Comments on: Young ‘prefer illegal song swaps’ https://scratchmybrain.com/2005/11/28/young-prefer-illegal-song-swaps/ Jeff Albert's blog Mon, 09 Jan 2006 04:35:15 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.7 By: Josh Roseman https://scratchmybrain.com/2005/11/28/young-prefer-illegal-song-swaps/comment-page-1/#comment-14 Fri, 09 Dec 2005 17:28:27 +0000 http://scratchmybrain.com/?p=34#comment-14 Good points, I agree..
I think if we can re-establish a healthy, functional relationship with everyday listeners, the revenue streams will follow- even if we can’t predict how they’ll actually work right now.
Web 2.0 is underway. With open-source software, free distribution portals and cooperative community weblogs (like this one), resources are being spread around for the greater good as never before.. They’re mostly free and they’re much, much easier to find these days.
These tools are gradually bringing an open and energetic new music business 2.0 into focus, none too soon…
The transition is challenging on a number of levels; most of our previous models have gone out the window. Funding new projects with a shrinking pool of investors (labels) is a major issue- and the music shouldn’t have to stand still.
Then again, catering to those dysfunctional companies with hopes of winning the label-lottery hasn’t been the most productive pursuit, either. Here’s to focusing on music and to breaking out of plantation mentality.
For the future, we need more tools to make it easier for musicians to barter sevices on spec, to split revenues and the like. Not hard to do, but it’s shift in the way we think about our work. I mean, musicians who know how to set up cooperative royalty-tracking deals? If your statements are calculated online, it’s not a problem.
I know that the company you mentioned has strong online accounting tools, it’d theoretically be possible to have the service digitally split their sales distribution for artists who are working cooperatively- which would mean your band could just track and then collect via direct deposit in perpetuity, how cool would that be?
It’s not something they offer out-of-the box, but I find that kind of idea exciting and it clearly could push the music ahead in a big way… If you hear of other companies providing services along these lines, keep us posted.

Beyond that, I’m noting that most of these services are pricey to deal with- there’s a whole cottage industry offering paid services to musicians.
But hopefully, as things develop, we’ll see more robust, flexible (and supportive) models online- either fully-automated ones with a low overhead, or perhaps some motivated entrepeneurs who want to fund and facilitate using existing webtools (labels with no offices)
JR

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