Music: get it for free but give bands money
Finaly a new trend started: one where users can download music for free and bands still get payed. We have several players on that field:
- Grooveshark - I've talked about it before, but I have to write more extensively about it. There are a number of reasons why I think it will fail, and it is not the best solutions for fans and artists... In this p2p service users share their music as they're used to in other p2p networks, but now it's supposedly legal to do so. Each time a shared file is downloaded the user gets money for it - but if you want to download music you also have to pay. From the transactions, Gooveshark takes a bite and copyright holders also get a share - if they sign a deal with GrooveShark.
- ReverbNation is a music social network, similar to those such as PureVolume, or MySpace Music. The thing is, they'll add "Fair Share" to the network in July. FairShare is basicly a system that makes artists recieve a share of the publicity revenue ReverbNation has when someone is listening to their music. People get music for free, artists get paid. I, for one, can't wait for July.
- Poptopus isn't a music social network, or something that lets bands have pages. Instead, they make widgets with songs submited by artists, and that widgets contain ads. That means that a blogger, for instance, can have a music player with songs of his choice in its website, and the revenue from the ads in there are splited between the blogger, the artist of the tracks presented there, and Poptopus, of course. Once again, yet another source of incoming. Their closed beta is going to start soon.
- We7, also yet to be launched, also lets users download music for free and pays artists, with ads revenue. The downside here is that the ads are audio ads inserted at the beginning of the music file, which kind of cuts off the music experience. It would be great if ReverbNation and Poptopus weren't in the field, this way... Nah.
- Playble is yet another to be released service that will "allow users to download music by artists for free and still support them financially. Playble.com will give companies with strong brands the opportunity to support music and artists directly". Unfortunately there are no more details about it yet...
- Finaly, yesterday the blogosphere started talking about RCRD LBL, a netlabel that will release its artists' music as free DRM-free mp3's and yet pay them with ads revenue. Not as good as ReverbNation's offering in the aspect that any artist can sign in into ReverbNation, but not into RCRD LBL. Yet, for an artist signed on this one, the revenue must be way bigger...
Do you feel there's something missing here? Please leave a comment and tell me. I can't but predict that we'll have interesting times in the music industry during the next months...
I personally believe none of these services will work. We7.com is the most idiotic and retarded concept to hit the web since the amway Quixstar concept.
ReplyDeletePiracy my friends is here to stay, its never going away, so we can all go home now. However, as a musician, in a relatively mid size following, I 100% support the concept of ad supported music, Ill do it my own way though, why share with any computer geek company? I started giving my music away for free with advertisements long time ago, you can view http://ww.drakewire.com/freealbum to see what Im talking about. Its the whole album, 28 songs, DRM free MP3's. No catch, just watch a brief ad and download the Mp3. My fans are pretty devout and they know I do this for them, so the chances of anyone saying hey I think Ill go to Limewire or Bittorrent to download a drakewire track is equally as retarded as all these services listed. Why? Its free anyway, it also doesn't take long for people to realize that if an artist gives his music away for free a sense of respect goes along with it. Why download some random mp3 when you can download it directly from the artist, whom you already know and trust. Since its free you can block out the advertisement anyway...
Free music can only be supported by advertisement, but not all advertisement can support free music. But you can also quote me on the fact that these services will fail, I hope they do. They only make the parent company rich. You know like Myspace!
best wishes,
Devon drake
Drakewire
PS Ive been thinking about doing this myself, but instead of giving people 50 percent of the ad revnue giving them 99 percent. Why not? I'd just let them use my affiliate network with Dbl click, I can set up a unique user ID, they can host their own Web Music Player, and voila whats the point of these companies?
Drakewire: while I agree (and openly say) that these services aren't that great, they're surely going into the right direction: ad-supported free music. From the concepts I've talked about, the one that seems to me more promissing is the one of ReverbNation, even if they said that that feature would be out July, and in August I'm still waiting, without news about it...
ReplyDeleteAnd it seems that you went with your idea, www.drakewire.com shows a future service on this field. If you're up to the task, please keep me updated about it: I'll surely review it and be an user.
Best regards,
Mind Booster Noori
Absolutely,
ReplyDeletedrakewire.com started out as a ad supported network, what has transpired in the last month or so is something hopefully better and in the right direction. As the founder of Drakewire.com my feelings are obviously bias, since I feel my solution is better, but I just find that the idea of giving music away for free to be counter productive, however, I believe artists need to be better compensated. So, the idea of drakewire was born. Sure my website, is 100 percent social based, it offers technical achievements that are light years ahead of the times we live in and current seek find click technologies. Having gone to a major technology school with a degree in Computer Engineering, my obvious purpose is to make a technology heavy website that enhanced functionality for users, but my purpose is to innovate the distribution methods for music and media in general. Hence drakewire.com will have nearly every feature that we now know as Yahoo and myspace combined all ad supported hence everything free.
The major and obvious features was a break through in multimodial achievements that will one day replace how we search and find music and media and information in general.
Drakewire is primarily a search engine, that is social based (think digg's big brother that beat up on Google. :)~)
The thing about search engines is that the bulk of internet profits are earned in the "find" feature. Which is why I knew from an entrepreneur standpoint, I must leverage something new and better to get businesses interested enough to advertise, and hence creating an ad supported market place for music, movies, ebooks, and microsoftware.
So the Drakewire search engine is born and currently categorizing the web... We are a month from a 90 percent completion of matching Google's total search results with our specific algorithm and our enhance features. the main difference is in the ways you can find information. By Voice, By touch, or by Tradional (mouse and Keyboard)....
Everything in drakewire's future release will be powered by technologies which most are merely trying out... Things like instant search are implemented as well as drag and drop web. Where as anything you can do on your desktop you will be able to do on drakewire. We used extensive ajax markup's with some house made intepreters that we have collectively named .dwl "drakewire language" the code is extrememly fast and artificial intelligence based. Hence a search engine that learns from its users.
Thank you for responding and I will definately keep you in mind....
Best Wishes,
Devon Drake
Drakewire
admin@drakewire.com
Hey, I don't know exactly what this blog is for but I would like to as that any musician, band, or singer that would would like to try and get there music heard on the internet and maybe even have a chance to make some money or at least get noticed to please check out tunebattle.imegastore.com and see if there is any interest in making your own music and having it rated by everyday people that have an option about your work.
ReplyDeletePlease take a minute and check it out and then after you do, go to the blog and let me know what you think.
That website seems to be down...
ReplyDelete