5 ms·

Can a musician sell their music online?

94 points by sevib 18y ago

cvinson 18y ago
There are tons of places bands can sell their music without a middleman or fees. Our site, Bandzoogle.com is one (if you want a full blown website), but you can also use one of dozens of widgets like Bandcamp.mu if you already have a site. In terms of paying the middleman to be on sites like Amazon and iTunes -- this is really just based on the policies of those stores. They make you go through a middleman because they don't want to deal with artists directly. Because of this, someone has to track royalties, encode the tracks in proprietary formats etc, which does incur a bit of work, which is why they are all fee-based.
pg 18y ago
http://www.popcuts.com/ http://www.popcuts.com/
- bk 18y ago
  For those who are wondering, they're funded by YC. Just posting it because I had to look it up.
- unalone 18y ago
  I don't like the looks of that. It doesn't thrill me. I want any music site I go to to be alive and in love and above all passionate. Perhaps it's a good technical solution, but if I were an artist who was pouring his life into creating music, I wouldn't want a site that feels generic. (Perhaps something like muxtape.com? Though Zed marked it as a site found wanting, I'd say there's a chance it moves to letting musicians sell their music directly, considering the people involved with its direction now.)
  - run4yourlives 18y ago
    I think you're being overly critical of a very underdeveloped idea. The theory behind it is worth much more than the current lack of presentation.
    - unalone 18y ago
      Oh, certainly I'm being critical! I figure that perhaps the criticism I've got might help the people making their service, and if not then criticism's not hurting anybody. The theory is good, but where art's concerned the form is concerned entirely with the function. Things like showing me a feed of activity doesn't particularly inspire me, and it doesn't make me see enthusiastic about the music being sold along that feed. I think they're doing a great thing: I'd like to see an open model get huge. Right now it's lacking. (As a counterexample regarding site design: when I saw the new Muxtape for the first time I began mentally planning an album's worth of music, because I thought Muxtape was so lovely that having a band to be on the platform was something I wanted. Beautiful design attracts beautiful things.
  - pg 18y ago
    Believe it or not, the site looks that way on purpose. It's supposed to be coolly bleak-looking. I don't love it either, but its not an accident.
    - unalone 18y ago
      "Bleak-looking"? For a site that wants to sell people things? I'm curious what the strategy behind that visual concept was - doesn't it fly in the face of what most sales sites are supposed to achieve?
  - jonny_noog 18y ago
    The sparse design of the site actually appeals to me. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that I may not be a typical example of the general population of musicians but I was at least once an "artist who was pouring his life into creating music". The music must speak for its self eventually... why not immediately?
    - unalone 18y ago
      I'm a fan of sparse myself. That's not the problem. The information is poorly organized and lacks a logical makeup. The name of a song is only slightly bigger than the information line, and it's all a single line so right now I'm seeing one artist name broken up into two lines, which is ugly. The list of "trendsetters" list people who haven't made much money, which discourages me if I'm going to sign up. That gradient is awful - it's both imprecise and bland, and serves no purpose. (With gradients, there's got to be a very specific purpose to including one. If you're doing it just to decorate your background, keeping it tight and not leaking it onto the content is essential.) The color scheme of "red, white, and gray" doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. That dark red looks poor for links, and it makes it look like link color was selected just to so that the default color couldn't be blue. (I prefer blue links to that bland state of red.) The underline style is just an underline, which is also unexciting. These things are all design choices! With every single aspect of the site you're making you've got a choice to make something that's exciting and appealing, or you can choose to follow status quo, but if you do that's bad design. When I visit a web site that sells music and the first thing it says to me is "Buy a song, get paid every time it sells again," the message is that I should buy music not for the joy of music but for the sake of making money. That's the big scheme here. From the customer point of view, that's the model, and that's shit. Compare that to Amie Street: "The best place to discover new music." Still not perfect - I have a lot of complaints about Amie Street as well - but at least it sets up the idea that music should be special. The "Trendsetters" system enforces this. THe best users are the ones who have made the most money from picking popular bands. From the user perspective this makes sense. From the artist perspective, I'm going to tell the person who thought this was a good place for me to sell my pride and joy to shove it. Next to that, the "recent events" showing reveals one users, "lalas1", giving a lot of albums 5 stars and telling them all "i pre oredered your new album! love your music, im a big fan!". My initial reactions are: "That's a silly username," "This person's a mindless groupie," and "This place chooses to highlight spam and senseless communication," all of which are things that turn me away. The thing that bewilders me is that Popcuts has a good visual point of reference: every album has album art. This has been done before, with Coverflow and with the iTunes store and with the iTunes screensaver on the Mac (which looks gorgeous). When you're asking yourself how to design a music site, you've got three basic elements to choose from: