I have been giving DRM some consideration lately, specifically with deals such as the Zune Marketplace free pass to millions of songs at 14.95$ a month with 10 free keepers a month would there exist and implementation of DRM I would accept as a requirement for access. While I generally hate DRM and think it punishes paying customers, could one envision an implementation that would be fair?

E.g could one envision a business build on free streaming of DRMed files and DRM free files for purchase so that they allow reasonable access to listen and learn new music but if you want to access the files and do with them what you wish – say use them offline, use excerpts of for a review or a composite video (adding a touch of music to a video project, like a review YouTube show or as a music interlude in a podcast). Would it work and what problems would there be with such a model?

Well first up the technological problems inherent to DRM won’t go away, if the DRM server is down or is removed as has been the case with a number of services already. Then your content stops working, however this would only affect the streaming service as songs you bought and own would be DRM free. Free services disappear all the time for many reasons so I don’t see this as specifically a DRM problem but a consumer support problem, if we don’t back the model then the service will go away. Magnatune runs a streaming service for all their music and the only price you pay for this wonderful access is listening to a little blurb at the end of each song, this works well for independent artists. However I don’t see e.g. Parlophone being ready as a corporation to grant the same level of access to their catalog with the only protection from being ripped off being “trust the customers not to abuse the service and save streams, remove ads and building a full copy without giving us a dime”. That is just not the way they have grown use to doing working and expecting them to attain enlightenment overnight is more than dangerously naive.

I think Magnatune deserves a lot of credit for taking that risk and I am hopefully that it is paying off for them. I think a lot of such a success can be traced back to their stated mission of not being evil, I think customers respect that and having it be highly visible and transparent, such as can be seen in their simple profit sharing that your money actually goes to the artists. As such Magnatune’s “pay what you want” system often is above the minimum of 5$, in other words people aren’t cheap when they feel they are being treated fairly. I have to admit that while there are no limits on the files and I get them in the format I desire even lossless I am still amazed when they encourage me to share my new music with 3 friends. They could have politely asked me not to do that to protect their business as well as their artists and I would respect it because of the beyond fair treatment they give me otherwise and instead send friends to their streaming service to sample my amazing new finds.

Another problem with any technology designed to limit your use of content is that what you will accept now isn’t always what you will accept in the future. E.g. a user might go an buy an iPhone today and not think twice about the limits Apple ensure using lawyers and technology to lock out 3rd parties, if that user some time later elects to move to Linux or just move away from iTunes the consequences of that acceptance hits. Nor did I when the DVD player came out give much thought to the protection schemes built in and how they affected me and I started building what has now become a huge collection of movies and TV shows on DVDs. Not for a second did I consider that the region coding meant that taking my DVDs with me out of Europe would render them unplayable. After all I thought I would live in Denmark all my life and it didn’t limit me then outside of buying DVDs from the US that weren’t available in Denmark and here all players are basically region code free so it was a non-problem. As my situation now might call for a move to Brazil or where ever my fiancée finds the perfect Ph.D. project this might come back to bite me in the nether regions.

Another problem relating to the DVDs is that the CSS protection, is being heavily protected by lawyers, limits my OS of choice from shipping support, I can’t view the content I paid for on my desktop out of the box. While the laws in Denmark would seemingly allow me to break the protection, making such code available could land one in serious trouble of the lose your house flavor. This also means that while he rest of the software stack in Linux is very advanced, DVD support is lacking since no company will risk helping out as it would make them a target, no distro can ship the code leading to the feature being under maintained and under tested. I might legally be able to install such support but frankly it’s in a poor state and close to uselessly broken in some cases for no good technical reason, all of which makes me a sad panda.

Why is this a problem? Well I would like to do to my DVDs what I did to my CDs. Keep the originals safe in a box and access my content the way I please on the devices I please. I would love a way to easily and quickly put my movies on a NAS and let them be transcoded for use on my portable devices, viewable on the TV and other such things. I might even want to use little snippets easily in other projects, like this blog. When I started building my collection a DVD was probably so large that the idea of fitting hundreds of movies onto a harddrive seemed a bit far fetched, not today though. The hardware is cheap and available anywhere, now it’s a good time to do something like this and I can’t easily.

