Treemo: walking on the right path

When I talked about the actual music industry scenario with the technological advances we're seeing on BarCamp Portugal, I said that new stuff was needed, and that some webapps are walking towards the solutions needed (like Amie St. or SellABand) but we weren't there yet. Well, yesterday I knew about Treemo, the next step towards what we need.

Joining the likes of Flickr and YouTube and a fairly busy marketplace, Treemo is trying to change the status quo in two noticeable ways.

The first is that they’re paying strong attention to the mobile device market on both the contribution and the consumption side.

The other twist is that the company seems to be very interested in growing a socially conscious community and have set up affiliations with a number of different organizations in an effort to keep its users involved in some things besides just sharing video clips from last night’s adventure at the bar.

Here's some cover on Treevo, TechCrunch's is outdated so discard it. Specially regarding to the issue that made me look to Treemo at first:

When you sign up for a pro account, you can enroll in our upcoming revenue sharing program. Treemo will share back revenue to users for the content they create.

That's right, while consumers of your content don't have to pay nothing to get your content, you still might be able to get some money for it. Too bad it will only happen to pro accounts:

Treemo is free with 200 MB of storage per month (1 GB total limit) and most of the functionality. We will be rolling out a 'pro' service -- that costs $2.99/month -- soon. The 'pro' service will have essentially no storage limit and several new, exclusive features.

Paying three dollars per month to get 50% of revenue out of advertising? It seems that you won't have money to win here (probably to loose) unless your content is really highly requested...

While new features are surely going to appear, their model business will hardly change - but will, perheaps, evolve. Yet, and under the actual stance that, I don't see them as being a viable way for artists to earn money with their art, but it's a good step towards it.