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Music Media

The Virtual Tip Jar 201

Posted by emmett from the squeezebox dept.
kemokid writes: "At last, an example of what Courtney Love was talking about. Fairtunes is a site set up to allow users to tip musicians directly. You can read the Music Dish news story about it." $269 and change donated so far, I'm interested to see where this one goes.
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Fairtunes: The Virtual Tip Jar More

Fairtunes: The Virtual Tip Jar

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  • I have to wonder though: What do the artist's contracts look like? Do they have to split these tips with their labels because they are revenues generated from jointly produced work?

    There's no proof that you are paying them for the albums that have been produced on their current label. You might only like their earlier stuff on a different label, or, in theory, you might be paying them for the enjoyment that you got out of seeing them live before they ever released anything. So I don't see how their current record label has any claim to the money. If you were tipping for a particular album, then things would probably be different.
  • I wish that it were easier for people that distribute their own music to open merchant accounts with credit card companies... this should be doable by individuals who could define their own rates and not have to worry about how big of a pie slice they've recieved or if the accounting is accurate. I know that when you put cd's out on consignment to stores that it can be like pulling teeth to get the right amount from the merchant - if the artist could _easily_ be enpowered it would be so much better.
    As it is, most music sites set up an alliance deal with amazon and have to sell the whole cd and don't sell all that much... it would be great to have like 45 seconds to a minute of each song on a relase with a checkbox next to it and a credit card form beneath and charge like 35 cents or whatever a song. Yeah, I know there are some sites that do this for multiple artists, I just would like to cut the entities down to artist, consumer, credit card company, and make it easy for the artist to set up....
  • Furthermore, it looks like the increased attention has either attracted a hacker or caused a crash in their tallying software. A glance a few moments ago (~1450 EST) reveals that -1 donations have been made, with a grand total of $0

    Bravo, /. for a job well done.

  • One problem with your analogy is that we are not comparing apples to apples by comparing GM to Record Labels/RIAA/Artists. If I had a magic transmorgifier that I could point at a Corvette, hit a button and have an almost perfect copy appear from nowhere would it be stealing for me to climb in and drive away?

    I think the basic argument in support of Iintellectual Property is beginning to fail. One cannot expect that a finite amount of effort like creating a digital recorded music source for a given song should be rewarded in perpetuity. Artists should be paid for performance not for recording, and recordings should be made only to promote and support the artists performace.

    A final thought do you really believe that anyone undermining another companies business model deserves to be sued? Should Barnes and Noble sue Amazon.com?


    Richard

  • Clearly you've never been a waiter. Originally, back say 50 years ago, tips were an optional way to say thank you to somebody who was paid fairly well by a company. Today however, waiters and other "tipped" jobs get no money from the establishment. Before becoming successful, I was a waiter at a resataurant in a resort town. THe establishment paid $2.33 an hour at a time when minimum wage was $5.15. Restaurants are allowed to pay below minimum wages because a 10% minimum tip is considered mandatory by the government. Usually my paychecks didn't even cover the tax on my real wages, the tips. Hence, my paychecks read like this: "$0.00--Non-negotiable". How would you like to get that on your paycheck when there are assholes out there who are expected to give at least 10% and stiff you on it? Essentially, waiters are NOT paid to do their job. THey rely on tips to pay their rent.
  • the world would be a much better place without the promotion. we wouldn't have crappy artists like britney spears dimonating the airwaves. people would listen to music based on the talent of the artist, not the spending habits of their distributor. and we can't "take our business elsewhere" because the RIAA has a monopoly, the same way that Microsoft does. sites like fairtunes are all about destroying that monopoly. the sooner the RIAA caeses to exist, the better off we all will be.
  • Heh-heh-heh-heh.... That's ingenious. Thanks!!
  • OK, just a remark :
    You can't have a company managing it.
    A company is seeking profit that it'll even take from the artist' revenue.
    If the goal is to deliver art that'd directly benefit its creators, then the system has to be managed by a non-profit organization.
    --
  • People pay much less attention to the artist than the actual music.

    Then why did so many smash their Milli Vanilli records?
    Did the music suddenly sound different because it was two fat guys singing?

  • e-gold looks interesting. However, what is needed is a standard for micropayments, otherwise buyers and sellers will both have to use the same e-currency provider in order to trade.
    Fortunately the World Wide Web Consortium [w3.org] has one cooking [w3.org].
  • I'm not being naive. I know how the industry works. $20 for a daggon CD is still unreasonble. Saying "we would prefer you not to use napster" is a little bit less extreme than making a lawsuit over it.

    What would the reason for being an AC be?

  • Okay then, s/MTA/"MailThingie"/
    =)
  • The newly released distributed file system called Mojo Nation [mojonation.net] that has something like this. It uses a digital cash-like system to create an economy in resources (disk space, bandwidth, and CPU). All transactions are paid for in Mojo. Artists/publishers can also be tipped directly. It's a very cool system, check it out.

    It's still under development but all open source. They have a site on SourceForge.

    Burris

  • In New York city, everybody tips. There is a social stigma associated with people who do not tip.

    With the anonymity the web provides, there is nobody to stigmatize those who don't pay. As you said, tipping is done far more often when there are social pressures. Without anybody to see you, the social influence is greatly diminished. That's not to say banner ads etc. won't eventually work, but they probably won't be as powerful as you suggest without public recognition of those who do/don't contribute.

  • Not if you are listening to 24 bit audio ;-)

    From what I'm told, digital @ 16bits can suck, but if its done correctly, it can be good as well.

    However, digital at 24 bits is very good, beyond the range of human hearing.

    For example, why hasnt anyone developed better than 24 bit color? Because its pointless...

    Then again, with crappy 16 bit systems you can really screw up the music...

    As for mp3s, they really do sound crappier. But then again, I built my own Vacuum Tube amp, built speaker cables from cat5 (is there anything it cant do?)...

  • "Killing the RIAA" will not only not decrease the amoung of teen pop music produced, but it will significantly increase the amount of teen pop music produced. Here's why: when artists start selling direct, they get to keep ALL of their profits, instead of having most of the money skimmed off in order to pay for unprofitable artists. Britney Spears sold 12 million copies of her first album, but probably got very little royalties from it (probably less than $10 million). If she sold direct, she could have $120,000,000.00 or maybe even more. She could re-invest this money into promoting herself even further, and become even more pervasive. Today only 10% of artists make money, but they are subsidized by the profitable artists (through the record company). When the record companies disappear, so will 90% of artists, the artists who can't make money.

    There are various other reasons why teen music will be so successful: artists will be forced to impress listeners with short, catchy snippets, and teen pop music is the only kind of music which is catchy. Moreover, in "online distribution" there is much more emphasis on hit singles (which is the realm of the top 40 teen singer), instead of actual albums. All of this tells me that top 40 teen music will be extremely successful after the record companies go out of business, and that almost nothing else will be produced.

