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Magnatune - a Non-Evil Record Label?
Posted by
michael
on Sun Sep 28, 2003 12:48 PM
from the brain-explodes dept.
from the brain-explodes dept.
jea6 writes "As seen on Fark and sure to intrest non-crossover Slashdotters, Magnatune is a record company with a catchy slogan. They highlight: 1) We're a record label. But we're not evil. 2) We call it 'try before you buy.' It's the shareware model applied to music. 3) Listen to hundreds of MP3'd albums from our artists. Or try our genre-based radio stations. 4) If you like what you hear, buy our music online for as little as $5 an album or license our music for commercial use. 5) Artists get a full 50% of the purchase price. And unlike most record labels, our artists keep their rights to their music. 6) Founded by musicians, for musicians. No major label connections. We are not evil. So if you are anti-RIAA (artist or consumer) and looking for an option (albeit a small option), this may be a start. The music is Creative Commons licensed, which is the brainchild of the eminent Lawrence Lessig."
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Magnatune - a Non-Evil Record Label?
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hmm (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.beryllium.ca/)
A swift kick in the rear (Score:4, Funny)
It may be non evil... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It may be non evil... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://shatteredstrategy.tripod.com/)
Depends what you consider good music. From what I can see, the RIAA and cronies tend to be pushing mass-market pop and "easy listening", so they can get their money back and much more.
This way, good music can get to the top so much more easily, if it's all word of mouth and independent of mass-marketting, rather than hyped.
music is a useless definition (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.andrewvc.com/)
I like experimental music. You can rant about it all you want, and that's fine. Just don't try to impose your unenlightened views upon me. Almost ALL experimental musicians are classically trained before they decide to try something new.
Re:It may be non evil... (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Saturday July 17 2004, @09:35PM)
I don't mind doing my own "quality control". I don't mind sifting through a bunch of crap to find a few gems. I'd rather have a few pearls and a bunch of dross then a sea of mediocre crap. Besides, if you follow your instincts and listen to the opinions of people you trust, you'll find good stuff more often then not. Stephen Hawking said that MC Frontalot had talent.... and by golly, he was right.
The Value of Editing (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.bigbrother.net/)
The adventurous listeners can go out there and try all kinds of new things and then bring back what they like to the masses. Word of mouth will become a far more powerful engine for generating popularit than RIAA marketing. This is already true for many who've grown sick of pop radio.
To speak from personal experience, I don't listen to the radio (except for NPR). But I listen to lots of music that never gets played on the radio. I've got a friend who's in a really good local band [gaskit.com], and I've got some friends who are really into music that always point me towards new things. So I get their recommendations, and I find that I like a large portion of what they recommend. Finally I experiment a little, usually finding crap, but occasionally discovering something new that I like.
That's the future of music. The RIAA is screwed.
Marketed != Good (Score:4, Informative)
(http://communitycolor.com/ | Last Journal: Monday November 19, @12:08AM)
What main stream America wants is the marketed music. Well, guess what? marketing machines are about making money.
Imagine who cool it would be if all the effort thrown into pirating the marketed stuff went into creating an underground force for marketing independent music?
The cool thing about the creative commons license is that it is a start in making such an underground force.
Re:Marketed != Good (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Saturday January 31 2004, @05:25PM)
I will not buy music before I've heard it. Bt where can I hear stuff outside the mainstream? Not on the radio (they won't play them), and not in the record store (too damn inconvenient to ask to listen to more than a few CDs there). Being able to download songs or listen to streamed music is a big help in selecting artists who have not been previously 'marketed'... so now we can continue to give the RIAA the finger and put our money where our mouth is.
This is great except.. (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.otierney.net/)
Metropolis Records - another example (Score:4, Informative)
Absolutely, and if you have any talent, it'll probably be wasted at a major RIAA label as well.