you can try and create a music-driven layout, like Muxtape's (where every line plays a band's song); you can use a graphical approach, which looks inviting; or you can go the text-only approach, which is cluttered and conveys no emotion whatsoever unless you focus hard on typography - dark red helvetica in this case does not appeal to my sensibilities at all. There's nothing unique on the page. I keep having to skip back over to it because I can't keep the design in mind past one or two critique points. The top bar looks generic. The search bar stands out, but only because it is too small. The fieldsets are used twice a page, which means they're no longer outlining anything interesting and eyecatching and look essentially like tables. The bottom line of links looks essentially the same as every other site. The color scheme is forgettable, there is no grid in place, things don't align. If I were a musician worth anything at all, and it's my goal to be worth something one day, I would require a web site that respects itself enough to look good. There's a difference between minimalism and bland. The music must speak for its self eventually... why not immediately? Because here, the music DOESN'T speak for itself. The web site's design does. It says "I'm ugly and plan, and I'm not organized, and I use a generic free flash player for my music, and the second-biggest number on the page tells people how much money they'll make back after buying my CD. That's the information the site I've chosen to express myself has deemed most important." There's a difference between a site being ugly and a site getting out of the way. The best site for art is one that you don't notice. Then the music does speak for itself. In this case, the web site speaks first, and it has an irritating voice.
- TrevorJ 18y ago
  I gotta say, the idea sounded a bit off to me at first but after poking around the site I really think the possibility of getting in-store-credit or even a partial return on your purchase makes the site sticky in a good way. I doubt anyone will be getting wealthy off of it but it does seem to encourage user involvement in a really interesting way.
- raheemm 18y ago
  Cool site - I really liked it but it maybe because the featured music just so happened to be in my taste. But I also like the idea of getting paid back for buying music. Very creative concept
- run4yourlives 18y ago
  Now that's pretty ingenious. I'm sure they'll eventually run into gaming issues, if they ever care (after all they'll be raking in the cash on every purchase). Great way to think of music distribution in a totally new way. I hope this catches on, since it may actually be a replacement for the current model that might actually work for everyone's benefit. If only someone at the labels actually wanted to be productive...
- ssharp 18y ago
  This site seems a bit too "pyramid-y" to have a long lasting appeal. However, I think the model is at least worth experimenting with -- at this point, just about ANY model in music sales is worth experimenting with.
ulf 18y ago
This one is located in Germany: http://justaloud.com/ http://justaloud.com/
thetable 18y ago
This is Hannes from Popcuts. What Zed describes ("Competitors Don’t Get It") actually did exist for a while. Snocap used to offer a service where you uploaded music and could sell it through an embeddable ministore. AmieStreet has something similar. And, of course, so do we. But I think the author oversimplifying a bit. Sure it's technically easy to sell music online. The stuff that's hard to come by is people's attention. And while it's true that the Internet lowers distribution barriers, it has also decreased the perceived value of music recordings. Because access has gotten so much easier, people tend to think of music less as something you can own, but rather of something you have access to, be it through MP3s on your hard drive or streaming. We at Popcuts set out to address that. Because we think there's a deeper sense of ownership possible than simply having access to a sound file. And we do think music should have a price tag. Our site is based on the idea that buyers of a song get a share of the revenue that song makes in the future. So when you buy a song on Popcuts, it's in your interest that that song does well. You might tell your friends about it, but you probably won't seed the file to a BitTorrent site. In addition, we try to reward the behavior that a lot of music fans already show: They know of a hot new band before everyone else, and they want to show it off. </selfpromotion>
- joshuarr 18y ago
  That's an interesting idea, but doesn't it suggest that the better a song sells, the less revenue the artist receives?
  - thetable 18y ago
    No, we have a fixed portion that goes to the fans, and the artist decides how much that is. Also, early buyers get bigger cuts, so it pays not to wait if you like a song.
    - albertcardona 18y ago
      Reads like you've got all the incentives right, to stimulate both purchasing itself and the proliferation of buyers interested in bringing in more buyers.
ilamont 18y ago
I had high hopes for mp3.com in the late 1990s -- they had a system that was kind of similar to MySpace, but also let artists produce and sell on-demand CDs, and take a cut (50%, I believe). While the downloads and CDs were never big moneymakers for artists I heard of one local band in the Boston area that managed to build up a respectable fanbase thanks to the service. The on-demand CD pressing arrangement was also convenient for creating and selling limited numbers of CDs to sell at shows. That iteration of mp3.com's business model didn't survive, but I really think that has more to do with the power of major labels and existing distribution/sales channels. In my opinion, it's hard for Band X to make it as an indie artist without the backing of a major label's marketing budget and arrangements with Apple, Amazon, Walmart, etc.
- blackguardx 18y ago
  As I recall, mp3.com was doing fine until they were bought just for the domain name. The site was shut down and nothing useful replaced it.