  • I think the egotism and the individual arrogance of these recent posts is pathetic. A waiter's job (just like anybody's job) is his or her JOB, not his SOUL. Some customers are sure that since they control the waiter's TIP that they control the PERSON. Those are the people that get on waiters' nerves. No person is any other person's "GOD" to quote the last post. Rather, they are just other people, on the other side of the transaction. Tips are an expected part of the price of eating out, and people who can not afford to tip properly should not go out to eat. Your 15% WILL help the waiter pay your rent; it WILL NOT leave the waiter eternally grateful to you or forever in your debt. Right or wrong, most waiters have very little stake in the restaurant itself. They work as independent agents. As the restaurant essentially pays them nothing, the restaurant is really only providing them with a place in which to do their business, much like an office building provides companies with a place to do their business. The customer's only power over the waiter is the tip. Hence, if you, the customer, piss off the waiter, he/she has the right to make the choice that your pathetic tip isn't worth dealing with your lording over them. Once they have made the decision to forego your tip, you have no control over them, and no amount of bitching to their managers will change that. Hence, if you want good service, you need to be courteous and understanding, and give a generous tip, just as you expecting them to be courteous and understanding and provide you with good service. It IS a two-way street, and the power-dynamics go both ways. All you are to the server is a possible revenue stream. All they are to you is a go-between with the chefs.
  • It is unclear how the tipping system will really work with the anonymity of the internet, i.e. we do not know that small bands will get paid. I think there has been some research which showed that people tip waiters and waitresses to make themselves look good.. and not to get better future service. This means systems like fairtunes should try to make people who tip look good, i.e. publish your handle on a list of people who contribute to this artists AND give a message to the artist for you---the artist will tend to give your message a short read when it has money attached.

    Actually, it might be possible to implement a tipping system based on email.. if you had one of those attach money to your emails things that people sometimes talk about.
  • I would use something like this to give kudos to my favorite artists. If this tip jar idea is properly implemented, MP3 could still revolutionize the way music is distributed, and the artists would still get paid. And Lars might just shut the hell up.:)

    On a somewhat unrelated note, MP3s have been outlawed at my company. They're doing company-wide scans and are threatening some pretty ugly repurcussions if someone is caught with MP3s on their hard drive.

    I had to blow away a gig of them yesterday... *sigh* Anyone else experiencing anything similar, as a result of the Napster debacle?

  • Considering how many years labels have been selling CD's for far more than the cost of production and distribution
    It's called a Profit. It's what companies are in business for. If you're looking for freebies, go to a soup kitchen or your local Salvation Army. Don't go looking for it in the Corporate world. If you do, you'll be disappointed.
    Tell me the truth, if you were a record industry Exec(or any Exec for that matter), you wouldn't try to make as much money as you can? If you had millions of suckers paying $17.00 for a product that costs a percentage of that, you'd be happy as a pig in sh*t. Admit it, you'll feel better once you do. ;-)
    Moderators, this isn't flamebait, it's my opinion.
  • another ac wrote:

    How do the Record Companies get Paid? This is still unfair to them.
    Considering how many years labels have been selling CD's for far more than the cost of production and distribution, a scheme like this ought to even things out in a decade or so.


    SO, when does the revelution against the cereal companies start? They are selling their cereal for a lot more than the cost of production and distribution. Face it, the record companies aren't doing anything that any other industry is doing. They are maximizing profits. The are shelling out a lot of money to make and advertise records, and they want to get a lot of money back for that investment. When you spend a lot, you expect to make a lot.

  • In my experience, small amounts of cash + Visa = skimming.

    You're correct, but not because of the nature of administrators IMO. Even honest administration can't get around the fact that Visa makes very small transactions un-economic [e-gold.com], and makes person to non-merchant-person transactions impossible.

    Fairtunes is interesting, and anything's better than the RIAA as a middleman, but if Courtney Love would ever-in-hell listen to me about e-gold [e-gold.com] some really interesting things could happen. Yes, if e-gold is the tip jar, there's a small spend fee & storage fee, and you have to get used to a market with lots of merchants who have different bid/ask spreads. If Fairtunes uses e-gold [e-gold.com] properly, it should be good for both artists and me (just a guy who likes art).

    It's easy to do things like my Dutch friends did with "The Plant" by Steven King [arbitrix.com] even if artists have never even heard of e-gold [e-gold.com] (Thanks for covering only hype, instead of fundamentals, news media of the planet!).
    JMR
    (Ok, I'll try to stop posting on this subject.)

  • One program to the connect them all: MailOne

    Don't you mean:

    One MTA to rule them all, one MTA to find them
    One MTA to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

  • People pay much less attention to the artist than the actual music.

    I really wish I could believe that. In many cases it may be true but it is obvious that the modern "record industry" is trying to sell the artist rather than the music. That's why we see all this crap like "Making the band", "The personality behind Britney Spears", "The legal battle between Eminem and his mom" etc. And people like that. If I meet one more gossip hog.... (well that's another story).

    It's not about the music, it's about being famous and making rich people even richer (and obviously I don't mean the artists). And since so much is put into this people pay attention. How many die hard Beatles fans ONLY listened to their music and didn't try and get all the intimate details of every band member's life?

    Well this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.

    --
    Garett Spencley

  • Yeah right (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Put up some obscure dotcom somewhere which 99.999% of Napstering music fans have never heard about, and then when (not if) the idea doesn't fly blame the "darn pirates".

    Sigh.

    The site is /.'d so I can't get there. But tell me, how else to pay except with a credit card? What if I don't live in a credit card -based consumer culture (ie. USA)? What will I use to pay in that case?
  • Interesting interpretation of Locke.. He (a fervent capitalist) believed (as far as I have read) that you (and only you) have the natural right to profit from your work/service (performing/editting/producing/promoting/distribut ing music being just this).

    Prehaps you are referring to the works of Marx? I believe he espoused that there is no natural right for profit from ownership. Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Marx profess that work for profit is wrong? I can see where you would get Marx and Locke confused, what with their completely inconsistent ideologies and all.

    Perhaps you do not think that information is the product of work and therefore can be owned? What about those that build houses. Is one capable of owning a house (the product of work and information and raw materials)? Is the house not worth more than the raw materials and work involved? If the house is not worth more than the raw materials and work, then why is there variable "property value?" This is an intangible that can be owned. The intangible revolves around aestheitcs and neighborhood, both of which are being purchased with a house. Otherwise, why would poorer people live in horrible sections of cities with less desireable homes? So it is possible to own an intangible and profit from it--whether it be safer neighborhoods or cash in the wallet.

  • On a pressing that has large appeal (appeal being your hypothetical limiting factor), media cost is negligable compared with production and promotion costs.
  • I agree, it's a pain. Furthermore, the credit card part is also a pain. I mean, I haven't memorized my flippin' numbers. Have you memorised yours?

    What if there was an X.com (PayPal) tie-in, where all you need to remember is your email address? Even better, I think.
  • (Score 4, Interesting), huh?

    If I were moderating at the moment it would be more likely to be

    (Score -1, Blatant Spam)

    but then I guess there's no accounting for taste.
  • I think that ever since the basis of trade moved away from direct barter, there has been a middleman interjecting into the transaction. Historically, you look at the merchant (read middleman) class as those who supply goods and services, streamlining the channels of supply from supplier to customer.

    With the record industry, there are two problems that circumvent this theoretical model:
    1. The product has the ability to vocalise thier grievances
    2. The customer, nowadays, doesn't necessarily have to pay for the goods that they use.

    The model has broken down. In order for the customer to understand that the only way that he/she may continue to enjoy the product offerings of the (artist/service/product) in question is to voluntarily, out of the goodness of their own hearts, pay people for what they produce.