There's been a lot of coverage the past few years about the real problems of these labels, including the absurd advances to dated artists like Michael Jackson (who never make back the advance money and end up costing other less prominant artists their chance), promotional efforts being spent on the tired old artists at the expense of up-and-coming ones ("Hey folks. That new Madonna album's out. Let's put lips on that pig!"), termination of thousands of smaller and newer artist contracts, fewer releases, etc.
Compare that with a label like Metropolis Records [metropolis-records.com] which has amassed a base of artists like Funker Vogt, KMFDM, VNV Nation, Juno Reactor, Apoptygma Bezerk, Frontline Assembly, Project Pitchfork, De/Vision, etc. - much of the EBM and techno-industrial sounds come from this label.
How do they play with the Internet community? They support royalty-free shoutcasting (which is how I found them and ended up spending a few $$$ on their artists!).
Support these labels by buying direct whenever you can, and let them know each time you buy that the reason you're sending them business is because of their support for great artists and the promotion of a music marketplace free of RIAA manipulation and anticompetitive behavior.
*scoove*
Re:This is great except.. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, yeah, there are a few pitfalls here. It's not just a matter of recording your stuff and throwing it out on the net. The Big Evil companies also do things like pay for promotion and help underwrite the cost of touring, exercise influence with the radio stations and MTV and whatnot to get the music played and brought to the attention of consumers. I'm not sure these guys have all the resources at their disposal to perform these functions. It wouldn't hurt to have an already highly successful artist or two sign on to this to help push it along. A stable of competent but unknown artists is fine, but is unlikely to generate the kind of revenues necessary to be able to afford to provide the kind of services the Big Evil companies provide.
*THIS* is what i've been waiting for (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.wowarmory...r=Kirin+Tor&n=Alicja | Last Journal: Thursday December 04 2003, @09:13AM)
I found its offerings to be professional and compentent, if unremarkable. So far the site seems to deliver on what its promising. FREE downloads, FREE streaming audio. Their business model appears to be ethical (by my standards).
Basically I'm waiting a week or two to see in the media if things are kosher before buying something: e.g. this is a legitimate venture?; they're on the up & up?; people don't have nasty customer service problems, etc.
Slashdot users -- this is probably THE busienss model we've been biatching for. If this venture fails, lets try to make sure its not because of lack of demand.
NOTE: I have NO affiliation with this site whatsoever. I can can barely read music.
Cool... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:'try before you buy' (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.t-shirthu...fullsize/tcod_lg.gif | Last Journal: Thursday November 16 2006, @02:30PM)
Same amount I would pay for a bottle of water, probably.
Finally (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.lt6.net/ | Last Journal: Friday May 09 2003, @02:34AM)
One feature I think is extremely unique is that people can choose what they pay. From $5-18, and the recommended amount is $8.
I checked it out (Score:5, Informative)
Now, how long before big labels realize that they have to start making more variety of music? With Apple music store I can already preview, download and burn on CD so they would be making some money.
Works fine, music sucks (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.animats.com)
Downloading works fine. Everything plays with open-source Freeamp/Zinf. If you care.
Re:Works fine, music sucks (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Friday November 14 2003, @03:56PM)
The gurus at Slashdot devised this really clever little distributed moderation system that works quite well to sort these posts by genre and revelence. I would think that Slashdot itself may provide an example of a ranking paradigm to help moderate the music at Magnatune. Statistics will evolve which show the more meaningful parameters of the music offered.
If I were working on their system, I would probably try to configure the radio streams so I could detect if the stream was aborted. That is a strong indication the guy on the other end was not much interested in that one. I would maintain statistics on which song of an album was downloaded first. Knowing which track was downloaded first probably will generate data for which tracks are the best ones of the album, based on which spawned off downloads of other tracks.
The album gets modded up for selling a track, a major mod if the entire album sells.
Its a brand new site, a brand new paradigm. But they will have the same bugs to work out as CmdrTaco has worked out here. Maybe they can look over here and talk to CmdrTaco for some insights on handling a torrent of data of various quality and how to set up some sort of moderation system similar to the one working here.