  - greendestiny 18y ago
    I was an mp3.com artist back in the day. It was truly the independent music revolution that people cry out for - basically it was good enough that normal listeners came there to find music - no alternative has successfully provided that marketplace since. It was killed by a $200 million settlement against them for allowing streaming of copyright content that had nothing to do with the independent artists.
  - ricree 18y ago
    Garageband.com ended up taking over a large portion of their database and has fairly similar capabilities. I've found a number of artists I like from that site.
prateekdayal 18y ago
This is Prateek from Muziboo.com, listed as one of the competitors who doesn't get it :) While Zed has excellent points, here are somethings I find kinda moot "Even if these companies open things up for musicians to sell their music, you’d still be stuck at having to sell through another company that doesn’t really add value." I don't think this is entirely true. The company is giving you a distribution channel, helping you accept payments and lots of other things in general. The very popular musicians with a dedicated following may be able to sell on their sites easily but I am not sure about the other 90%. I think these companies provide a lot of value to them * They don’t ask you to prove you’re the author or that you’re “signed”. I agree about the signed part but I don't think its a good idea for the sites to allow people to sell whatever they put up and assume they are not selling someone else's stuff. Another problem that I have certainly seen in places like India is the fact that bands really crave for an audience and give out their music for free a lot of times. The same music is also available for purchase on some other sites. I feel thats cheating the guy who is buying music. He should know that he can get the same music for free elsewhere and then pay if he wants to. I think this is where the companies providing such services will have a lot of overhead and they do need to take a cut out of the sales.
omouse 18y ago
This is absolutely fucking retarded. We are in the age of the internet where I can communicate directly with someone who likes my work, and yet I’m still paying some middle man to do nothing other than move some bits around on a piece of plastic. That's the most important part. There's a lot of stuff that should be made quicker and easier by the Internet, but nope, there's still the middle man waiting to delay the process and make some cash.
redrobot5050 18y ago
Wow, Zed Shaw basically described what my friend I wanted to build and applied for VC from. Except we had (independent) labels on board to give us a catalog of about 200 (minorly) successful artists and a fanbase. Too bad we got rejected. =(
- jasonkester 18y ago
  Why didn't you build it then? Because you had a single meeting with a VC and they didn't offer to give you tons of money? That seems a bit of a silly thing to say to this crowd, many of whom have built bigger things than this article describes without any funding or support. Go build version one this weekend, launch it on Monday and report back here so we can give you some feedback!
  - redrobot5050 18y ago
    We are building it. And we were rejected by 3 VC firms, not just one. =) On the other hand, we do have to compete against both SoundCloud.com and BandCamp.com, both of which accomplish some/most of our idea. Its should be an interesting year for music.
mileszs 18y ago
I think http://amiestreet.com http://amiestreet.com might solve a subset of Zed's problems (or, perhaps just the "you can't charge for your music" problem). On AmieStreet, a song starts free or cheap, and rises in cost as its popularity grows (capped at 98 cents per song). AmieStreet has a "REC" system that is similar to PopCuts' fan-revenue-sharing model that "thetable" mentions in these comments, somewhere. On AmieStreet, when a fan recommends (RECs) a song, and from that point on it continues to rise in price (and in popularity), they put money into your AmieStreet account. The site also suggests music based on your previous choices, you can preview everything, it has a player widget built in that will allow you to start previewing one album while browsing to other artists on AmieStreet, etc. AmieStreet is a really great experience, for the fan. I cannot testify as to the experience for the musician. I could see not being able to set your own price point as annoying. Artists do keep 70% of the proceeds after $5 (so, AmieStreet is still a middle man), paid quarterly. AmieStreet's Wikipedia entry is short but interesting. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amie_Street#cite_note-ForArtists-19 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amie_Street#cite_note-ForArtist...) I have not used PopCuts, but I'm checking it out now. EDIT: For the record, I have no affiliation with AmieStreet, other than being a user. I do have a bit of an infatuation, though.
blurry 18y ago
A friend of mine makes sells a decent amount of his music on beatport.com.
- simianstyle 18y ago
  Beatport is mostly an outlet for electronic music, thus satisfying a particular niche. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, as I've bought music from Beatport before, however I think it's a bit harder in the general sense to sell music online.
  - sachimartin 18y ago
    jhhkhloo
latortuga 18y ago
It seems like you could easily step into a huge spider web of having to ensure that everything uploaded to be sold is legitimate and not restricted by other copyright holders.
- grandalf 18y ago
  this is a very good point.. also, one purpose of the "gatekeeper" is to ensure a very minimal level of quality... not the best approach but one that is used often in retail... exceptions are sites like youtube and zazzle...
  - gills 18y ago