    This must set the recording industry on edge, as they have made gods out of their icons (to suit thier own nefarious purposes) for 100 years.

    Are we to constantly swallow this? I don't think so. I honestly believe, simply because I espouse a vaguely libertarian philosophy, that it is my right to hear what I choose, and pay for it if it is valuable to me.

    Maybe, the record industry has to climb off its high horse, recognise that both the artists and its customers don't need them anymore, and perhaps get a life.
  • don't own most of this music the RIAA will still complain about it and be exposed for the bastards they are. At least this is what I hope will happen.
  • You go girl!

    Here's a link [liberzine.com] to an article at liberzine (originally posted at ars-technica [arstechnica.com]). It's a good read. For those too lazy to follow the link here's the quote posted at ars:

    The artist once again known as Prince was onto something when he sold his five-CD set "Crystal Ball" exclusively on the Web without the help of record companies, distributors, or record stores. On his website, he advertised the album and told his fans he would release not one song until he had 100,000 pre-orders for the entire record. He sold 250,000 copies and kept 95 percent of the revenue which industry experts estimate at $5 million.

    Because recording artists only get 10 to 12 percent of a CD's retail price, selling directly to the fans is a boon to them. "We got paid!" Prince said, "More than for the last five to six albums on Warner. It's straight-up money, and the check's on time, not quarterly."

  • Slashdot Effect. (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11, 2000 @02:52AM (#863143)
    Why do I know the site will now feel the slashdot effect, but not the tip jar?
  • With high volume (and by high we mean only a few thousands transactions a month) that drops down to next to nothing. And when that happens we will drop the service fees and get even more of your money to the artists.

    Also with the shopping cart model you can send money to multiple artists on one invoice and the .23 cents is spread across all of those 'tips'. Matt
    co-founder
    Fairtunes [fairtunes.com]

  • ...between those, we're looking at what? 40% of the total? Maybe 30%? It's a big chunk, but that's not the main difference.

    Promotion does not benefit the end user in any way. It just sticks stuff in your face whether you want it or not. It's a hostile act and if I can avoid paying for it, I will.

    Promotion is often a much larger cost than production, too. When things are freely available on the internet, people find the good ones whether someone's spending lots of money pushing them or not. "Promotion" costs, like "distribution" costs, are really control costs. If you give up control, these things take care of themselves.

    The internet is as much a more responsive and convenient a distribution system than retail CDs as email is a faster and convenient a way of sending messages than paper mail. With the support of the producers, it would be as convenient as radio with more choice than retail CDs.

    So now we're down to production cost. No agents, no "label", no printer, no retailer, nothing. Production costs, hand it off to a fan site, and it's in everybody's home who wants it.

    Add in the ability for anybody, anywhere to donate money in various automated, convenient ways, and there's your advantage.

    If people are willing to make the donations, they'd only have to pay about 5-20% what they'd pay for CDs. That is the advantage of buskware. More money for producers, less money out of the users' pockets, no money for parasitic middlemen. Everybody who counts is happy, and the others can go do some honest work.

    ---
    Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.

  • Here's my TIP (Score:3)

    by AbbyNormal ( 216235 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @02:55AM (#863146) Homepage
    NO MORE BRITNEY SPEARS!

    I never eat a sig cuz my sig is a crock...

  • ...would have better luck methinks. There people give them money for several reasons. In the case of tipping our musicans though, most of the public (I fear, but hopefully I'm wrong) is still going to think that these musicans have made their money, blah, blah, blah. The exception of course is for the people who do understand the ongoing battle against RIAA and support it.

  • I always find it disturbing that people seem to belive that because companies exist to make profit they are under no obligation to act with any morality or fairness whatsoever. It seems by this reasoning its ok to treat your wokers like slaves or make unsafe products because, hey, they are motivated by the almighty dollar and thats it.

    I am not saying that every corporation should become a charity. But I feel corporations have (almost) as much responsibility as citizens to benefit their community. Otherwise you get situations like we have now, where they will grab as much power and money as they can, with no concern for how it affects consumers, or how good a value they really provide in their product. I guess thats what bugs me, I would like companies to be motivated by providing the better value (the best, or the cheapest or however they judge it), and not by forming cartels and spreading FUD.
  • As to middlemen, let them find jobs where they are producing something of value, or performing a service, or even being middlemen in a transaction where they can add value (e.g. almost anything where the product can't be distributed instantly anywhere for practically nothing).

    For an example of this, look at travel agents. They used to just book airline tickets for you, and hold them until you came and picked them up. But ETKT and airline websites made that business model obsolete. So now a good travel agent offers services over and above, like itinerary planning, locale-specific advice, emergency assistance services, etc, thereby adding value to the transaction.

    The same thing happens in any commoditized marketplace, and despite what that fool Lars Ulrich says, music is a commodity (altho' it's not fungible).

    But one thing that keeps getting forgotten is that the music industry is like the venture capital industry or the pharmaceutical industry: for every huge success, there are many, many expensive failures. Do you honestly believe that if word of mouth was all an artist had, your favourites would be heard above the hubbub? The music industry does need brokers.

  • The site is /.'d so I can't get there. But tell me, how else to pay except with a credit card? What if I don't live in a credit card -based consumer culture (ie. USA)? What will I use to pay in that case?

    Don't forget that Napster is being sued because they allegedly infringe the rights of the RIAA -- are these laws still being infringed if both the sender and recipient of the .mp3 are outside the US?

    As always, there's only one country in the world, and I'm not living in it -- I'm over in Australia instead :)
  • Maybe they decided to do this because of the runaway success of PayLars.com [paylars.com]... :-)


    --
  • The Street Performer Protocol has little relation to the operating procedure of street performers (a.k.a. buskers): a price is set and must be matched. Have you ever seen a busker with a sign, "I'm only playing the first half of this song, if there isn't $10 in my hat by the end of the first half, I won't play the second half."? It doesn't fit the analogy at all.

    I'd instead try "I'm going to keep doing this annoying street mime until there's $10 in the hat. The quicker you pay me, the quicker I move on."

    :)

  • Also the "paying...for the enjoyment that you get out of seeing them live" is the same the ticket price--which ALSO largely goes to the label.

    I don't believe that's correct. Labels rarely get a piece of the revenue produced by ticket sales at live performances. That's one of the main arguments one could make against Courtney Love's claims that the artists are slaves to the label: The artists can make money from touring. (I still don't think it's fair for the label to keep the lion's share of the revenue from CD sales, but that's another issue.)

  • Re:Here's my TIP (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Britney Spears.... I would, wouldn't you?
  • Do they really need more money? Doesn't the x amount of millions they have already amount to enough???

  • But will they actually get the money? (Score:3)

    by Red Moose ( 31712 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @02:58AM (#863156)
    I don't really trust any of these things. Partly because there are a number of charities that request money, etc., but after a lot of "administrative" costs, the end-receiver does not get the main chunk of cash. Maybe this is different, but I don't know. In my experience, small amounts of cash + Visa = skimming.

    Also, the fact that my Visa card bank has a minimum charge of £5 means that I will pay more to the bank than to the actual company or artists!