We are evolving. They will too.
the test (Score:3, Insightful)
What excuses will you use for stealing the music now?
Re:the test (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Sunday March 21 2004, @11:14PM)
This isn't a troll, and neither are the hundreds of posts that criticize pirates that are also modded as trolls. It's a legitimate comment, because people who pirate music are going to come up with another excuse just as the parent is implying.
Finally, UNCOMPRESSED online music! (Score:5, Informative)
Let's compare this service to iTunes, the most popular current service.
Price:
iTunes - $0.99 per song
Magnatune - $5.00 an album
If it's a good album without crappy filler then Magnatune is the big winner here. Classical fans get a great deal, but pop fans may not, depending on the band. Overall, I'd give the edge to Magnatune, but not a big one.
Format:
iTunes - AAC with some annoying DRM
Magnatune - Uncompressed WAV's!!!
Absolutely no contest here. Finally an online music store has listened to audiophiles! They'd be smart to use a lossless compression format to save on their bandwidth costs though...
Ethics:
iTunes - Apple takes it's (big) cut and then the Artist's (frequently RIAA affiliated) label takes most of the rest.
Magnatune - The artist gets 50%!!!
Again, no contest. Instead of feeling guilty about fueling a powermad monster when you buy music you can feel good about supporting the people who actually made it!
Selection:
iTunes: Lots
Magnatune: Not a lot
iTunes is the clear winner here.
To sum up, you get more for your money with magnatunes, including peace of mind. You just can't get many albums there... yet. If magnatune manages to get off the ground that may change, but they have a long road ahead of them. Their biggest challenge is getting more content. In my opinion they need to forge alliances with other like-minded independant labels. There are a lot out there, but many use mail-order as their only form of distribution! Magnatunes needs to get these labels on board pronto.
Maybe not evil, but... (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Sunday April 16 2006, @10:03PM)
When I went to buy one of their albums, Magnatune wanted me to type my credit card number on a NON-SSL page. Naturally, my attempted purchase ended right there. $5 to Magnatune and $5000 to man-in-the-middle hacker is not cheap.
According to Magnatune's "forum", they plan to add SSL "in a few days". That this wasn't a higher priority makes me very worried; even if they do set up SSL, it suggests they might not be too careful with say, customer lists and credit card numbers.
And there doesn't appear to be way to search through the albums for sale.
Still, Magnatune's a step in the right direction.
Magnatune site a little slow (Score:5, Informative)
Things look better now, but still sluggish. (at least it's still working).
I've moved all graphics to my secondary server, running Squid. That helped Apache, but graphics are taking some time to come up. I'm bringing up another squid server now.
Audio streaming seems to be working ok (at least for me)
And THANKS for all the kind words on this thread (I'll respond to them once I get the servers running fast)
- John (the Magnatune guy)
Re:Magnatune site a little slow (Score:5, Informative)
I'm now running a copy of the poorly-named but amazingly fast open-source "AOLserver" http://www.aolserver.com/ on port 81, feeding all graphics requests through it rather than through Apache. That seems to have alleviated all the (current) speed problems.
Now, of course, that'll just encourage more people to visit, and I'll have new speed problems in a few hours (grin).
-john
Or use the RIAA Radar to find non-RIAA albums (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.supersaiyan.com/)
Weak offer when compared to CD Baby (Score:4, Interesting)
All they offer is a website to listen to the songs and then buy them. If I need that service, I'll use CD Baby [cdbaby.net], where I don't sign the rights to my music away. And boy do they have many artists already! [cdbaby.com].
Additionaly, CD Baby takes a flat amount of $4 (CDs) [cdbaby.net] or 9% (iTunes music store) [cdbaby.net], all without signing my rights away. I think I know which one I'm choosing :-)
Re:HTTPS? (What is music?) (Score:4, Informative)
Says who? I always maintained that the western violin is not a musical instrument, but an instrument of torture, inflicting injury on players and mental anguish on listeners. Still, it would be idiotic for me to dictate that violin music will not enter our home.