    Quality is important if you are the gatekeeper trying to sell other people's music. But if I am an artist, and I record something that everyone thinks sucks, so what? The only consequence is a low rank in the aggregators, just like low-quality submissions here on HN.
    - grandalf 18y ago
      Well there is the "cost" of having an unwanted item clutter up the aggregator (or store, etc.). Things like collaborative filtering help with this, but are still (shockingly, really) not used, even by HN.
- gills 18y ago
  It sounded like his solution was the idea of the sampled-down rss-esque feed, with the only purchasing taking place through the artist's own paypal-or-whatever basket. The feed protocol needs to have some sort of cryptographic audit trail so that users can always reach the artist's sales page, and the artist can inspect, if necessary, where and how the distribution is flowing.
coolnewtoy 18y ago
What about TuneCore? http://www.tunecore.com/ http://www.tunecore.com/ Their prices don't seem that bad to me - nothing like what a label takes from you.
lyime 18y ago
This is exactly what Mugasha ( invite @ http://www.mugasha.com/signup/hack http://www.mugasha.com/signup/hack) is doing for electronic dance music. EDM genre is all based on promotions. Promoting music through live sets, DJ sets, and weekly podcasts. The problem is how these sets are distributed. iTunes is a great source for podcasts but they way it distributes these live sets is inherently flawed in terms of a good user experience. As a EDM fan you want to know what track is playing, so you can come back to it on a later day and listen to it again. Or perhaps you want to buy the song you are listening to on a set/podcast. What we have done on Mugasha is built a player that streams these long (1-2 hours) podcasts on-demand and allows the user to listen to them as if the set was an album. Embdeeded in the track listing for each set is a buy button (through amazon [iTunes and Beatport](coming soon). We are partnering with Bandsintown to provide live event(tickets) information for the artists that you are listening to i the set. This is not the best way to monetize (for us), but it is great for the artist (thats the goal). We are here to promote EDM in a more effective way and make it easier for users to enjoy this kind of music, as well as for them to easily buy and support the artist. So if you like dance(including trance) music, please check out Mugasha.
- fortybillion 18y ago
  Interesting site. My biggest issue with listening to DJ sets/podcasts in iTunes is the lack of trackname visibility and accessibility. I really wish iTunes supported an Audiobook chapter-style interface for these types of tracks. I really like what you guys have done with the interface, and have a fairly good selection of sets. I think the biggest problems are portability and integration. Whenever I'm listening to a streaming set through a browser, I inevitably tap the "pause" media key on my keyboard out of habit, setting off a nice random mix of streaming audio and whatever happens to be cued up in iTunes. I also tend to download sets to my iPhone and listen to them in car. I wonder if down the road you could address the portability issue with a iPhone app that mimics your site's UI, and the integration by providing custom streams to iTunes (or winamp, or whatever) that include tracknames in the stream. Do you have any plans to support user-submitted DJ sets?
  - lyime 18y ago
tjogin 18y ago
I think "selling" is the wrong model to begin with. Spotify is the kind of model you're looking for.
- micahphone 18y ago
  Agreed! Selling downloads is a very short-term business model. iTunes and Amazon know it won't last forever and are just making what money they can while waiting for streaming everywhere to become commonplace. I'd say we're about three years away in terms of mobile phone technology before streaming becomes the dominant business model. Early adopters right now are using Spotify, Pandora, Slacker Radio, etc. and not looking back. When all music is streaming artists will be paid royalties funded by either subscription or advertising. At that point downloading an mp3, paid or otherwise, will seem like a chore.
jamroom 18y ago
Jamroom pretty much allows artists to do this - they are 100% in control, as they run the software on their own site: http://www.jamroom.net http://www.jamroom.net We've been selling and supporting Jamroom for over 5 years - it really began as an alternate to mp3.com, but has taken off from there.
Cunard2 18y ago
I think labels will continue to play a role, if only for the legacy that they already control. Also, I don't think artists want to have to or should have to be their own record-store-managers. Handling all of that daily grind artist-by-artist is contrary to the fundamental principle of specialization in economics. Lastly, I feel that even if an emerging artist wants to self-start and promote using a blog (which worked just fine for Lily Allen), will they want to handle t-shirt distribution in Australia ten years from now? Is that what guitar-players are struggling to get to? Incidentally, my startup is all about solving this problem by disengaging the license from the file. Let's see if it works. I have to get it built first.
jonursenbach 18y ago
With someone like Zed, I'd of thought that he'd know about CDBaby.
- rs 18y ago
  Think he does mention CD Baby (few paragraphs into the article)
vermontdevil 18y ago
One problem it seems to me is that once a site like this becomes successful, RIAA will enact stealthily measures to screw the site. I can see them flooding the site with copyrighted music and then suing the site in court for copyright violations, putting demands that music gets screened for copyright, etc. That will drive up the costs to a point where it's not profitable anymore. That is unless there's technology available that can accurately screen any uploads for copyright violations.
klon 18y ago
I work with http://www.klicktrack.com/mdt/ http://www.klicktrack.com/mdt/ which is a turn-key download store for artists and labels. We also offer a widget for integration with Myspace and blogs.

