Magnatune - a Non-Evil Record Label? 457
jea6 writes "As seen on Fark and sure to intrest non-crossover Slashdotters, Magnatune is a record company with a catchy slogan. They highlight: 1) We're a record label. But we're not evil. 2) We call it 'try before you buy.' It's the shareware model applied to music. 3) Listen to hundreds of MP3'd albums from our artists. Or try our genre-based radio stations. 4) If you like what you hear, buy our music online for as little as $5 an album or license our music for commercial use. 5) Artists get a full 50% of the purchase price. And unlike most record labels, our artists keep their rights to their music. 6) Founded by musicians, for musicians. No major label connections. We are not evil. So if you are anti-RIAA (artist or consumer) and looking for an option (albeit a small option), this may be a start. The music is Creative Commons licensed, which is the brainchild of the eminent Lawrence Lessig."
This is great except.. (Score:5, Informative)
This part needs a correction... (Score:1, Informative)
I don't see any MP3s, and all I see are streams (m3u). It would be more correct to say "listen to hundreds of streamed MP3'd albums from our artists."
Then again, I do think this is the right way to approach this. You can listen to low quality streams to get a feel for the album or song before you buy it in mp3 form.
I am willing to bet if they didn't do this they would end up having all their songs downloaded, bandwidth eaten up, and despite the claims made here about "supporting the artists" they will not get much money back in return.
Re:Not New (Score:2, