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What I would really like to see is a non-profit alternative to Tunecore/CDBaby/DistroKid, submitting music for digital distribution and disbursing streaming roy

by rectang 11y ago

What I would really like to see is a non-profit alternative to Tunecore/CDBaby/DistroKid, submitting music for digital distribution and disbursing streaming royalties. Tunecore has a nice model and they were great for a while, then they jacked prices and forced out their founder. Distrokid seems good right now, but what's stopping them from pulling a Tunecore in the future? The only way to guarantee transparency and stability permanently is for the musicians themselves to control the distributor -- similar to how individual Members of the Apache Software Foundation control it. Speaking as a former mastering engineer and graphic designer, whatever QC DistroKid and Tunecore are doing can't be too hard to reproduce. I've often thought of writing some open source software for this purpose.

Zigurd 11y ago
Those services as investor owned enterprises are not the problem, and and a coop is not the solution. Don't assume there is any way to make selling, or streaming, recorded music pay for more than a few highly promoted musicians, and don't assume that the business of promoting those musicians can stay clean. Compared to performing and teaching music, selling a recorded performance is a relative novelty, and the business of it was always an irrational hits business and always more or less dirty. Recorded music disrupted performance, and vastly reduced the demand for music performers. Figure out how to reverse-disrupt that and you will do more to put more money in the pockets of more musicians than a novel way of selling recorded performances.
- aikah 11y ago
  > Recorded music disrupted performance, and vastly reduced the demand for music performers. This is totally untrue, on the contrary, recorded music has always been a way to promote music performances. It never disrupted performance. How can anyone say that? Before pop music and the record industry, there were no big concerts with thousands of people attending them. Recorded music boosted the demand for music performances.
- rectang 11y ago
  Investor-owned distribution would be a substantial incremental improvement over today, and it answers David Byrne's challenge to improve transparency. So what if it can't compete with vaporware?
aikah 11y ago
> The only way to guarantee transparency and stability permanently is for the musicians themselves to control the distributor -- similar to how individual Members of the Apache Software Foundation control it. Musicians are just musicians. You can't expect them to be developpers, sysadmin, sellsmen, accountants all at the same time while selling their music for pennies in a world fully of youtubes and co and where the audience don't want to pay for music anymore. Being Musician is a tough job at first place.

by rectang 11y ago

Zigurd 11y ago

Those services as investor owned enterprises are not the problem, and and a coop is not the solution. Don't assume there is any way to make selling, or streaming, recorded music pay for more than a few highly promoted musicians, and don't assume that the business of promoting those musicians can stay clean. Compared to performing and teaching music, selling a recorded performance is a relative novelty, and the business of it was always an irrational hits business and always more or less dirty. Recorded music disrupted performance, and vastly reduced the demand for music performers. Figure out how to reverse-disrupt that and you will do more to put more money in the pockets of more musicians than a novel way of selling recorded performances.

aikah 11y ago
> Recorded music disrupted performance, and vastly reduced the demand for music performers. This is totally untrue, on the contrary, recorded music has always been a way to promote music performances. It never disrupted performance. How can anyone say that? Before pop music and the record industry, there were no big concerts with thousands of people attending them. Recorded music boosted the demand for music performances.
rectang 11y ago
Investor-owned distribution would be a substantial incremental improvement over today, and it answers David Byrne's challenge to improve transparency. So what if it can't compete with vaporware?

aikah 11y ago

> The only way to guarantee transparency and stability permanently is for the musicians themselves to control the distributor -- similar to how individual Members of the Apache Software Foundation control it. Musicians are just musicians. You can't expect them to be developpers, sysadmin, sellsmen, accountants all at the same time while selling their music for pennies in a world fully of youtubes and co and where the audience don't want to pay for music anymore. Being Musician is a tough job at first place.