Muxtape relaunching soon, in the service of bands (it says)

An update on Muxtape was just published on their site: Muxtape. My previous Muxtape-related posts are here. It totally amazes (but not surprises) me how much Justin's story is similar to my own experiences with Sonific, my last digital music startup, and how much it matches with the stories I keep hearing from dozens of brave if maybe somewhat 'fresh' digital music entrepreneurs every single day: you bring golden ideas to the record industry and they will act like it's dirt - simply because it means they will need to share the control. Most of the major label execs will eagerly suck up all the information you can give them only to then a) drop all communications and reverse-engineer what you do b) present you with terms that would make Stalin look like an altruist. Muxtape draws the right conclusion: start from scratch, directly with the artists. But - how will they retain a sizable audience with just that?  This is the Sonific, Jamendo, Reverbnation problem... Also see my post on the MidemNetBlog, on Muxtape.

Comments

[Crosbie Fitch]

I suggested to Pandora that they should simply ditch all licensed music (except where copies were already possessed by the listener - the playback of those copies being interleaved with streaming of others) and focus solely on the recommendation/discovery of NEW artists who'd unilaterally negotiated permanent zero licensing rates.

My suggestion was not considered financially viable (nor particularly practical).

I suspect that's because they're still focussed on chasing old money (promoters and advertisers), rather than that of the people who actually value their service, i.e. users/listeners.

The audience has the money, the musician has the music. These are the two parties who need to do a deal, to exchange music for money, and money for music.

There are library facilities such as Jamendo, and recommendation facilities such as Pandora. So, there's still room for intermediaries between audience and artist, but they've got to add value if they want to earn money, not remove it.

I think entrepreneurs in this field have to look to a future of non-copyright based revenue models, and that means avoiding contamination from the past, the traditional music industry and its copyright polluted works.

[Gerd Leonhard]

Crosbie, you are right of course, but the problem for the likes of pandora is that if they ditch the 'known' music they ditch their huge audience, too, and the 'longtail' users don't add up to millions quite yet -- in other words, how would they TRANSITION without killing themselves?

[Crosbie Fitch]

They've left the UK, they've ditched their audience.

I'd suggest that if they still hold out hope for a negotiated settlement of tenable rates, that they create the new 'license free' service in parallel rather than radically transition to it.

I'd call it Cassandra - the true future of the music business, that no-one can believe is the future.

Having a service in parallel would dilute its strength, but at least it would be better than trying to hang on to favour from a doomed industry.

Let's list the features of Cassandra:

* it includes the analysis of all music ever recorded (doesn't need license for analysis since no copying is involved)

* it can still take users' music collections into consideration (no copying is involved in its itemisation)

* it can still play users' music collections (since no copying or streaming is involved)

* it can still recommend other label and collection society member artists to users, even though it can't stream their music. Users can obtain copies of respective artist's music via other means.

* it will only be able to stream the music of musicians who have unilaterally provided zero rate licenses

I think pretty much all the musicians on Jamendo would jump at the chance to have Cassandra stream their music. Moreover, Cassandra listeners would be pleased in the knowledge that any music streamed was also obtainable as a CD quality copy without additional fee and no fear of litigation for giving to friends, etc.

How do Cassandra musicians make money? By having their audiences commission them to produce more. Such commission can be enabled in the Cassandra client software.