With the creation of a new music service that benefits artists who are already ridiculously rich, here’s an alternative idea:
Create a streaming service for independent music.
Here’s the idea:
– there is a massive number of sites that review indie music, right? So why not bring their reviews together and create a “metacritic”-type site that initially serves music based on the average review score.
As listeners have a chance to listen (or not), the number of plays on the site can take over as the main scoring mechanism.
– the creators of the service can start out by getting paid a decent salary, but nothing exorbitant. As the service picks up steam, the revenues go to the artists until all artists receive 80% (or whatever is agreed on) of revenues from their music. Beyond that, the site keeps the money as profit. This ensures that artists get paid _before_ the site makes any large amount of profit, rather than the site being based on pimping its artists and giving them left-overs.
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I’m not sure if anyone has done anything like this, but if they have, I’d gladly support it. If not, I hope you steal this idea — or better yet, several people can steal it and create an alternative indie music industry on the Internet that actually pays musicians first.
The real question is: how do we eliminate middlemen and create a technology that is fair to the artist — in a way that is transparent to the extent that the artist also feels that their compensation is fair?
Neither Spotify nor the other streaming music services have done that to any satisfactory degree. That’s why this idea matters.
Reblogged this on SUMU Spotlight and commented:
You are thinking in the right direction, but most people listen to music to do exactly that.. listen. Offering reading material to people will not likely generate, especially in the internet age.
For this idea to work, some great music publicists would need to be involved on a day in day out basis. Those types of organizations already exist in Pitchfork, Hypebot, etc. If Pitchfork launched their own streaming service, then we would have a perfect example of the company you describe.
I think the solution to the music industry issue is soon to hit the market and spread like wildfire. That is: the exploration of alternate forms of currency and payment.
Technological and intellectual advance of culture is always fueled by a general interest in improving art. TIDAL may have been the spark of lifeblood and publicity that the music industry, and maybe capitalism, needed. It was an S.O.S. from the popular faces we respect as the best, and I believe that music fans the world over will respond in kind with ideas that will leave the rest of us wide eyed and drooling.
Hi keithbaudry, thanks for your thoughts.
“Offering reading material”? Not sure what you mean, there.
A “Pitchfork + streaming” idea could be a move in the right direction.
An “artists first” revenue model combined with aggregating reviews from multiple reputable sources may be an ideal starting point.
To my knowledge, advances in technology and culture most often come as the result of war between countries and/or deep-pocketed patrons (including governments) paying for passion projects. This is true from the painting of Mona Lisa to the invention of the Internet. Throughout history, the average person has usually been too trapped scrabbling for a few pesos to be able to worry or care about “art”. As we witness now on the Internet, the “common man” still has very little grasp of the value of time or creativity, and so we see a myriad of psuedo-moral rationalizations for what essentially amounts to stealing all forms of digitally creative work.
That’s the key question here, really: when given the opportunity, will people choose to do the right thing?
Tidal’s only apparent purpose is to use streaming as another brand marketing avenue for super-wealthy artists who already have tip-of-the-tongue, top-of-mind name recognition. Stratospherically successful artists (Jay-Z, Taylor Swift) need neither profit to fund their work, nor recognition of their skill, nor do they need fame from new fans to fuel interest and gain visibility. The stated purpose of Tidal is at variance with the multi-millionaires pretending to represent the “little guy”. We see cracks in the shimmering facade due to their reluctance/refusal to divulge details about their revenue model in regard to paying artists.
Jay-Z does say many of the right things, though. And so do politicians around election time. I don’t pretend to know his motives, but if you look at how the available facts fit, there is an incongruity that’s hard to ignore.
Another key difference here would be to attract truly “indie” artists who may not be tied up in artist management issues. This could remove the unnecessary mass of middlemen, as well as the intellectual property gouging and artist throat-cutting that was par for the course in the pre-digital era. All of that becomes superfluous when the artist can connect directly with the consumer.
In order for artists (of all kinds) to truly become independent, they/we need to own the rights to our work.
A “fair-pay” approach like this one puts all terms and conditions upfront and in central view, no hype or shifty tactics required.
Face the Music:
Copyright laws are antiquated and showing their age.
Look at youTube. Look at Facebook making BILLIONS off its users identities, which SURELY they own ? nope.
The only thing anybody owns at all is their own mind. Technology owns the rest. The only ownership you have over an item is the history you have with it. Even your supposed ‘identity’ is owned and administered by someone else.
That you can ‘own’ a sound is arguable, to say the least. Can you own a visual? I would never sue anyone over the content of their visual movie in comparison to mine. What is the purpose? The truth remains true, regardless of all misconceptions. If you truly did creat something, you are justified and vindicated by its growth. You have done your job, you have added to the growth of the plane.t
The music industry needs to offer its product in order to be successful: cd’s, vinyl records, and live music tickets are popular, but now with free digital libraries and youtube videos, people think “I can get the ‘greatest hits’ of all music” right where they sit. Damn them. In the words of FRANK, “Music is shit!”
However, there exists a wealth of bands beneath this top market TIDAL tier. These smaller bands function on a level where people are more invested in each other’s lives than they are in the particular sound of the group. They are led by and surrounded by some pretty intelligent folks, and I can’t imagine they aren’t the ‘next tide to roll in’.
Even their relationships are not theirs to keep or to micromanage. Anything involving other people expands the intrapersonal and becomes a shared item; owned in part by every witness and participant.
If it is impossible to say you own the music, what can you own ? A small business ?
Where music is headed is OFF THE CHARTS. No one will be able to explain how it happened.
Either that…. or it is dying extinct.
Yes, copyright laws have problems. The bigger problem is that the laws are abused by large corporations to bully smaller operators and control the market.
If you can’t tell the genuine article from a rip-off, then it might be useful for the original creator to be able to say, “hey, Person X ripped off my idea and made a massive amount of money from it!” (for example, the song Blurred Lines).
So yes, if you put you’re time. energy and life’s work into creating a piece of art (or science, or engineering), you can expect to be able to defend it against (at least some of those) who might want to plagiarize for their own financial gain.
Likewise, if you give up the right to privacy because someone sells you the idea that “sharing” is now mandatory, then we will all suffer from the commercialization of our identities at our own expense.
You might think of it as inspiration and community versus profiteering and stealing. These are very different things and must be seen as such if we want an outcome that protects our rights and encourages creative freedom.
“However, there exists a wealth of bands beneath this top market TIDAL tier. These smaller bands function on a level where people are more invested in each other’s lives than they are in the particular sound of the group.”
This is the group who would benefit from a “fair-pay streaming” concept. People who would steal creative work won’t suddenly stop doing that, any more than a petty thief would suddenly stop to contemplate the moral implications of pickpocketing before lifting the next person’s wallet. The key is to identify and engage this “invested tier” who love music and want to see smaller artists survive and thrive.