The point is you will agree to some limitation now that might come back to haunt you years from now, if it is enforced by DRM then your only choice is to violate the law to access and enjoy the content you bought the way you want. There are risks involved with this and you cannot be sure that software to do such alternation will be available as companies like to sue those who enable you to do these things.

I honestly though don’t think I can find a single major thing to object about with a scheme which sole purpose is to prevent saving a stream, there will always be people for whom this isn’t enough or people who will be break the protection to keep the content they get free access to. I have no problem going after these people, I really don’t, they have the option of using the entirely free access (perhaps with ads, lower resolution than would be available to buy DRM free), I see no moral argument one could present for doing such a thing. Well there is one, provided the access isn’t equal, then they would deprive users of say Linux from using the free option thus forcing them to buy without trying.

Even an truly dogmatic FSF supporter wouldn’t really be able to argue this is directly evil, while the specific component that unlocks the DRM is very likely to be proprietary (giving you the content, the means to unlock it and the key – that is free access which is unlikely to happen) you would still have the option of playing the content using nothing by ideologically blessed software, provided you buy the content.

Assuming the blob is well written as well as supported on any platfrom and some entity such as the Linux Foundation has access to the code under NDA so we can get an opinion as whether or not unlocking the DRM is all it does. I wouldn’t feel bad about installing such a thing by default on users desktops (again, if you don’t like it, remove it and live with buying your content). We could even restrict the binary with things such as AppArmor or SELinux to ensure it’s not given all out access to reduce the security concerns.

Lots of maybes and assumptions but I think such a scheme would work and hopefully as time progresses, with the support of customers it could be shown that customers can be trusted to not abuse such restriction-less privileges. As for the realism inherent to such an idea, I doubt you’ll get record companies and movie studios to agree to this but on the other hand what Spotify is doing today if I understand it correctly (sadly there is no Spotify in Denmark yet) in the countries where they have gotten the licenses isn’t that dissimilar to the streaming part of the idea, adding a DRM free store wouldn’t be a far stretch.

I think when it comes to DRM free content customers also need to realize that they are asking companies to run a risk of losing revenue, something that is very scary to them, it’s a big shift in the way they have grown used to working and they need to be convinced by the bottom line. They give you an awful lot of power which can be abused and we need to show that the limits they put on content is harmful to paying customers, it holds back creativity and new business models but in return we have to reward them for trusting us by not abusing that trust once they put it in us. Even if we are justifiably angry over past transgressions, the way to settle that anger is not to rip them off when they change for the better.

DRM Free, to paraphrase that cliché from Spider-Man, comes with great responsibility.

Lisää pillimusiikkia. Tästä puuttuu vaan Hevian iskevyys ja nykyaikaisuus.

Ruotsalaiset Anna Rynefors ja Erik Ask-Upmark ovat yhtä kuin Dråm. Samalla nimellä kulkee myös kaksikon levy, joka pitää sisällään pääosin 1800-luvulla sävellettyjä kansantansseja. Instrumentteina ovat harppu (Celtic), ruotsalainen säkkipilli ja myös ruotsalainen ainutlaatuinen avainviulu (nyckelharpa). Tanssisävelmistä huolimatta musiikki on kuitenkin rauhoittavaa ja rentouttavaa. Erikin säkkipillillä lurittama pariminuuttinen Springlek ei ole ainoastaan rivakka polska kaukaa menneisyydestä, vaan se on myös todella ROCK!

Levy on myytävissä Amazon.co.uk:ssa ja iTunesissa. Muutaman sentin sijaan eniten rahaa artistit saavat kuitenkin kun ostat levyn Magnatune.comista, joka antaa artisteille 50 % myyntihinnasta. Ostaja saa itse päättää levyn hinnan (väh. 4 euroa/levy, suositus 6 euroa). Äänenlaatu on valinnan mukaan pakattua tai cd-tasoa. Levyjä voi kuunnella streaminäkin helposti jopa ilman veloitusta.

Kuuntele koko Dråm-levy täällä (klikkaa myös Artist Info).

