kesho: The Future of Music

Bram

An interesting article about Bram Cohen which talks about how Bittorrent could be used as a 'part iTunes part eBay'. Sort of what I'm thinking.

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1117681-1,00.html

What is a song worth?

So what is a song worth? They say in economics that the price someone is willing to pay for something is what it is worth. But there must also be some value above the price which makes it all worthwhile. You wouldn't give someone $1 for $1, it's not worth it.

What does this have to do with music?  With everyone talking about the price of CD's, the impact of CD burning and file sharing, pirate music and the stranglehold of the music industry, I think it is interesting to think about what a song really is worth.

The answer, of course, is that it depends.

'Hey Jude' as a song is probably worth millions of dollars. That is the value of owning all the rights to that song. But hearing it played as I drive to work in the morning (or on Love Song Dedications at night more likely) is worth considerably less. In fact the cost of a song on the radio to me is sitting through (boring, annoying) ads.

So what are all the situations where a song is valued? Here is my thoughts with my relative value estimate.

1. Listen to a song privately in a fixed location - lounge room with CD player, radio. $0.01
2. Listen to a song privately while moving - car. $0.02
3. Listen to a song privately while movine - walking, jogging $0.03
4. Listen to a song while at a party - private. $0.10
5. Listen to a song while at a party - public (at a pub). $0.50
6. Listen to a song played live for you - at a rock festival. $3.00
7. Listen to a song played live for you at a one band concert. $6.00
8. Listen to a song played live for you personally. $1,000

Now of course all of this depends upon the musician, the song, the timing, etc. But you get my drift.

The key point here is that 90% of music listened to is only very little value. Your life at that point (in the car, around the house, jogging) can go on without the music. It's nice, but it's not critical. The only reason why you pay $20 for a CD is because you can listen to it 100 times and get the price per song down to a good value. That is why people don't buy music they don't know. But you might take the risk if it was 1c per listen?

Music in my life is priceless. It is a luxury, but I love that music is in my life.

What is music worth to you? What is a song worth?

eBay for Music - short version.

What if we were to create an eBay for music? But you don't have to bid on it, you just buy it. The seller picks the price and all the other terms.

Here is the short version.

A new band produces some songs and instead of getting a record deal where they get screwed over, they put their music up for sale on a site.

They can do this now, but the big challenges are distribution and marketing - two things which the music industry both control. For so many small bands selling small amounts of music you need a very efficient way of distributing and promoting. 

Distribution - Peer to Peer.

Good peer-to-peer, not evil peer-to-peer. You use Creative Commons licensing to protect the music to some degree, but otherwise you just let it go. Files distributed on peer-to-peer are typically 95% cheaper than distributing via the web and 500% cheaper than distributing via CD.

You also encourage sharing music by rewarding the uploaders.

When a new song is downloaded, people can try it for a period, and then they get a message asking if they want to buy it. If they buy it, some goes to the band (most), some goes to the uploader, some goes to the promoter (if I put it on my blog) and a bit goes to the central service (to pay for admin, servers, etc).

Marketing - central and decentral

So their is a single site, or app that you can go to or get that lets you browse via genre, artist, most downloaded, most purchased, newest, etc.

Each song, album, band has a URL that you can link to, so I can IM, email or link to anything to promote it and tell my friends what I'm listening to right now.

That's the start of it. I believe it can work but need some help. I'm sure that with open source development and all the resources out there that we can put together this system and run it like a democratic commons. All the money that it makes goes back into making more music or making the system better for the musicians and the fans.

Let's make music about music again.

Anyone?

Long Version...

Things to Think About

A list of things we need to think about - principles, challenges, risks, etc.

Principles;
* This about music, not money.
* This is about more music, not music elites.
* This is not about free music, this should be about the music industry being fairly rewarded for what they do, which hopefully means more musicians earning a decent living and less rich music company owners.
* Music can be very cheap, and we hope that by making it more freely available, musicians will get more money because more people will buy it. A bigger pie and more for everyone.
* This is about world music, not any one country.

To think about;
* We want music to flow freely, but we want a way for musicians to be paid.
* There is a lot of good music and a lot of bad. The music industry used to pick the winners. 'The people' should pick the winners and diversity should flourish.
* DRM sucks and we want a way to have music where and when you want it, on whatever device you have. Maybe a central record to show all the music you own and once you've bought it you can get it anywhere, anytime.
* Each time a song is played the value is pretty low. The easiest way to value this is to think what you'd pay to play a song on a jukebox. It's about a dollar (or less if you bulk buy) and this is for one play in a specific environment. What is a fair price to pay to own a song forever and play it whenever you want? It depends on the song and the person. I might be in love with a new song and pay $1 for it, or I might just be exploring a new band and pay 10c for it. We need flexibility in pricing for bands.

Big topics;
* Paying - paypal, etc
* Getting paid -
* Stopping copyright material
* The software to do it
* Flexibility in the terms.
* How do we get bands to sign up to this and not a record deal?
* Other companies have tried this (Cornerband) and failed. Why did they fail?

New Ideas for Music

This blog is dedicated to finding new ways to support the world of music.

Music is universal.
Music is a great part of life.
Music is a part of being human.

For the last sixty years, music has become money. An industry and some musicians have been more focused on making money than making music. This is not good for music and it is not good for life.

Things are changing. When a small group of people try and control something that is loved by the masses they will eventually lose. The harder they try to hold onto it, the more it slips away.

The music industry has done some good things for music. They built a mechanism for music to be shipped round the world in a way that was affordable for many people. The record and the CD made music global. But then they got greedy. Their job is to protect their assetts and reward their shareholders. They do this by making money out of music. You make money out of music by controlling distribution and marketing. Change is a threat. Uncontrollable change is death.

With massive amounts of cash, the music industry is powerful. They are not going to go down without a fight. They probably cannot be beated head on. If 'the people' want an alternative we have to make one, support it passionately and be patient as it grows.

The reality is that initially only a small proportion of music lovers will support a new model. Also, probably only a small proportion of musicians, but we must let it grow.

I have an idea of a system that 'might just be crazy enough to work'.

This blog is for people to make comments and suggestions and ask questions about creating a new system. If the mass of people really want something new, then the mass of people can make it happen.

If you want to contact me please email me on mliubinskas At hot mail

What Artists Need

From Big Energy Norman;

fundamentals for an artist are:

1. create something good
2. refine it
3. practise
4. get out and get in front of fans
5. build a profile
6. let users connect with your music
7. repeat and use whatever leverage you can

Marketing is where it is at?