  • Withdrawel (Score:3)

    by Dungeon Dweller ( 134014 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @03:00AM (#863157)
    Yes, I'd like to make a withdraw. Everyone who sold out or backstabbed their listeners owes me $5 each. Also, if you suck and get played on the radio all of the daggon time because you are what the companies want me to hear, that's $15. Eminem... The Real SlimShady will be $50. Not that I don't like the song, it's just been marketted to death... I liked it the first 50 times I heard it, but when I had to suffer it being played every 3 songs while driving through New Jersey, your daggon company just went too far, bill it to them. Also, RIAA, for being a bunch of pricks, and destroying the industry's dignity and all that was right with it... And for all of the illegal things that you have done... And just because I don't like you... 15 million dollars, and I want you to sign a contract with some bands that don't suck. I have a list of them over here, including the ones that I like that you can keep, and the ones that you keep turning down that you should pick up, come and pick it up any time.

  • The revolution begins when joe bloggs unveils the free cereal duplicating machine that copies and distributes the cereal for free and the cereal companies begin to sue everyone in sight in the interests of protecting the farmer, when the farmer has signed a contract along the lines of

    The farmer borrows lots of money to buy and produce the cereal
    The farmer only get 5% of the sale price of the cereal
    When, and only when the loan has been paid off is the farmer allowed to receive any of the profits
    The cereal company still owns the farm and relevant equipment, and, should the farmer ever try and start a new cereal business the cereal company owns that too.

    Then we backlash against the cereal companies

  • great, a (perhaps) intelligent site in regards to mp3's and taking on RIAA and we're going to go in, get the site slashdotted, servers will be shut down, and the media can hype it up as a DDOS attack.....

    ...or maybe I got a little carried away at the end.

  • There's no proof that you are paying them for the albums that have been produced on their current label.

    I guess you didn't visit the site. There a form to fill out where you can specify an album or title you especially like. In any case, some artists have no previous label. Also the "paying...for the enjoyment that you get out of seeing them live" is the same the ticket price--which ALSO largely goes to the label.
    --
  • Jeez, that's pretty dumb. Are you allowed to listen to music at work? If so, there would be a very good case for challenging the new rule based upon the availability of thousands of completely legals MP3's at places like mp3.com.

    Of course, if their reasoning is based more on productivity or download bandwidth, it's slightly more understandable - but not much!

    Where do you work? The RIAA :-)

    "Give the anarchist a cigarette"
  • My guess is that they wouldn't get much (if any) of the money even if there are minimal (or no) administration charges.

    The record companies have them tied in to such horrible deals [mp3.com] that I would be highly surprised if they are even allowed to accept money gathered from this website. Though I'm sure Joe Blow, Record Exec would be happy to handle the check and make sure that it gets to the right place (ie. the record company's bank).

    ------
    IanO
  • That would account for the high death rate in the Country music arena.

  • King's popularity is mostly a function of his career with big-publishing and especially their marketing department. He can get away with the dollar a chapter deal because he's a big name. I really don't think nobodies, talented or otherwise, could pull off the same trick.
  • Napster handles arbitrary MP3 files, not JUST pirated albums :-) And the tune titles are entered free-form by readers, not in any particularly consistent format. So it's pretty hard for Napster to tell who the artists and tunes are in a format reliable enough to pay them from, much less find where to actually pay them. (Hint: A web site search engine can be tricked into finding the Free-Web-Page-Site page where you're running the clone of the official Pay Lars site. Tricking general-purpose search engines is one thing, but tricking one specific engine is easier, especially if there's a big financial incentive.)


    Besides, if you could find the specific album, that would be admitting Napster is designed for publishing ripped off records rather than designed for unsigned bands and home DJs to publish their own Napster Public Radio shows.

  • Ultimately, I don't think that a subscription model will work for unsigned/unknown bands.
    Of course, subscription would only concern access to notorious artists' works, like Courtney Love or any other that escaped a vampiring contract.
    I bet this system could also represent a viable opportunity for them.
    --
  • At a guess I'd say the important point is that you are tipping, not paying them, it is a personal gift from you to them. (can't get to the site right now for some strannnggg reason).

    Kinda like if you met them in the street, "Hey! Wow! Cool! Wizard! [musician's name]!, I love your stuff, especially [album name]. Here's a tenner, and ...spend it on food .... please?"
  • Funny you should mention McDonalds in the context of Britney Spears and N'Sync. I was in a McDonalds the other day, and in addition to promoting Britney Spears and N'Sync CDs and videos, they also had the Tiger Hitclip Player [tigertoys.com], a ~$5 widget that plays 1-inch-square memory chips with 60-second music recordings. I didn't have time to look at the technology or hear the sound quality, but besides Tiger's web site, there's an AP Wire story about one of the big toy shows where these things were demoed - you can get a player and an alarm clock, and there's a recording device as well, so if blanks are readily available and cheap, you can record clips and give them to your friends. Wonder how soon somebody starts issuing Pokemon stickers for the things :-)

    ===== From AP Wire Story =====

    Tiger, which is owned by toy giant Hasbro Inc., has the Yahoo! HitClips Downloader ($20). Kids can plug the unit into the speaker jack of their computer, play any music or audio they want online and record up to 60 seconds of the sound on a computer chip in the downloader. The recorded selection then can be played on the transportable downloader or on any of Tiger's HitClip products, including an alarm clock ($15), a boom box ($11) and a personal audio player ($8) -- none of which are linked to the computer.
    ============================

  • What struck me about Coutrney Love's interview was that so much of her concept of an artist is derived from the manner in which hollywood and the recording industry treat artists.

    When she uses terms like "creative person", or talks about how good recording execs are at masssaging the egos of their "talent", she's revealing how much she has bought into the whole system of maintaining stables of "talent". I mean really, who says artists have to be treated like gods, or treated by fans, distributors, managers in the manner the recording industry treats them? What Courtney Love is really saying, is that she likes the way the recording industry execs treats her, and wants internet content companies to massage her ego in the same way. Whether this is how all artists want to be treated is a different matter altogether.

    The nonsense about the sound quality of MP3s preventing someone from enjoying the performance is another strawman. The problem generally is that someone used a bad encoder, or a damaged recording to make the MP3. If one does it appropriately, MP3s have very good sound quality. If you're listening to something interesting, even an LP makes for an interesting listen. If you're listening to bad music, using a better format won't change anything.

    This attitude towards technology is not surprising at all. It feeds in perfectly with the strategy of the recording industries, where increasingly bad content (and yeah, I'll call it content if I want to Courtney, little of the mass entertainment produced by the music industry counts as art in my book) is released using increasingly sophisticated technology. Witness the quality of films produced by Hollywood, it has been steadily declining, as the quality of special effects and distribution media becomes better. Something most people have seen occur on the web, flashy sites, dumb content, high co-ordination with the point when LA become home to web-development companies.

    In sum, I think Courtney makes some great points in the essay. The distribution system used by the music industry is broken, and serves only their own purposes. It would be great to see an independent distribution mechanism arise which is efficient, and capable of rewarding the people who are most important to a music recording (or a book for that matter). Some of them may well require managers, or editors, to guide them (clearly Courtney excepts to have someone like this), but this fucntion should not be foisted on the distribution company. Why should artists who are mature enough to handle themselves, have to see some of their earnings diverted towards paying psychologist-managers to look after enfant terribles? Why should consumers have to pay more either? If the artist requires therapy, they should foot their own bill.