94 points by sevib 18y ago

There are tons of places bands can sell their music without a middleman or fees. Our site, Bandzoogle.com is one (if you want a full blown website), but you can also use one of dozens of widgets like Bandcamp.mu if you already have a site. In terms of paying the middleman to be on sites like Amazon and iTunes -- this is really just based on the policies of those stores. They make you go through a middleman because they don't want to deal with artists directly. Because of this, someone has to track royalties, encode the tracks in proprietary formats etc, which does incur a bit of work, which is why they are all fee-based.

pg 18y ago

http://www.popcuts.com/ http://www.popcuts.com/

bk 18y ago
For those who are wondering, they're funded by YC. Just posting it because I had to look it up.
unalone 18y ago
I don't like the looks of that. It doesn't thrill me. I want any music site I go to to be alive and in love and above all passionate. Perhaps it's a good technical solution, but if I were an artist who was pouring his life into creating music, I wouldn't want a site that feels generic. (Perhaps something like muxtape.com? Though Zed marked it as a site found wanting, I'd say there's a chance it moves to letting musicians sell their music directly, considering the people involved with its direction now.)
- run4yourlives 18y ago
  I think you're being overly critical of a very underdeveloped idea. The theory behind it is worth much more than the current lack of presentation.
  - unalone 18y ago
    Oh, certainly I'm being critical! I figure that perhaps the criticism I've got might help the people making their service, and if not then criticism's not hurting anybody. The theory is good, but where art's concerned the form is concerned entirely with the function. Things like showing me a feed of activity doesn't particularly inspire me, and it doesn't make me see enthusiastic about the music being sold along that feed. I think they're doing a great thing: I'd like to see an open model get huge. Right now it's lacking. (As a counterexample regarding site design: when I saw the new Muxtape for the first time I began mentally planning an album's worth of music, because I thought Muxtape was so lovely that having a band to be on the platform was something I wanted. Beautiful design attracts beautiful things.
- pg 18y ago
  Believe it or not, the site looks that way on purpose. It's supposed to be coolly bleak-looking. I don't love it either, but its not an accident.
  - unalone 18y ago
    "Bleak-looking"? For a site that wants to sell people things? I'm curious what the strategy behind that visual concept was - doesn't it fly in the face of what most sales sites are supposed to achieve?
- jonny_noog 18y ago
  The sparse design of the site actually appeals to me. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that I may not be a typical example of the general population of musicians but I was at least once an "artist who was pouring his life into creating music". The music must speak for its self eventually... why not immediately?
  - unalone 18y ago
    I'm a fan of sparse myself. That's not the problem. The information is poorly organized and lacks a logical makeup. The name of a song is only slightly bigger than the information line, and it's all a single line so right now I'm seeing one artist name broken up into two lines, which is ugly. The list of "trendsetters" list people who haven't made much money, which discourages me if I'm going to sign up. That gradient is awful - it's both imprecise and bland, and serves no purpose. (With gradients, there's got to be a very specific purpose to including one. If you're doing it just to decorate your background, keeping it tight and not leaking it onto the content is essential.) The color scheme of "red, white, and gray" doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. That dark red looks poor for links, and it makes it look like link color was selected just to so that the default color couldn't be blue. (I prefer blue links to that bland state of red.) The underline style is just an underline, which is also unexciting. These things are all design choices! With every single aspect of the site you're making you've got a choice to make something that's exciting and appealing, or you can choose to follow status quo, but if you do that's bad design. When I visit a web site that sells music and the first thing it says to me is "Buy a song, get paid every time it sells again," the message is that I should buy music not for the joy of music but for the sake of making money. That's the big scheme here. From the customer point of view, that's the model, and that's shit. Compare that to Amie Street: "The best place to discover new music." Still not perfect - I have a lot of complaints about Amie Street as well - but at least it sets up the idea that music should be special. The "Trendsetters" system enforces this. THe best users are the ones who have made the most money from picking popular bands. From the user perspective this makes sense. From the artist perspective, I'm going to tell the person who thought this was a good place for me to sell my pride and joy to shove it. Next to that, the "recent events" showing reveals one users, "lalas1", giving a lot of albums 5 stars and telling them all "i pre oredered your new album! love your music, im a big fan!". My initial reactions are: "That's a silly username," "This person's a mindless groupie," and "This place chooses to highlight spam and senseless communication," all of which are things that turn me away. The thing that bewilders me is that Popcuts has a good visual point of reference: every album has album art. This has been done before, with Coverflow and with the iTunes store and with the iTunes screensaver on the Mac (which looks gorgeous). When you're asking yourself how to design a music site, you've got three basic elements to choose from: you can try and create a music-driven layout, like Muxtape's (where every line plays a band's song); you can use a graphical approach, which looks inviting; or you can go the text-only approach, which is cluttered and conveys no emotion whatsoever unless you focus hard on typography - dark red helvetica in this case does not appeal to my sensibilities at all. There's nothing unique on the page. I keep having to skip back over to it because I can't keep the design in mind past one or two critique points. The top bar looks generic. The search bar stands out, but only because it is too small. The fieldsets are used twice a page, which means they're no longer outlining anything interesting and eyecatching and look essentially like tables. The bottom line of links looks essentially the same as every other site. The color scheme is forgettable, there is no grid in place, things don't align. If I were a musician worth anything at all, and it's my goal to be worth something one day, I would require a web site that respects itself enough to look good. There's a difference between minimalism and bland. The music must speak for its self eventually... why not immediately? Because here, the music DOESN'T speak for itself. The web site's design does. It says "I'm ugly and plan, and I'm not organized, and I use a generic free flash player for my music, and the second-biggest number on the page tells people how much money they'll make back after buying my CD. That's the information the site I've chosen to express myself has deemed most important." There's a difference between a site being ugly and a site getting out of the way. The best site for art is one that you don't notice. Then the music does speak for itself. In this case, the web site speaks first, and it has an irritating voice.
TrevorJ 18y ago
I gotta say, the idea sounded a bit off to me at first but after poking around the site I really think the possibility of getting in-store-credit or even a partial return on your purchase makes the site sticky in a good way. I doubt anyone will be getting wealthy off of it but it does seem to encourage user involvement in a really interesting way.
raheemm 18y ago
Cool site - I really liked it but it maybe because the featured music just so happened to be in my taste. But I also like the idea of getting paid back for buying music. Very creative concept
run4yourlives 18y ago
Now that's pretty ingenious. I'm sure they'll eventually run into gaming issues, if they ever care (after all they'll be raking in the cash on every purchase). Great way to think of music distribution in a totally new way. I hope this catches on, since it may actually be a replacement for the current model that might actually work for everyone's benefit. If only someone at the labels actually wanted to be productive...
ssharp 18y ago
This site seems a bit too "pyramid-y" to have a long lasting appeal. However, I think the model is at least worth experimenting with -- at this point, just about ANY model in music sales is worth experimenting with.

