So, This One Time, At Bandcamp, I Made It Easy To Offer Fans New Music
from the the-tools-are-on-the-way dept
It's definitely been cool to see various musicians embracing aspects of the business models that we discuss around here concerning using free music to improve your business model -- but what would be even more exciting is seeing an ecosystem of companies start to spring up in order to support and enable this type of activity (and, no, we're not talking about MySpace Music). For a while we've seen platforms like Sellaband, ArtistShare and BandStocks, that help in some ways, and now we're seeing a new generation of platform providers. Earlier this year, we mentioned TopSpin's platform, which appears targeted at bigger bands, providing them with a platform for embracing these new models. And now, Mathew Ingram points us to the launch of Bandcamp, which makes it easy for a band to set up their own website.It was created by the guys who did Oddpost, which became Yahoo Mail. Basically, it's a system to make it incredibly easy for bands to set up their own website, streaming all their tracks (none of this 30-second-soundbite stuff), and then offer a variety of ways for people to download the music -- either for free, for a set price or at pay-what-you-want. The site takes care of all of the encoding (you just upload lossless files and it creates a bunch of different options). Basically, it's designed to give the bands a lot more options than just having a MySpace page. Also, the concept of sharing the music is a big part of it, as the songs come with embeddable players that can easily be placed on websites with a few clicks. And, for the band, it provides detailed stats, including how many people are downloading each track (including whether they completed the download) and where the songs are being embedded.
As a critique, right now, all of the band sites I'm seeing on Bandcamp look generically similar, which may be a limitation. Also, you would think some community tools would be useful, as well as enabling other aspects of new business models beyond just selling music (such as buying tickets to concerts, or tiered support offerings). However, obviously the site just launched, so hopefully these types of improvements are in the plans. As an example, you can check out the Bandcamp page for the band Monolith, or see the embedded player here:
The really sad part, though, is that the things that TopSpin and Bandcamp are doing are exactly what the big record labels should have been doing five or even ten years ago to help bands embrace the opportunity of the internet. Instead, they continued to claim the internet was a threat, and have suffered because of it. Luckily, these days, if an old obsolete business insists on ignoring opportunities, others can step in and provide those services instead.
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Filed Under: enabling, music, technology
Companies: bandcamp
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Tsk, Tsk!
And someone really ought to tell BandCamp that the DownloadHelper add-on for Firefox can capture and download the files being streamed from that media player for free, regardless of whether the band in question chooses to offer them that way. They probably ought to do something about that before more people notice.
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not really new - but it raises a point
The share option on the widget raises (for me) one of the things that needs to change to allow these to work more seamlessly. if you click on share it asks you how you want to share it, and it offers you some options like facebook, blogger, etc. Wouldn't it be nice if rather than identifying the service you'd like to share it through, you could identify the category of friends that you'd like to share it with, and that would be sent out to them no matter what social networking gui (that's how I think sites like facebook, myspace etc should be seen) they happen to prefer to use.
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Re: not really new - but it raises a point
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This one time...
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wait... Masnick law?
BUT IT WOULD NEVER WORK FOR THE MEDIUM LARGE BANDS, OR POSSIBLY THE MEDIUM SMALL ONES. IMPOSSIBLE. BLAH BLAH BLAH EXCEPTION BLAH BLAH SEMANTICS BLAH CLOSED OPINION.
Sorry guys, just had to get that one out there before anyone else did.
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Dissapointing
-Chris
CONFLICT IN THE SKY
www.conflictinthesky.com
www.sellaband.com/conflictinthesky
www.myspace.com/conflictinthesky
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Re: Dissapointing
Well, there's a lot of stuff behind the scenes that makes this cool. It's much easier to use, and enables much more than many of those other sites.
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This is a fine example of the web giving an opportunity for exposure to start up bands, as well as a review source (think Demo) for working bands.
Again, I think entirely too much has been made of the Recording Star business model... that is not something that most musicians can aspire to. Working bands on the other hand can use this in a business model that puts them forward and exposes them to increasingly larger crowds, as any good "Advertising tool" should do.
Lets drop the whole "Superstar" angle to music as a business model please. It was never designed to benefit Consumers nor artists, it was designed and tweaked over the years to support the industry.
This is also where the Idea (music) separates itself from a tangible good (property). It can be re consumed again and again for the cost of the energy to play it... like Jefferson's Candle lighting another. Music and other Ideas were never intended to be chained to profit only the conceiver of the work.
As soon as we are able to interpret the medium the idea is stored in (language, dat tape, .mp3) the idea should be freely shared, and the concept only returning dividend when the idea is exercised (i.e. used for profit). Ideas should not be constrained to pay for play.
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new target
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