    The problem is, pop artists rely more on a cult of personality than their art. The recording industry loves it because they control the media that creates personalities (Hansen, Britney Spears, Jenifer Lopez, Leonardo DiCaprio). I'm more interested in the substance. So I'm not particularly interested in what Courtney Love does, but rather what she produces.

  • I don't purchase CD's.

  • We're both arguing pretty much the same point.

  • I will give a krispy one-dollar bill to any artist listed with this site every time I download a song I keep more than a week.

    My .02
    Quux26
  • Yes, in a competative market that is true, but there is evidence of price fixing by the record labels, which happends to be currently landing them in court. I wish I had the link

  • Re:But will they actually get the money? (Score:3)

    by acb ( 2797 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @04:26AM (#863210) Homepage
    I thought so too at first; but after I thought about it, changed my mind. What can the record companies do, after all? The payment is just a gift from fans to artists, not tied to CD sales or anything.

    Now if an artist went out and said "don't buy our CD, download it from Napster and send us a dollar", the company could have a case against them. I imagine something like that will end up happening; and it'll be interesting to see the way it goes.

    Though everywhere I look, I can see the recording industry pimps' luck running out. Thanks to Courtney Love, Steve Albini, the Napster case and the Internet, lots of people know what bastards they are, how they rip off all sides. Now that 90% of the industry is five massive companies in the process of becoming four, there is no doubt that the recording industry is inhuman, artless corporate greed on a massive scale. And now that they've sued mp3.com and Napster, and the head of Universal came out calling for an end to Internet anonymity so that they could rake in the profits unhindered, it's clear to see who the villains are. Witness their reversal on the work-for-hire bill; chances are the changing tide of public opinion forced their hand.

    It is only inertia that keeps the Big Five controlling the medium of recorded music. It no longer takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to record an album and promote it, thanks to advances in recording technologies and the Internet. The RIAA's role as gatekeepers depends on consumers and artists staying where they are. They can afford to lose Public Enemy and a few others, but they can't afford it turning into a mass exodus of artists to new distribution mechanisms. Eventually, they may get things like DVD Audio and SDMI put into place, where they control the means of encoding (as the MPAA does with DVD), and have a secure oligopoly. But that can only happen if their industry doesn't collapse like a house of cards first; hence, they're treading water.

    If the RIAA try to sue these people, or take the money from artists with lawyers, there will be an outcry, and their situation will worsen.

  • Sliding Scale doesn't work (Score:3)

    by uqbar ( 102695 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @04:30AM (#863213)
    As a music promoter who has presented numerous live shows that have "sliding scale" (voluntary) admission, I can tell you it really doesn't work. Those who could afford to pay twice the suggested cover pay a small fraction or nothing (they could afford $10, but pay $2). Those who have less money pay nothing or as close to the suggested cover as they can afford (say between $0 and $8). In then end though, I end up paying the band, the sound person, security, the hall, etc out of my own pocket.

    People imagine themselves to be generous, but few of us are as generous as we imagine.

    BTW, $269 wouldn't even pay for the 2" tape used to record one album...

  • I'd like to see a "tip" button on media players. It's the natural place for it. There could be provisions to auto-tip favorite performers/songs, as well as a tip budget manager built in.

    No fuss finding artists this way- like tossing a coin in a hat.

    For more on this, see Busking as a Form of Online Compensation [insound.com] at InSound.com

  • Re:Street Performer Protocol - misnamed (Score:3)

    by laborit ( 90558 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @07:48AM (#863227) Homepage
    What if you're a runaway success? You can't raise your price and not expect your customers to feel betrayed.


    One possible way:

    You think: I need $2000, and I have ~4000 listeners.

    You say: "I need about one dollar from each of you."

    Later, you think: I want to make five times as much, and I have ~40,000 listeners

    You say: "Now, just 50 cents per person!"

    In today's business model, it doesn't cost much more to listen to the most popular musicians (with the exception of live shows, and I'm not sure how much of that is venue-gouging). A CD is a CD, and the extra profit comes from volume.

    - Michael Cohn
  • I think the main problem with this is that it's a pain in the butt.

    Yup, I think it is. So let's say you download 25 songs by 15 different artists on napster one night. And you actually like, say, 5 of them enough to tip. So you're going to jump over to fairtunes.com and individually search through the database 5 times to find your artists and go throught the rigamarole of tipping them?

    Sure, if you're really committed. But it's a pain! What there needs to be is some kind of tie-in with, yes, napster or [insert p2p sharing system here] that collects info on what you've downloaded in a session, and provides an easy-to-click dialog saying "You've heard these 10 artists tonight. Check a box next to the ones you'd like to tip."

    Then, if you were subscribed to the service (or had a cookie set or something, whatever) it could even fill in a default amount for each and your credit card number. Click! You just used 1-click (tm) tipping online. Okay, better make it 2 clicks to avoid patent infringement :)

  • I think that fairtunes is a wonderful concept, and would love to watch it suceed as I dance through a meadow with faieries and leprechauns, but really........(sarcastic tone intended to imply that for the most part good natured, kind hearted people don't exist, Stephen King fans aside).

    As dougman said, I read about this two weeks ago and the money hasn't exactly been rolling in.
  • What if waitresses didn't get a salary but instead relied entirely on tips?

    They pretty much do, at least in this state. The minimum wage for tip-based jobs is rather lower than the normal minimum wage because, well, it's expected that you'll get tips to cover the difference. And if you're good, it'll probably get you a bit more.

    --

  • Micropayment or Subscription (Score:3)

    by mirko ( 198274 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @04:02AM (#863235) Journal
    One could also set a subscription service like :
    1. You go on an MP3 site and they charge you, say...
      • 5$ a month for limited downloads,
      • 10$ for unlimited radio-like broadcasts (you are only allowed to make a selection amongst a selection to which you contribute by vote)
      • or 50$ for unlimited downloads (whatever there is, you can accees it and download it).
    2. Regularly, statistics are gathered and artists get a percentage for what they got heard.
    Of course,this is a draft so it might sound incomplete, so, instead of [flames ¦ moderation], juste contribute and suggest.

    Some remarks before I click the Submit button :
    1. To work efficiently, the whole "site" would have to be a democratic and non-profit organization
    2. If commercial (one could give his music for free on such a site) MP3 would have to be signed though a quick MP3->WAV->MP3 conversion would mess it...

    --
  • (I'm playing the devil's advocate, by the way, so please don't moderate this as flame bait)

    I've seen the statement "we don't want all the money going to the middle man" tossed around here quite a bit, and it got me thinking... I bet most of us here who have jobs end up working for some sort of "middle man". So if we try to cut out the middle man in these transactions, aren't we in fact taking money away from our fellow workers' pockets? (i.e. the middle men will see a decline in revenue, have to cut wages/jobs, etc.)

    Okay, I'm done playing the advocate, I know that the above doesn't take into account all of the variables, but the fact is that for most products, middle men are necessary. There aren't a whole lot of CD manufacturing plants that have walk-up counters with cashiers, ready to take our orders. And our economic system seems to be built on the idea of having tons of distributors and resellers and retailers and whatnot, which in turn gives lots of people a job and food on their tables.

