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...

Web Music Services for bands - revisited

I've talked about this before, but the social web is developing fast and well, so there are news on the field... So let me revisit the topic, and talk a little about the "new web music services for bands".

I'm going to list five services that can help bands promote themselves, and fans to easily access to their favourite bands and even help them. Here they are:

ReverbNation is a newcomer on this blog. Basicly, ReverbNation started last October as yet another music social network, in the vein of services like PureVolume. The thing is that since they started they didn't stop adding new features, some of them really cool for artists. But what makes them start this list is a feature that they don't yet have but will do in July: an ad revenue sharing program for their artists, called “Fair Share”. With this, fans are giving to their artists money each time they visit the artist webpage and specially when clicking in the ads presented there. Alternative sources of incoming are allways cool, right?

Then, another newcomer. 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.

Then, we're back to those I've already talked about. GrooveShark is getting bigger and better day by day, even if still in Alpha. I'm still swapping e-mails with them and plan to have a new blog post about it soon enough, but the concept is good: a legal p2p music network where you're paid to share and artists whose tracks are shared too.

SellABand also keeps going on, and are, at least, a very successful case of an indie label - after all in less than an year they've managed to launch several bands albums and compilations, besides organizing events - for instance. Here listeners pay to give the bands a chance to release an album, and after they can make money out of it.

Last.fm continues to be awsome, a great way for a band to expose themselves if well exploited. They're experiencing a boom of users now that Pandora is enforcing their users to be located in the United States, yet there are rumours of Viacom wanting to buy them which are no good news.

Also, I'm curious about two new services that might be quite interesting: We7 and Playable. When more info on those are announced, I'll surely let you know...

Quickies

We7 is a music sharing website where you can get DRM-free music for free and artists still get payed. The trick? A small add in the beginning of each mp3 file.

See what you can do to try to convince Warner Music to drop DRM.

Article about Security Concerns in Web 2.0.