. I don't think people *want* to steal, if they're given a better, a reasonable option.

I can imagine, there are tons of questions as to how exactly this should happen. I'm sure it will suck big time, but within 5-20 years something new, and working must work out.

Because what we have now is just plain silly, and it cannot hold forever.

Sure. I think that's because recording is underwa...

2008-06-02T10:12:58.750-04:00

Sure. I think that's because recording is underway. Anyway, thought it was an interesting twist on the non-label approach (or, an alternate self-made label) that you might find interesting since you're in to this line of thought.

One possible middle ground that could develop over time is this cycle of:

- Start out independent.
- Hit a threshold and sign with a label to take it to the next level.
- Outgrow the label (or desire to "return to the roots") and strike out on your own.
- Optionally, produce free content funded by your earlier wealth and recoup the cost by touring, etc.

I think the possibilities for hybrid models are pretty neat. I'm also intrigued by the groups who generally sell their music but also offer creative-commons licenses on some tracks to allow for large scale remixing, variants, etc. in a community of musicians.

In this sense, I also find Jonathan Coulton interesting.

Justin,regarding myspace, from a statistical persp...

2008-06-02T09:42:16.381-04:00

Justin,

regarding myspace, from a statistical perspective that would be a stellar sample size.

regarding issa, I think they would qualify, but they do not have a tour schedule up so no way to measure them.

Thanks Mike.I just added an answer to this questio...

2008-06-02T09:37:34.071-04:00

Thanks Mike.

I just added an answer to this question because I realized I had thought about it but not addressed it. My goal is to find artist that give away their music as a career choice and not as a one time promotion.

I would second removing the MySpace-only restricti...

2008-06-02T09:36:52.083-04:00

I would second removing the MySpace-only restriction as you'd be in danger of only proving your point relative to MySpace and not in the general sense.

Not sure if this meets your criteria, given that there's self-determined pricing involved, but you might be interested in checking out Issa who tours and whose fans sponsor album recordings as I understand the model.

While I don't disagree with your premise, I would ...

2008-06-02T08:52:30.619-04:00

While I don't disagree with your premise, I would like to point out that "giving away MP3s on MySpace" is far from the only avenue of distributing fere music. Case in point - I'm a member of the free music service Goombah (www.goombah.com). They regularly give away free tracks. I've taken advantage of this. In more than one case, I've followed up my free download by visiting iTunes and downloading entire albums.

I can't tell you whether or not these bands are making a profit, but it is one case where free music directly to revenue, and it did not certainly didn't involve a MySpace page.

I look forward to the outcome of this survey...