    Just something I thought that people might want to think about.

  • Re:What's wrong with the middle men? (Score:5)

    by jamused ( 125583 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @04:35AM (#863238) Homepage

    What's wrong with middlemen is that unless they add significant value to the transaction, they are parasites. If so, everyone else involved would be strictly better off if they were eliminated. If the middlemen eat 90% of the transaction costs (by no means unreasonable if you're talking about music), if the musician could deal directly with the consumer, you could quintuple the amount the musician gets, while halving the amount the consumer pays.

    As to middlemen, let them find jobs where they are producing something of value, or performing a service, or even being middlemen in a transaction where they can add value (e.g. almost anything where the product can't be distributed instantly anywhere for practically nothing).

    If you think our economic system is built upon shuffling money around endlessly without actually producing anything of worth, maybe you should study some economics. Think about where the money is coming from at the start of the transaction, and where it could go if it weren't being siphoned off every step of the way. People who think that adding frictional costs to transactions is a good thing ("it's food on someone's table!") are the same sort of people who think "I can't be overdrawn, I still have checks left!"

  • I don't know of many waitresses that get more than that. Most of them DO rely on tips, and end up doing far better than I who make $7/hr. It is possible to make a good living on the kindness of strangers, but the strangers have to have it in their heads to be kind in the first place. After all, would you tip at restaurants if it wasn't expected of you? If this sort of model is to work, there has to be a re-thinking of the entire entertainment industry.
  • Most artists would make more money working at McDonalds than recording and selling CDs, at least until they've had a good number of big hits.

    The way the system works, the recording company gives you an advance for recording the album, say, $250,000. They you record it, they manufacture it, market it, pay promotions people to bribe radio to play it, and so on, which costs the best part of a million.

    The CDs go on sale. In a typical major-label contract, the artist gets 50c-$1 for each one sold. That is, after they've paid off their advance, marketing expenses, producers' fees, returns, breakages, &c. Which means that you don't see any money from CD sales until you've sold several million units, and then see only a trickle. Meanwhile, the recording company sees money from the first CD sold. They're not the ones who have to pay for the whole thing, after all. In his book Confessions of a Record Producer, Moses Avalon estimated that this is equivalent to a loan at 66% interest.

    If you're a big-name artist, say, Metallica or someone, you can negotiate a cushier deal; say, $2 per CD, with the company footing parts of the bill, and you owning the copyright. After all, it's in their interest to sign you. However, if you're just a young band, star-struck that Warner or someone would be interested in them, no dice. If you don't sign on their terms, one of the young bands in the line behind you will.
  • And if I don't like my work, I find a new job.

  • Re:Yes But, how do.... (Score:3)

    by Greg W. ( 15623 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @04:51AM (#863246) Homepage

    An AC wrote: How do the Record Companies get Paid? This is still unfair to them.

    CmdrNacho wrote: If you're looking for freebies, go to a soup kitchen or your local Salvation Army.

    Well, that's exactly what we keep trying to tell them, but they don't listen! Buncha lazy good-for-nothing bums! They think they can get stuff for free -- that just because they've always got things for free in the past they have a right to continue this practice indefinitely!

    It's time for the record companies to wake up. Their free ride is over. Their welfare state -- created and empowered by a government-granted monopoly on an infinite resource -- is being destroyed.

    The world -- or at least a small part of it -- is finally beginning to realize that "intellectual property" is a crock of shit. Just because someone has a funny little C-with-a-circle-around it and their name on something, that doesn't mean that they have a natural right to make money from it. In fact, there is no natural right to make money at all. That's what a free market means -- you may make money, or you may not. You spin the wheel, you take your chance.

    Now all we have to do is survive the mercenaries they're likely to send to kill us. (Hint: they're the ones with the red-white-and-blue flags on their uniforms. Bought and paid for by the RIAA using the money that you spent on CDs. You didn't think all that money went to the artist, didya?) At least the second amendment isn't completely dead yet. We still have some hope of living through this with both lives and freedom intact.

    (Sorry, I'm in a bad mood this morning.)

  • I like it (Score:5)

    by FascDot Killed My Pr ( 24021 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @03:03AM (#863247)
    Nice features:
    1. Can see total contribs to date for entire site
    2. Can see total contribs to date for individual artists
    3. Can contribute via credit card
    4. Marketspeak free (the fine print re: credit card fees is refreshingly clear and frank)
    5. Tip amounts are free-form entry (i.e. no "$10, $100 or $1000" drop down)
    6. Can leave message to send to artist (of course proof that they read it is missing, but whaddya gonna do)
    7. Very simple and fast site
    Some of the music I own is so good I'd be willing to use a site like this to tip even after buying the album.

    I have to wonder though: What do the artist's contracts look like? Do they have to split these tips with their labels because they are revenues generated from jointly produced work? I can see how they'd get around this if I were tipping a band member (just a person-to-person transaction). But I'm tipping by band name--not really the same thing.
    --
  • Because most people don't yet have a bit of e-gold [e-gold.com] to give, yet. :) I know Fairtunes has an account (and I could even make the balance publicly-viewable [e-gold.com] if any owner wants).

    I have repeatedly tried to get Courtney Love (or any musician) to notice that we've been able to do micropayments or macropayments efficiently, cutting out the middleman and saving people money even if they keep using plastic [e-gold.com]. Wanna buy an animated gif (hey! it's PUSSY! WooHoo!) for ten cents worth [e-gold.com] of e-gold? It has been possible for over a year... Try it.

    Step back and think about gold logically, even though it's the most emotional element on the periodic table. The stuff makes damn good money, and this e-gold bunch (me included) are NOT going away. We'll keep doing, keeping promises made about the internet and its possibilities instead of hyping the theoretical. Journalists interested in fundamentals (if that's not an oxymoron anymore...) should contact me. Thanks.
    JMR

  • Nice idea, but... (Score:3)

    by Killer Napkin ( 221026 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @03:07AM (#863251)
    I completely support artists getting compensated for their works. I think voluntary donations are a great way to do so. But I don't see any way at all that this could possibly be a viable business model.

    $269 is a good gesture, but its only that -- a gesture. That doesn't pay bills, keep food on the table, or make it worth the hassle for the artist to keep on creating. (He could do better working at McDonald's) An argument might run that an true artist doesn't really need to be rich if he really loves his job, but we have to face reality, artists need money -- real money.

    I think this is a good first step, but we need to improve on this idea. You can't really count on the generosity of others to make a living. What if waitresses didn't get a salary but instead relied entirely on tips?

    Actually, that analogy is flawed, because in the case of the artist and MP3s, you don't really see the artist's face being polite to you trying to win your favor like a waitress does. People pay much less attention to the artist than the actual music. How do convince people that they are ethically obligated to donate money into this tip jar? Maybe they'll get about 20,000 Slashdot folk to do it, but there are hundreds of millions in the US alone that need convincing.
  • Even if your grandmother owns the copyright of my favourite album, she did not play any role in the act of its creation other than lending money. Why should she have more right to it than the artists whose inspiration it was?
  • Donating not only supports the producers things you like, enabling them to produce more, it encourages others to produce things you like in the hopes of getting your future donations. [boswa.com]

    the cost of music IS real world cost. Tape costs money, studio time costs money, rehearsal space costs money, FOOD costs money.