ulf 18y ago

This one is located in Germany: http://justaloud.com/ http://justaloud.com/

thetable 18y ago

This is Hannes from Popcuts. What Zed describes ("Competitors Don’t Get It") actually did exist for a while. Snocap used to offer a service where you uploaded music and could sell it through an embeddable ministore. AmieStreet has something similar. And, of course, so do we. But I think the author oversimplifying a bit. Sure it's technically easy to sell music online. The stuff that's hard to come by is people's attention. And while it's true that the Internet lowers distribution barriers, it has also decreased the perceived value of music recordings. Because access has gotten so much easier, people tend to think of music less as something you can own, but rather of something you have access to, be it through MP3s on your hard drive or streaming. We at Popcuts set out to address that. Because we think there's a deeper sense of ownership possible than simply having access to a sound file. And we do think music should have a price tag. Our site is based on the idea that buyers of a song get a share of the revenue that song makes in the future. So when you buy a song on Popcuts, it's in your interest that that song does well. You might tell your friends about it, but you probably won't seed the file to a BitTorrent site. In addition, we try to reward the behavior that a lot of music fans already show: They know of a hot new band before everyone else, and they want to show it off. </selfpromotion>

joshuarr 18y ago
That's an interesting idea, but doesn't it suggest that the better a song sells, the less revenue the artist receives?
- thetable 18y ago
  No, we have a fixed portion that goes to the fans, and the artist decides how much that is. Also, early buyers get bigger cuts, so it pays not to wait if you like a song.
  - albertcardona 18y ago
    Reads like you've got all the incentives right, to stimulate both purchasing itself and the proliferation of buyers interested in bringing in more buyers.

ilamont 18y ago

I had high hopes for mp3.com in the late 1990s -- they had a system that was kind of similar to MySpace, but also let artists produce and sell on-demand CDs, and take a cut (50%, I believe). While the downloads and CDs were never big moneymakers for artists I heard of one local band in the Boston area that managed to build up a respectable fanbase thanks to the service. The on-demand CD pressing arrangement was also convenient for creating and selling limited numbers of CDs to sell at shows. That iteration of mp3.com's business model didn't survive, but I really think that has more to do with the power of major labels and existing distribution/sales channels. In my opinion, it's hard for Band X to make it as an indie artist without the backing of a major label's marketing budget and arrangements with Apple, Amazon, Walmart, etc.

