Where Indie Artists Get Everything 142
anonicon writes "From the same people who brought you the Web's first corrupt CDs tracking list comes the first site where independent musicians receive 100% of the money that fans pay for their music or merchandise (of course, after the credit card company takes their cut from the payment). More information can be had here or here."
Re:Artists get 100%? Not for long. (Score:3, Informative)
Even if they didn't ask for payment they might still take donations or some well meaning people might choose to fund it out of their own pockets (as with the Wikpedia [wikipedia.org])
Not exactly a new idea (Score:3, Informative)
My brother-on-law sells on CD Baby [cdbaby.com] and seems pleased. Not sure how they structure the deal, but the basic idea is to allow independent artists to get most of the money.
None of these sites solve the much larger problem of artist marketing, IMO. That's the one service that the record companies offer to the artists that no one else can get close to (in part because they lock competitors out of radio access, for example). There's room in the market for someone to do that, but they're going to have to find other means of getting to the customer other than radio (sites like Epitonic.com [epitonic.com] are a good step in that direction).
More convenient services available (Score:2, Informative)
CDBaby (Score:3, Informative)
check the site. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Artists get 100%? Not for long. (Score:5, Informative)
Per bandwidth, 300gb/mo is $95.00. If I need more, I can get 2tb/mo for about $600/mo.
As far as keeping 0%, that's absolutely no joke. When you pay for an artist's CD, the money moves from your bank through the processor (2CheckOut) directly to the artist. We keep nothing because we're not even in the payment stream.
My expenses for now are $10/month for cheap hosting. I think I can handle it.
Peace.
Re:Artists get 100%? Not for long. (Score:5, Informative)
For more info:
http://www.fatchucks.com/about.html [fatchucks.com]
Scroll to the end. No ads.
Enough already! (Score:3, Informative)
Chuck's site is a popular site already with the corrupt CD list, and it's only a matter of time before they come. So, rather then pan the idea because it may not look professional or because it doesn't have any artists signed up yet, applaud it and Chuck for wanting to do the right thing for the artist, giving them the money they deserve.
sevcom.com (Score:4, Informative)
Severed Heads also offer improved versions of their older stuff - and the latest album (Op) comes with a key to access 'upgrades' - i.e. extra songs and new versions. On top of all this, you can hear just about everything they sell as a (low bandwidth) MP3 before you buy.
Cut up the middleman!
Re:Artists get 100%? Not for long. (Score:3, Informative)
I pay $9.95/month for 30gb of traffic at hostforweb.com, a pretty good hosting company. If I need to go to 300gb/month, they charge 95.00. The next step up in case things get crazy is sanethosting.com:
http://www.sanethosting.com/
They charge $200/month for colocated hosting (including 330gb of transfer) and $99/month for every 330gb block after #1.
Hope this helps!
Chuck
Re:A just little exaggeration here?! (Score:2, Informative)
The idea behind FCM (Fat Chuck's Music) is to get rid of all the middlemen and allow artists to ship directly to fans and to be paid directly from fans. As you can see, we're not in the payment loop or the ordering loop besides letting artists list their goods with us (shopping has to begin somewhere that's convenient for fans).
I've been surprised by all the negative reactions here since I've seen so many comments about how great it would be to allow artists to sell directly to the world without middlemen (which is what we're doing). Hopefully this will keep growing and the way things are done today will seem like an anachronism in a few years, or else my idea will.
Thanks for the encouragement, it is appreciated.
Peace,
Chuck
Re:2CheckOut (Score:2, Informative)
You're right and you're wrong. You're absolutely right that you can sign up for your own merchant account at 2CheckOut for $49 and take it from there.
The rest of the pie is where you're somewhat wrong. Besides hosting their page at artist.fatchucks.com, we also take care of all these items:
Creating the shopping links and variable shipping for each item the artist wants to sell, both on our end and on the 2CO end.
Taking care of scanning and editing the album art so that people can see what they're buying, adding the track lists, making fan and media reviews about the artist centrally available, and otherwise providing a central location for fans to find info on the artist.
Providing order and customer support help for artists who need help handling the shipping and ordering aspects to their account when there's an issue.
Creating one location and one contact point for both artists and customers to talk to when they need the tools we provide, instead of having to deal with X parties, each of whom have their own agendas. We're here for both artists and the public.
And of course, if the idea is so-so, why hasn't anyone thought to harness the off-the-shelf tools that are publicly available to create a service that helps Indies this way? I looked for months and no one's doing it.
Peace,
Chuck
been doing this for the last year... (Score:3, Informative)
MP3 sound samples (full songs) you can download off our site.
All we did was upload (we snailmailed the CD for replication) our info, all we have to do with fulfillment is wait for them to send the checks. They handle the credit card stuff and create the goods on demand. The prices are a bit high, but creating stuff on a one-off basis is expensive even with everything basically automated.
Check out our site... it's in the sig below.
Re:Good on 'em (Score:3, Informative)