    These are fixed investments producing unlimited copies of music. It is a fundamentally different situation than an investment producing transient performed music which can only be heard by a limited audience. It demands a fundamentally different income model.

    ---
    Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
  • Congratulations, you just beecame the 10,000th person to point out the street performer protocol in a slashdot discussion about music online!

    Your prize is a "imagine a beowulf cluster of street performer protocols!" shirt.

    sig:

  • Re:Courtney Love. (Score:3)

    by Cplus ( 79286 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @04:15AM (#863272) Homepage Journal
    I was never a fan of the music, image, acting abilities, or miscellaneous talents of Miss Love, but after reading her music industry manifesto [salon.com] I have a whole new opinion. Give it a read........she's no slouch.

    As for your joke about Kurt Cobain's death.........grow up.

  • This idea should work for more than just music. (Score:4)

    by TheDullBlade ( 28998 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @05:05AM (#863273)
    I wrote an essay on why I think this is a viable economic model for all IP [boswa.com] based on the self-interest of the donor. Personally, I like to call the general concept "mass-market busking" and any such freely-redistributable product "buskware".

    In short, the reason you donate is that it sends a message to the world that there is money to be had in making something you like. You aren't donating primarily to support one specific producer, but to reward, and thus encourage, the behavior of making such products and releasing them for free distribution.

    The key to making it work is for each buskware producer to give full public disclosure of how much money they receive, with as much information about which product it was for as is available. This is the payoff for the donor, as other people can look at this and think "Hey! He's making money at it, I should try, too!" (conversely, they are discouraged from following the example of people who don't make an adequate profit).

    Music is something of a special case, as most music isn't tailored to a particular audience, and people generally don't seem to prefer that it is, but at the very least you are encouraging musicians to believe that they can distribute their music freely, without signing on with a big label.

    ---
    Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.

  • Street Performer Protocol (Score:3)

    by ruud ( 7631 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @04:16AM (#863274) Homepage
    Perhaps something like Bruce Schneier's Street Performer Protocol [counterpane.com] would work for sites like this?
    --
  • With the internet, 90% of those middlemen are no longer necessary. They have no real economic reason for existence. So, they're trying to use laws which are supposed to exist for the good of the artists and of the public to preserve their positions.

    --

  • Cool (Score:4)

    by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @05:12AM (#863277)
    This is what Gene Kan of Gnutella was talking about in the "Future of Digital Music" hearing I believe: incentivizing "pirates" to create new legitimate business models. Well here's one. A virtualization of the street performer's protocol. Think of a street performer: some people walk by and drop a coin in a hat, others do nothing, thereby technically "pirating" the performer's music without compensation. The recording industry's answer is to jail everybody who doesn't pay, or create some cumbersome locks on the music so that nobody will want to even listen to it, and the whole business is driven away and dissolves. A protocol like this recognizes that some people *won't* pay, but those with a good heart will. I recognizes you simply can't *stop* people from not paying, but you *can* make it easy for those who want to.

    Even better, this money goes *right* to the artist (sounds like it at least) circumventing every middle-man down the line slicing his share off. I think this could turn the tables so that now *artists* are in control, and instead pay for the services of the recording industry.
  • The really big problem I see with their payment structure is that at least $0.25 of each transaction is swallowed up in fees. So if I like one song by an artist and decide to leave him $0.50, over half is going to Visa. While that's way better than the cut for a record company, it's still a pretty hefty share. The only way artists will really benefit from this system is people tipping for (i.e. buying) entire albums for a few dollars.

    A real micropayment system would require a lower base fee. For example, maybe you could set up an account at the site and buy a few dollars worth of tips at a time (thus losing only 4 or 5% to Visa), which you would then distribute as you see fit over time. The other advantage of this system is it minimizes the number of times you need to enter your credit card data (which seems like it would improve security, though I know little on the subject).

  • NO MORE BRITNEY SPEARS!

    A quick search on Platinum Certifications [riaa.com] notes that Britney Spears has sold over fifteen million records in two years. If over fifteen million people are willing to pay over $10 for a CD, why wouldn't they tip considerably less if given the choice?

    Slashdotters who continually bitch about how killing the RIAA will destroy Britney Spears types amaze me. There will always be a market for each generations equivalent of teenage bubblegum pop, killing the RIAA won't suddenly mean that the average teenage girl would suddenly see the Who or whatever as quality music and leave Britney Spears, N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys. In fact they will be reinforced since they cater to the lowest common musical denominator (kinda like how McDonald's is a major player even though their food is nowhere near the best) and will thus benefit more from artist centered music distribution schemes than fringe groups. If you doubt this...consider how many of their concerts are sold out.
    FOOD FOR THOUGHT
  • Metallica lives way more comfy than I do and I still haven't gotten my thank you letter yet. In fact, they lashed out at their fans. I figure that even with the fact that they only get a cut of all of their sales, between myself and a handful of my friends, they have made pretty damned good money all the way since I was in elementary school. Still like their music, just wish that this knife wound in my back would heal... and that they'd stop just saying what they're producers tell them to. The second they cut their hair, the damned record companies saw them as about as markettable as a boy band, already a lot of fans, and they had good music, now the cleaner, safer, more cuddly heavy metal band. Sort of like the "tough guy" from boy bands who looks like any good sized high school jock could break him in 2.

    Look mom! We're rebelling!

  • This was covered [theswindle.com] on The Swindle, uhmm...2 weeks ago. At that time, a whopping 60 dollars had been donated.

    I wish Fairtunes the best of luck, tho. I put my money where my mouth is.

  • Having seen too many dipshit companies that store them/otherwise don't handle security correctly, I'd be hesitant to use a credit card for anything on the net. Even though fraud protection is pretty easy to invoke, it's damned inconvienent. I had a credit card number stolen while travelling once and there wasn't anything the credit card company could do other than cancel the card. If I hadn't had enough cash on me to pay for the hotel bill, I'd have been fucked.

    There needs to be a method of micropayment available which is secure, resistant to fraud, and easily limited. Ideally I could just go to the store and buy a card worth $20 to $50, like a phone card, and use it until it's gone. Then even if the card is compromised, I'm not out a whole lot.

  • Rent ain't free. (Score:3)

    by TheDullBlade ( 28998 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @05:23AM (#863294)
    In then end though, I end up paying the band, the sound person, security, the hall, etc out of my own pocket.

    There's your problem. You're talking about a very limited distribution medium (how far does sound carry?) with a real-world cost.

    In that situation, you need a certain minimum average donation, and that's what kills the profit model.

    There is no motive for the people to donate more. They gain no advantage by encouraging voluntary admission shows if they pay more at each one. If they were willing to pay $30 for the show, they'd rather it be required and not have to fight for elbow-space with the riffraff that crowds in for free. It is against their interests to subsidize the admission of people who pay less.

    There is also the problem that there is only one opportunity to donate. If you have a copy of a song, listen to it often, and the option to pay is always there, you are a lot more likely to decide it's worth paying for at a time when you are able to donate.

    Paying voluntary admission is "social donation", people pay because they are in a public place and feel obligated to demonstrate that they're not freeloaders. Naturally, they look at it as a problem in how little they can get away with spending (hmm... what's the recommended minimum?).