blackguardx 18y ago
As I recall, mp3.com was doing fine until they were bought just for the domain name. The site was shut down and nothing useful replaced it.
- greendestiny 18y ago
  I was an mp3.com artist back in the day. It was truly the independent music revolution that people cry out for - basically it was good enough that normal listeners came there to find music - no alternative has successfully provided that marketplace since. It was killed by a $200 million settlement against them for allowing streaming of copyright content that had nothing to do with the independent artists.
- ricree 18y ago
  Garageband.com ended up taking over a large portion of their database and has fairly similar capabilities. I've found a number of artists I like from that site.

prateekdayal 18y ago

This is Prateek from Muziboo.com, listed as one of the competitors who doesn't get it :) While Zed has excellent points, here are somethings I find kinda moot "Even if these companies open things up for musicians to sell their music, you’d still be stuck at having to sell through another company that doesn’t really add value." I don't think this is entirely true. The company is giving you a distribution channel, helping you accept payments and lots of other things in general. The very popular musicians with a dedicated following may be able to sell on their sites easily but I am not sure about the other 90%. I think these companies provide a lot of value to them * They don’t ask you to prove you’re the author or that you’re “signed”. I agree about the signed part but I don't think its a good idea for the sites to allow people to sell whatever they put up and assume they are not selling someone else's stuff. Another problem that I have certainly seen in places like India is the fact that bands really crave for an audience and give out their music for free a lot of times. The same music is also available for purchase on some other sites. I feel thats cheating the guy who is buying music. He should know that he can get the same music for free elsewhere and then pay if he wants to. I think this is where the companies providing such services will have a lot of overhead and they do need to take a cut out of the sales.

omouse 18y ago

This is absolutely fucking retarded. We are in the age of the internet where I can communicate directly with someone who likes my work, and yet I’m still paying some middle man to do nothing other than move some bits around on a piece of plastic. That's the most important part. There's a lot of stuff that should be made quicker and easier by the Internet, but nope, there's still the middle man waiting to delay the process and make some cash.

redrobot5050 18y ago

Wow, Zed Shaw basically described what my friend I wanted to build and applied for VC from. Except we had (independent) labels on board to give us a catalog of about 200 (minorly) successful artists and a fanbase. Too bad we got rejected. =(

jasonkester 18y ago
Why didn't you build it then? Because you had a single meeting with a VC and they didn't offer to give you tons of money? That seems a bit of a silly thing to say to this crowd, many of whom have built bigger things than this article describes without any funding or support. Go build version one this weekend, launch it on Monday and report back here so we can give you some feedback!
- redrobot5050 18y ago
  We are building it. And we were rejected by 3 VC firms, not just one. =) On the other hand, we do have to compete against both SoundCloud.com and BandCamp.com, both of which accomplish some/most of our idea. Its should be an interesting year for music.

mileszs 18y ago

I think http://amiestreet.com http://amiestreet.com might solve a subset of Zed's problems (or, perhaps just the "you can't charge for your music" problem). On AmieStreet, a song starts free or cheap, and rises in cost as its popularity grows (capped at 98 cents per song). AmieStreet has a "REC" system that is similar to PopCuts' fan-revenue-sharing model that "thetable" mentions in these comments, somewhere. On AmieStreet, when a fan recommends (RECs) a song, and from that point on it continues to rise in price (and in popularity), they put money into your AmieStreet account. The site also suggests music based on your previous choices, you can preview everything, it has a player widget built in that will allow you to start previewing one album while browsing to other artists on AmieStreet, etc. AmieStreet is a really great experience, for the fan. I cannot testify as to the experience for the musician. I could see not being able to set your own price point as annoying. Artists do keep 70% of the proceeds after $5 (so, AmieStreet is still a middle man), paid quarterly. AmieStreet's Wikipedia entry is short but interesting. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amie_Street#cite_note-ForArtists-19 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amie_Street#cite_note-ForArtist...) I have not used PopCuts, but I'm checking it out now. EDIT: For the record, I have no affiliation with AmieStreet, other than being a user. I do have a bit of an infatuation, though.

blurry 18y ago

A friend of mine makes sells a decent amount of his music on beatport.com.

simianstyle 18y ago
Beatport is mostly an outlet for electronic music, thus satisfying a particular niche. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, as I've bought music from Beatport before, however I think it's a bit harder in the general sense to sell music online.
- sachimartin 18y ago
  jhhkhloo

latortuga 18y ago

It seems like you could easily step into a huge spider web of having to ensure that everything uploaded to be sold is legitimate and not restricted by other copyright holders.

grandalf 18y ago
this is a very good point.. also, one purpose of the "gatekeeper" is to ensure a very minimal level of quality... not the best approach but one that is used often in retail... exceptions are sites like youtube and zazzle...
- gills 18y ago
  Quality is important if you are the gatekeeper trying to sell other people's music. But if I am an artist, and I record something that everyone thinks sucks, so what? The only consequence is a low rank in the aggregators, just like low-quality submissions here on HN.
  - grandalf 18y ago
    Well there is the "cost" of having an unwanted item clutter up the aggregator (or store, etc.). Things like collaborative filtering help with this, but are still (shockingly, really) not used, even by HN.
gills 18y ago
It sounded like his solution was the idea of the sampled-down rss-esque feed, with the only purchasing taking place through the artist's own paypal-or-whatever basket. The feed protocol needs to have some sort of cryptographic audit trail so that users can always reach the artist's sales page, and the artist can inspect, if necessary, where and how the distribution is flowing.