Ivan Ilic has four albums of classical piano on Magnatune. He’s good–this sonata by Haydn is my favorite so far, and I tried to find a YouTube video of someone playing it. I prefer to embed the song rather than have to post a link. There were a couple that were played pretty well, but I just couldn’t post them after I’d already heard Ilic’s performance. It has an expressiveness that the videos lack…I don’t know how to explain it, except to say that comparing Ilic’s recording to the videos, I can hear that Ilic is a pianist, while the others are just people playing piano.

Haydn Sonata in B Minor no. 47 mvt. 2

Magnatune, I think I love you.

You let me listen to free podcasts in a variety of great, but possibly less mainstream genres (that is, not hip hop or radio pop). You have everything from hammered dulcimer (how sweet the sound!) to electronica. Your podcasts are an hour long each and you have some 150 available for streaming on your website at once. You feature classical music, and you also have a whole genre dedicated to guitar-playing similar to an old favorite of mine, Michael Kelsey.

Speaking of which, I listened to your latest Cool Guitar podcast today. Oh, chère Magnatune, I played it only as background, but one song came on mid-’cast that was so very nice that I had to interrupt my other work to search through the songlist you so graciously provide (complete with links, even!) so that I could find the exact song and make a note to listen to the full album to which it belongs.

It was track 9 from David Modica’s Acoustic Earth, Electric Sky, “Spontaneity.” It reminded me strongly of Michael Kelsey, especially of “Midnight Voices.”

And should I like the rest of this album as fully, you will let me purchase the album — including the right to burn a cd of it — for a price (relatively) of my choosing. My pauper self can offer $5 and own a copy, a high-quality copy, of a whole album. I have had trouble finding many discs used on half.com for such a price. …And when I am not such a pauper, I can choose to support the musician with as high a price as I feel their album is worth (up to $18). Sure, I’m broke now, but if I could afford it, I’d like to pay more for a really great album. I see I’m not the only one, either: some of your more popular albums garner an average of more than $10.

And you give half of that money straight to the artist. And to think, I only earn around 15-20% of the price customers pay for my artwork at the produced-on-demand site Zazzle. (Sure, there I can set my own commission, but if I go much over the 20-point line, no one will buy from me because the prices start to get so high.)

Magnatune, you have made a friend this week. A very happy friend. Thank you.

Ok, weird post maybe, but Magnatune is really cool. They also let you stream a whole album before you pay to download it, and they have free downloads in addition to the podcasts. There’s a Song of the Day and a “relaxation mix” (a free album), Music for Meditation. They work directly with artists, who retain the rights to their music (Magnatune’s right to sell it is non-exclusive). Just check it out, already.

Episode 6 of Off the Shelf is now available. In this episode, Kghia Gherardi interviews author and Rez Libris publishers, Debbie De Louise (Dulcie Mills in Second Life). Simeon Beresford and Kghia Gherardi also provide an overview of the main events for readers taking place through Bookstacks.

Note: Schedule guest JJ Drinkwater was unable to be interviewed due to illness, but JJ will make an appearance on Off the Shelf in the future.

You can listen to Off the Shelf via any of the following methods:

• Direct link to the show on Archive.org, where you can listen to it as a stream or download the audio file directly
• Subscribe on iTunes
• Subscribe using our RSS feed

Show Notes

During this episode, Simeon announced the winner of a signed copy of Mark Eller’s novel, Traitor. Soup Jonson will receive his book soon.

Debbie De Louise recently published her first novel, “Cloudy Rainbow,” available at Booklocker.com.  Additional information about the novel can be found at Debbie’s website.

In Second Life, Debbie produces Rez Libris, a magazine about libraries and librarianship in Second Life. She is assisted by her staff including the following people:

• Dulcie Mills, Publisher
• Eirene Janus, Webmaster
• Vienna James, PR Director
• Bookie Balogh, News Editor
• Leeorie Alter, Assistant News Editor
• Stf Honi, Features Editor
• BlueAngel Lungu, Assistant Features Editor
• Sifriya Devin, Arts Editor
• Bunny Burnstein, Assistant Arts Editor
• Pia Klaar, Multimedia Editor (machinima)
• Verde Otaared, Multimedia Editor (photos)
• Clark Abismo, Publisher Emeritus

Debbie also discusses the memorial garden for pets she created in Second Life.