    It's different when you're paying for freely distributed (whether legally or not) music in private and at your own convenience. Then you stop thinking "how little can I get away with spending" and start thinking "how much do I want to spend on keeping this band around"?

    Whether this will work out remains to be seen...

    ---
    Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
  • I will use tipping in New York city as an example of how this can be a huge success.

    $269 is a good gesture, but its only that -- a gesture. That doesn't pay bills, keep food on the table, or make it worth the hassle for the artist to keep on creating...reality, artists need money -- real money.

    Most of my friends in NYC have worked as waiters at one time or the other and currently do so now while in school. One of them is a bright kid who is currently working on Nanotech research at the Rochester Institute of Technology yet he frequently waits tables while in school instead of looking for a better job.
    Why is this?
    In New York city, everybody tips. There is a social stigma associated with people who do not tip. When Hilary Clinton ate a meal at a restuaraunt and didn't tip, it made front page news in some tabloids. Because of this it is normal for waiters to make anything from $100 to $200 a night depending on how busy the restaurant is. Working five days a week that is comparable to what most people make after a gruelling 4 year degree in college.

    I think this is a good first step, but we need to improve on this idea. You can't really count on the generosity of others to make a living. What if waitresses didn't get a salary but instead relied entirely on tips?

    They do, most waiters/waitresses make half of minimum wage. Obviously no one is making a living on $80 a week (after taxes) for 40 hours of work.

    How do convince people that they are ethically obligated to donate money into this tip jar?

    Easy, bombard people with information about tip sites until they feel socially obligated to do so. If all 20 million Napster users suddenly started getting hit with banner ads advocating tipping the artists whose music they were downloading, how many do you think wouldn't? Especially if the payment process was easy. Heck, if I could click a link from Napster everytime I downloaded a good song to throw a dollar or two at the artist I would. Multiply that by a few million and you have a new distribution model that pays artists a lot more than the current butt-fucking that the RIAA gives artists.
    FOOD FOR THOUGHT

  • We're working on embedding meta-data into digital content files which will allow for easy voluntary payments and will encourage free distribution. We're using crypto in an attempt to assure consumers that the person they're paying is actually the originator of the content, not an imposter with their hand in the artist's tip jar. The discussion is just getting rolling and we could use some input:

    http://tipster.weblogs.com [weblogs.com]
  • Fairtunes strikes me as being a reasonably good step in the right direction. The thing that people aren't realising here is that it needs a lot of donations to work out right, and it's not getting those donations from people are take one look at the site and say "That's not enough to afford XXXX thing for them crazy artists!" or "bwahaha with so little money there's no way to get the puny tip to the artist reasonably!". Well, gee. If you actually made a donation, not only would it help overcome these two factors, but it would entice more people to donate. Unfortunately, this sort of phenomenon plagues anything like this and will probably murder fairtunes before it gets off the ground.

    I praise Courtney Love for the opinion she wrote. It indicates that she has a good grasp of where things should be going and why what's happening now is wrong. I can't wait for the day when all it takes is the artist, a credit card commerce outfit, and a web pimp for bands to exist. At that point, costs will be ultra-low for everybody. I'd love to slap $1-5 for an mp3'd album (or whatever compression system is big in 2020 when this actually happens =P ).

  • Street Performer Protocol - misnamed (Score:3)

    by TheDullBlade ( 28998 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @05:44AM (#863303)
    Maybe a name more like "Ransom Protocol" would be more appropriate, or "Communal Purchase Protocol".

    The Street Performer Protocol has little relation to the operating procedure of street performers (a.k.a. buskers): a price is set and must be matched. Have you ever seen a busker with a sign, "I'm only playing the first half of this song, if there isn't $10 in my hat by the end of the first half, I won't play the second half."? It doesn't fit the analogy at all.

    I think it is a badly flawed variant of mass market busking [boswa.com] (not to suggest that the idea was derived from it, just that MMB is the more general term).

    The flaws?

    Well, how do you set the price? You know donations are going to drop right off once one the price is reached; when you explain it in terms of influencing this one single producer, people will think of it in those terms and look for the minimum donation they can get away with (and who knows what price you'll set for the next piece? better to hold some back against future increase). So when you set a target, you also set a limit.

    What if you're a runaway success? You can't raise your price and not expect your customers to feel betrayed.

    What if your sequel isn't as well-received as the first book, even though it pays well enough that you'd like to keep going? You can't lower the price when you see it's not going to be met, or people won't take you seriously at all.

    IMHO, it's far better to just let people pay what they will. If you want to make noises about giving up on the project because you're making too little money, fine, but don't try to set a price target/limit before release. Only someone like Stephen King, who has such a loyal following that he can predict demand, can get away with this kind of thing.

    ---
    Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.

  • I think this idea has considerable merit. I like it. I do have, however, some concerns about their ability and plans for dealing with "imitations", for lack of a better word.

    Just like cyber squatting on domain names, and their similar-looking/sounding names, it seems it's only a matter of time before someone starts registering:

    • Britanny Spears
    • Britney Spears
    • Britney Speers
    • Brittle Spears

    Then there's making web sites that are variations on www.fairtunes.com [fairtunes.com] such as:

    • www.faretunes.com - Tips for cab ride muzac(tm).
    • www.fairtoons.com - Tips for Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, or (shudder) Barney.
    • www.fairytunes.com - Tips for "Tinkerbell".

  • Steven King, with music (Score:5)

    by NoNeeeed ( 157503 ) <slash&paulleader,co,uk> on Friday August 11, 2000 @03:24AM (#863310)
    I think this sort of thing could have some serious potential.

    The thing about these sorts of scheme is that they believe that fundamentally most people are honest, as was demonstrated by King. The record industry (and movie) work on the principal that if people can steal it they will.

    I believe that the latter arguement has got human nature fundamentally wrong. I don't mind paying for a CD/Video but what I do mind is the fact that these things cost so much and most of the money goes to the middle men. This is especially true with CDs when the artists get relatively little.

    This sort of thing works because most people don't mind paying Steven King 1USD a chapter (as long as there arn't too many chapters :-> ) when they know that he is the one getting the money, rather than some middle man.

    The same could work for music. When we are all downloading music direct from the artists we cercumvent the distibution companies, removing them froom the loop. Most people would be willing to pay a reasonable amount direct to the band on an honour basis, and with costs so low you wouldn't have to ask for much.

    I live in York (england) and at the Minster (big church) they don't charge you to look around (partly because they can't), but they do request that everyone make a voluntary donation of a suggested amount, and most people do. Admitidly it being religious probably helps, but I have seen a similar scheme used for other historic buildings. This works because people are generally willing to pay for what they get.

    The same is true for musicians, artists, writers, movie makers and software writers. If people like what you have done they will more than likely pay for it because they want more.

    What people object to is paying through the nose for a CD only to find out that it is rubbish when they get home.

    With the advent of digital distribution for music, books and films (digi projectors and broardband?) we could (eventually) see the sidelining of the distributers, and money going direct to artists on an honour system. At which point piracy becomes moot and everyone is happy (except the RIAA and MPAA of course).

    A little utopian (and rather long winded), but we can hope. King has already shown that it can work for the well known artists, it just remains to be seen how it scales down to the up and comming ones who have no publicity machine or well known name. Mabey.

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