coolnewtoy 18y ago

What about TuneCore? http://www.tunecore.com/ http://www.tunecore.com/ Their prices don't seem that bad to me - nothing like what a label takes from you.

lyime 18y ago

This is exactly what Mugasha ( invite @ http://www.mugasha.com/signup/hack http://www.mugasha.com/signup/hack) is doing for electronic dance music. EDM genre is all based on promotions. Promoting music through live sets, DJ sets, and weekly podcasts. The problem is how these sets are distributed. iTunes is a great source for podcasts but they way it distributes these live sets is inherently flawed in terms of a good user experience. As a EDM fan you want to know what track is playing, so you can come back to it on a later day and listen to it again. Or perhaps you want to buy the song you are listening to on a set/podcast. What we have done on Mugasha is built a player that streams these long (1-2 hours) podcasts on-demand and allows the user to listen to them as if the set was an album. Embdeeded in the track listing for each set is a buy button (through amazon [iTunes and Beatport](coming soon). We are partnering with Bandsintown to provide live event(tickets) information for the artists that you are listening to i the set. This is not the best way to monetize (for us), but it is great for the artist (thats the goal). We are here to promote EDM in a more effective way and make it easier for users to enjoy this kind of music, as well as for them to easily buy and support the artist. So if you like dance(including trance) music, please check out Mugasha.

fortybillion 18y ago
Interesting site. My biggest issue with listening to DJ sets/podcasts in iTunes is the lack of trackname visibility and accessibility. I really wish iTunes supported an Audiobook chapter-style interface for these types of tracks. I really like what you guys have done with the interface, and have a fairly good selection of sets. I think the biggest problems are portability and integration. Whenever I'm listening to a streaming set through a browser, I inevitably tap the "pause" media key on my keyboard out of habit, setting off a nice random mix of streaming audio and whatever happens to be cued up in iTunes. I also tend to download sets to my iPhone and listen to them in car. I wonder if down the road you could address the portability issue with a iPhone app that mimics your site's UI, and the integration by providing custom streams to iTunes (or winamp, or whatever) that include tracknames in the stream. Do you have any plans to support user-submitted DJ sets?
- lyime 18y ago

tjogin 18y ago

I think "selling" is the wrong model to begin with. Spotify is the kind of model you're looking for.

micahphone 18y ago
Agreed! Selling downloads is a very short-term business model. iTunes and Amazon know it won't last forever and are just making what money they can while waiting for streaming everywhere to become commonplace. I'd say we're about three years away in terms of mobile phone technology before streaming becomes the dominant business model. Early adopters right now are using Spotify, Pandora, Slacker Radio, etc. and not looking back. When all music is streaming artists will be paid royalties funded by either subscription or advertising. At that point downloading an mp3, paid or otherwise, will seem like a chore.

jamroom 18y ago

Jamroom pretty much allows artists to do this - they are 100% in control, as they run the software on their own site: http://www.jamroom.net http://www.jamroom.net We've been selling and supporting Jamroom for over 5 years - it really began as an alternate to mp3.com, but has taken off from there.

Cunard2 18y ago

I think labels will continue to play a role, if only for the legacy that they already control. Also, I don't think artists want to have to or should have to be their own record-store-managers. Handling all of that daily grind artist-by-artist is contrary to the fundamental principle of specialization in economics. Lastly, I feel that even if an emerging artist wants to self-start and promote using a blog (which worked just fine for Lily Allen), will they want to handle t-shirt distribution in Australia ten years from now? Is that what guitar-players are struggling to get to? Incidentally, my startup is all about solving this problem by disengaging the license from the file. Let's see if it works. I have to get it built first.

jonursenbach 18y ago

With someone like Zed, I'd of thought that he'd know about CDBaby.

rs 18y ago
Think he does mention CD Baby (few paragraphs into the article)

vermontdevil 18y ago

One problem it seems to me is that once a site like this becomes successful, RIAA will enact stealthily measures to screw the site. I can see them flooding the site with copyrighted music and then suing the site in court for copyright violations, putting demands that music gets screened for copyright, etc. That will drive up the costs to a point where it's not profitable anymore. That is unless there's technology available that can accurately screen any uploads for copyright violations.

klon 18y ago

I work with http://www.klicktrack.com/mdt/ http://www.klicktrack.com/mdt/ which is a turn-key download store for artists and labels. We also offer a widget for integration with Myspace and blogs.