Slurls

• Rez Libris: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cybrary%20City/146/152/24
• Rainbow Gardens Pet Memorial: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cybrary%20City%20II/129/13/21

Music

This week’s musical interlude featured Slippolska by Erik Ask-Upmark on the Magnatune album Himlens Polska.

Seguimos hablando de la cultura musical, pero esta vez con una iniciativa diferente. Las grandes discográficas nunca han tenido muy buena imagen, sin embargo, existe un sello discográfico cuyo lema es, en clara referencia a este hecho, “we are not evil”, que no comparte las ideas conservadoras y anticuadas del resto y que trata de salir adelante distribuyendo música libre haciendo uso de licencias de tipo Creative Commons. Estamos hablando de Magnatune.

Fundada en 2003 por John Buckman, empezó vendiendo únicamente música para descargar desde su propia web. Sin embargo, con el paso de los años ha ido creciendo, pudiendo encontrar a día de hoy canciones y álbumes enteros con el sello de Magnatune a la venta en tiendas online como la de Amazon.

Al contrario de lo que sucede normalmente, no contrata a artistas en exclusiva (es decir, que pueden seguir firmando con otros sellos al mismo tiempo), y el reparto de los beneficios se hace equitativamente, mitad para el sello y mitad para el autor.

Quizás una de las características más llamativas de este sello es el hecho de que es el propio usuario el que decide cuanto pagar por una obra. El usuario puede bajarse o escuchar mediante streaming la canción completa sin coste alguno en MP3, y una vez escuchada, elegir si quiere comprarla o no. En caso afirmativo es también el propio usuario el que elige cuanto quiere pagar (entre 5 y 18 dólares por álbum), y en que formato quiere bajarse las canciones. Además de todo ello, las canciones que nos descarguemos no están protegidas de ninguna forma para evitar que podamos compartirlos, es más, desde Magnatune se nos insta a hacerlo.

El hecho de que iniciativas como esta salgan adelante nos demuestra que existe mundo mas allá de los restrictivos y anticuados derechos de autor que tanto tratan de defender algunos organismos, y que se puede hacer negocio a través de las licencias Creative Commons, mucho menos restrictivas y con las que al final todos salimos ganando, haciendo que la cultura pueda llegar a todos.

Unai Rabanal

No, I am not going anywhere. Adios is the 11th track in band Curandero’s album bearing the same name. Curandero is Miguel Espinoza on the flamenco guitar and Ty Burhoe on the tabla.

If Adios is “soft”, Segue, the 3rd track from their second album – Aras – is, well, an example of segue.

PS: If you haven’t heard about Magnatune “We are not evil” Records, pay them a visit. Though my musical tastes primarily revolve around Indian film music, Magnatune does seem to have some nice stuff as far as classical and world music goes – its entire catalog actually – which you can listen to for free, even if you don’t plan to buy anything.

I like to listen to a bit of music. I don’t always like to listen to the music played on the radio. I don’t like the prices charged for many CDs. And I don’t like being treated like a criminal every time I do buy a CD—I shouldn’t have to go to insane lengths just to get a disc to play on my computer!

A few years ago I came across Magnatune. Magnatune has a lot of great music for sale, but the business model is a little different to most. You can preview entire albums at no charge. If you want to buy an album, you set the price, and the artist is guaranteed to get half of what you pay. If you have a decent internet connection you can download the album (in a choice of formats) there and then, or you can pay a bit more and get a CD shipped to your door. And once you’ve got the music, you are allowed (within reason) to make copies for your friends.

Magnatune provides an example of ‘Free Culture.’ In short, the Free Culture movement says that culture is owned by everyone in a society. We shouldn’t lock aspects of our culture away, releasing it when it suits us and under conditions we impose. I’ll have more to say about that another time.

If you’ve listened to the prognostications of many of the big record labels you’d think the internet spelled the end of the recording industry. Magnatune has proven far more successful than its founder ever expected, and now they’ve changed their model again. For as little as US$10 per month you can subscribe to Magnatune and download as much as you’d like during the life of your subscription.

That’s right. If you’re dedicated you could get every album in their catalogue for ten US dollars.