On your rule of "no distortion": So Shakti would be kosher, but Mahavishnu Orchestra wouldn't be? Shankar would be OK, as long as it isn't that "screaming" album he did with Frank Zappa? The Roches would be forbidden because Robert Fripp used a distorted guitar on the second track of their self titled debut album?
Death Metal singers don't scream - they growl. Would that be ok? No? So I guess Tom Waits is verboten. Too bad.
Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz To Come: Fine - an acoustic, instrumental work. No screaming there. What about Free Jazz? They don't actually scream, but they might as well have. The screaming attitude is there. There goes a seminal 20th century recording. Plonk.
Listen to anything by Devin Townsend. Is he singing or screaming? Whatever it is, it's musical, except that your daughter won't even get the chance to argue that with you, because this screaming ain't getting in your home, no siree.
Krzysztof Penderecki made a symphonic orchestra scream in Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, but I guess that's not music. Damn - I rather liked it, and I was deeply moved by it.
I suppose you'd approve of Pat Metheny's work. No screaming or distortion there... Oops, I forgot about Zero Tolerance For Silence. It's a work of great beauty, if you dig into it, and see past the, well, distortion.
Give me a break. This isn't philosophy, or moral structure. This is an arbitrary, boneheaded and ignorant rule of aesthetics. If you give your children a philosophy of life (as you should, and you seem to strive to do), it must be consistent. It must have structure, and things must follow logically from the ground rules. Setting arbitrary rules to satisfy your preferences in music is neither consistent nor fair.
Re:Artists aren't this stupid. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.phillyshreds.com/)
there are some bands that get big from writing songs and touring. the 50/50 split is nothing new, and has worked for many labels and artists for years. Labels like Dischord, Lookout!, Kill Rock Stars have used this model for years with bands like Fugazi, The Donnas, Greenday etc.
It works well for small labels and bands because the label and the band split profits 50/50 and in the early days the bands and the labels both have a real reason to make the records sell. when the bands get huge, the bands make a lot of money this way. that's a better percentage take than any major label could afford.
no, labels like that won't dreate the next brittnany spears, but how many of them exist, and who really want to sell their soul and suck that much anyway.
Re:Artists aren't this stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
In any case, it is flat out wrong to state that this model of record company cannot give an artist the same opporunity for success as a major record label. It is certainly true that such a label won't be able to finance the mega-buck music video and media promotion that top pop tarts like Britney Speares have gotten. At least, not at first. (That may come later) However, *very* few artists signed to record labels get that treatment. Most get shelved, with their contract actively preventing them from seeking opportunities elsewhere rather than helping them.
If a service such as this were to really take off it could be an excellent way for unknown artits to find an audience. By making their entire catalogue available for sampling, artists who would otherwise not even be popular enough to be pirated would have their body of work available and easily accessable with little risk to samplers. It's a long shot, but those odds are a heck of a lot better than an artist who gets one CD pressing (and a fat bill for it) from their record label which is immediately shipped to a warehouse instead of stores. In the latter case, live performances are the only way they have to generate interest.
Now here's the kicker: An artist has to be an entire order of magnitude more popular with a major record label than they do with this service to make the same cash. The kind of artist who scrapes maybe 30K a year out of a record contract with a major label could be living very comfortably with 50% royalties instead of 5%. Even Steve Tyler could do that math.
Of course, for all this to work people actually have to check out the service. If you love music, think of it as a duty to listen to every bloody track this label has available until you find something you like. Then *BUY* it. We're voting with our wallets here, and if nobody heads to the polls these guys will die out, and that would be a shame.
P.S. These guys even have WAV's available when you buy. That flat-out *OWNS* any other music vendor out there. The lack of lossless online music vendors has been something that has kept the audiophile community at arms length from online music purchases. This site could change that. However, it would be smart for them to adopt some form of lossless compression to make their bandwidth costs more bearable. Speaking of bandwidth, I don't think they were planning on being slashdotted! There are rough seas ahead, but I sure hope they can stay afloat!