I strongly suggest you head over there and have a listen to see if you like anything. The range is incredible—there will be genres to meet all tastes, although I’m yet to find any decent brass band recordings. I didn’t recognise any of the names when I first had a look, but it just goes to show: just because it doesn’t get played on Triple M doesn’t mean it’s not good.

(Note: I’m not being paid by Magnatune or anything. I just think this is a great thing their doing, and I really dig the music I’ve downloaded.)

I always felt that music and music industry are two different things. And I always felt that there is too much unfairness in the relationship between the artists and people who are in the music business. Being from Senegal, I somehow got used to these unfair relations between so called developed and developing countries. Of course, getting used to it, does not mean that I agree with it. And so far too little has been done to contrast this state of affairs.

In Finland, where I live, fair-trade has been successsful as a niche market. Still, it’s about trade, but ethical values are at the core of scheme. I find very interesting the idea of supporting small farmers in the South to produce organic and healthy goods, and of bringing together producers from the South and consumers from the North to decide together about a fair price.

Fair-Trade usually is associated with coffee, sugar, handycraft from the South. Some people have started to understand that the music industry is in need of it, too. There are too many stories of companies making money on the artists and musicians without redistributing the benefits. No wonder that musicfans turn away from the big record companies and try to find new music in niches as well as on the internet.

These last years, there has been few companies which committed to certain criteria that offer advantages for artists and listeners. Among those criteria, one can find low prices for sound mediums, fair payment of musicians, more artistic freedom.

Still, there is a long road to walk. But the fact that some people are moving in that direction is a good sign.

Personally, I started with Tuneyourworld. Other initiative is the Fair trade Music Network, including NovaTune, Orca Records, Magnatune, 3H Records, Trostlos Records. I also know that in France, there are several initiatives.

If this can help to bring more space for good music and social health of music makers and music fans, I’ll go for it.

Keep me informed about your own experience.

Starting with some ambient, then clicks’n'cuts, and ending dubstep, enjoy your November grooves mixtape!

Adam Fielding – Distant Activity (courtesy of Magnatune.com)

Pickle – Yak Attack

Heaven 17 – I’m Gonna Make You Fall in Love With Me (ATOM’s Fuming Red Nitric Mix)

Beckett & Taylor – World of Me

2562 – Greyscale

Thanks to IODA for the remaining tracks. Now support some musicians!

Hört sich spannend an, oder? Ist es auch!

Magnatune ist ein Musiklabel, dass seit 2003 existiert. Auf Magnatune.com können Songs komplett angehört werden, nicht wie z.B. bei itunes, wo man 30Sek zu hören bekommt. Das alleine ist ja schon eine tolle Sache, aber es kommt noch besser. Wenn man ein Album downloaden will, kann man den Preis selber bestimmen. Es wird zwar einer vorgeschlagen, es kann jedoch au deutlich weniger bezahlt werden. (Natürlich auch deutlich mehr). Das Spannende ist, dass die User anscheinend bereit sind für gute Musik auch gerecht zu bezahlen, so wird im Schnitt mehr bezahlt als der vorgeschlagene Preis!

Magnatune ist ausserdem sehr fair zu ihren Künstlern. Die Einnahmen werden nämlich 50:50 geteilt, da könnten sich andere Labels ja mal was abschauen oder?

Mehr Infos findet ihr in diesem Artikel.

Nach dem Börsencrash im Jahr 2001 dachten einige die Zeit des Internets sei vorbei. Andere hatten das Gefühl es beginne ein neue Ära in diesem Bereich. Diese setzten sich zusammen und entwickelten ein Konzept für eine neue Internetgeneration und zwar das Web 2.0. Bei diesem Brainstormin wurde in erster Linie ein Begriff kreiert, der diese neue Bewegung benennt. Der Grundgedanke des Web 2.0 war, ein Netzwerk zu erstellen, indem jeder mitwirken kann und somit Verantwortung trägt. Man soll es also nicht mehr passiv, sondern auch aktiv nutzen können, was eigentlich auch die ursprüngliche Idee des Internets war.

Der Erfolg zeigte sich rasch. Schon achtzehn Monate später fand man 9.5 Millionen Einträge auf  Google zu diesem Begriff.

Heute ist das Web 2.0 nicht mehr wegzudenken. Es gibt unzählige Communities auf denen Informationen ausgetauscht, Kontakte geknüpft oder Bilder gezeigt werden. Dazu ein paar bekannte Beispiele:

Wikipedia ist ein Onlinelexikon, in welchem jeder User Inhalt dazufügen, verändern oder löschen kann.

Auf Flickr kann jeder seine Fotos und Videos veröffentlichen. Egal ob Fotograf oder Amateur. Der Basic-Account ist kostenlos.

Auf Amazon kann man Bücher, CDs, DVDs, Elektronik und vieles mehr bestellen. Das besondere daran ist, dass man zu jedem Produkt die Meinung von anderen Käufern lesen kann.

Facebook ist ein Portal um sich mit seinen Freunden auf verschiedene Arten zu vernetzen. Es besteht die Möglichkeit Nachrichten zu verschicken, auf einer Karte einzuzeichnen wo man schon alles gewesen ist und noch vieles mehr…

Bei Plattformen gibt es drei verschiedene Wege um eine grosse Datenbank aufzubauen. Man nennt dies “The Architecture of Participation”. Ich zeige diese Varianten anhand von Beispielen:

Yahoo! bezahlte früher Leute um eine Datenbank zu erstellen. Dies ist im Web 2.0 jedoch nicht mehr üblich.

The Open directory Project wurde von der open source community inspiriert und sucht Freiwillige für die Arbeit.

Napster funktioniert mit einer Gegenleistung. Das heisst du kannst nicht profitieren, wenn du nicht auch anderen deine Daten zur Verfügung stellst.

Für genauere Infos siehe What Is Web 2.0. Ein Artikel von Tim O’Reilly.

Bom, meu primeiro post. Sou novo nesse negócio de GNU/Linux e erros de programas, mas eu tive que me virar para arrumar essa depedência de biblioteca que o Rhythmbox apresentou.

Uso XUbuntu na minha máquina, eu não sou muito fã do KDE, mate quem quiser, mas eu acho o visual do Gnome mais bonito e limpo, pode talvez não ser muito intuitivo às vezes, mas eu prefiro ele. Mas a discussão aqui não é essa, é sobre a lib que ficou faltando na instalação do player.

Isso é simples de resolver. Caso quando você for instalar o Rhythmbox, que não vem por padrão na instalação do XUbuntu, pra mim pelo menos, precisei instalar a biblioteca libgnomevfs2-extra. A falta dessa faz com que todas as vezes que você for abrir o player aparece uma mensagem dizendo que não foi possível fazer load dos plugins do Jamendo e do Magnatune.

então vamos lá, abra um terminal e digite:

sudo apt-get install libgnomevfs2-extra

Após instalada é só abrir o Rhythmbox e colocar sua música preferida para tocar.

Have you heard the news? Apparently the long tail is flat. For those of you unfamiliar with the long tail, it’s a theory coined by Chris Anderson (The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More) that describes the niche strategy of businesses that sell a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities. Because of the low overhead incurred through the selling of digital products, the long tail was supposed to help retailers of less popular items earn significant profit by selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers (instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items).

For musicians, the long tail of music was supposed to help redistribute the wealth a bit in the music industry. It was supposed to shift the industry away from having a few big artists that earn large profits to having many smaller indie/niche artists that earn moderate profits. The notion behind this was that through digitization, niche releases are more accessible to fans and thus easier to discover, purchase, and consume. Through this long tail of music, a musician’s middle class was supposed to have been formed. Well, where is this musician’s middle class that Gerd Leonhard and Dave Kusek wrote about a few years ago? Why has the long tail not proved to be commercially viable? Why aren’t niche artists profiting from their art online?

I suspect that the long tail theory is still viable for indie and unsigned artists to make money from their works. It’s undeniable that given the low overhead of making and distributing digital music, an artist could sell less and make more. Plus, there are more licensing/placement opportunities today than ever before and there are plenty of sites that help musicians leverage this. But still, why then is the long tail flat?

In my mind, there are three main reasons:

First, Creative Commons licensing has failed to help musicians monetize their works. Any notion of CC providing a viable profit mechanism for musicians is a pipe dream. The purpose of CC licensing is to expand the range of works available for others to legally share and collaborate on. It’s clear that this is the direction that Copyright Law should go in. It’s also undeniable that CC has a noble purpose that contributes to more creative works for the general public to enjoy. But, CC hasn’t actually been leveraged to make artists licensing works under it any money.

While the reason I make music is not to make money, I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing a little profit from my works. Perhaps, CC has overlooked this. With the vast number of works distributed under CC, how can their collective power be leveraged to compete against the market power of bigger acts. Isn’t this what the long tail is all about? If CC doesn’t figure this out, how can it reasonably expect to be an appropriate solution for distributing creative works? Right now, CC licenses seem like a better fit for reference works that people can use to share knowledge. But for unique works of art, the notions of sharing and monetization must be intertwined. Wouldn’t you rather your favorite artists not get a day job so that they can always be making new music for you?

Second, long tail artists haven’t been working collectively to distribute their music. It’s hard to argue against the power in numbers; simply put, the more people that work together on a common purpose, the higher the chance that purpose is achieved. This is the underlying theory that the American Revolution was built on (“Join or Die” anyone?), that collective bargaining is based on, and that a shit ton of sites on the web base their successful business models on (Craigslist is a classifieds aggregator; eBay is an auction aggregator). So, why aren’t long tail musicians taking advantage of this?

There have been some attempts to do this, and some are even successful. Magnatune, for example, aggregates CC works and sells them in an Itunes style store. But the biggest vault of CC works, ccMixter (CC’s own music sharing/collaboration community), has no monetization whatsoever, not even ads (which its artists could perhaps see a rev share on). Why hasn’t ccMixter leveraged the collective power of its community to make its members some money? Because of this, CC licensing seems to be more effective as a marketing tactic than a new rights management system — license one song under CC, have fans share and remix it, and have this exposure trickle over to other songs which are sold.

Merlin is a good example of an organization that is thinking about the collective power of long tail musicians. Merlin is the world’s first global new-media rights licensing agency that manages new-media rights for indie artists. The collective market share of Merlin artists is larger than EMI’s market share. That’s right, its market share is on par with the majors. Through this mechanism, indie acts can punch above their weight to eat like a bird and shit like an elephant. And while Merlin dropped the ball a bit on the Last.fm negotiations, it wil be successful if it can find novel ways to leverage the power of its artists.

Third, long tail musicians haven’t been presented with the right ways of creatively distributing their music so that they can actually make a profit. Despite the digital boom, it’s still hard for unsigned and indie musicians to make much money form selling finished songs. While it’s easy to give fans the option of buying a song, the reality is that more music is now being distributed than ever before and musicians have to compete against other long tail musicians and the many options consumers have to get the music for free.

What seems to be happening is that long tail artists are stuck on the notion of just selling finished works. If Merlin fails, it will certainly be because of this. Instead, long tail artists need to look to aggregating as many sources of revenue as possible, and to create as many value adds for their music as they can. A finished song should only be a part of the value proposition an artist gives a fan. If these value adds are engaging and give fans a new experience, they will convert casual fans into loyal fans and will give them a reason to financially support artists. While there are tools on the web such as Topspin, ReverbNation, and AWAL that currently target indie and unsigned artists, these services need to recognize that focusing on selling finished works may not be entire answer.

So how are we to aggregate and distribute the long tail of music so that its collective power starts making an economic fuss? How do we improve music discovery so more of these artists get discovered? And if we’re not able to sell songs, what other kinds of value adds can we give fans to boost our brands and how do we monetize those value adds? The answers to these questions are at the heart of a the type of service that unsigned/indie musicians need to profit from their works in this new era of music. Soon, we will all find out.

Aunque pueda que lo único bueno que tenga la SGAE y su canon digital sea su (posible) desaparición hay gente que aún le encuentra el lado positivo al canon digital.

En Ningunterra, citan 7 cosas cosas interesantes que se han logrado gracias al a implantación del canon digital.

Yo personalmente soy de los que piensa que muchas de esas cosas se seguirían creando aún sin el dichoso canon digital.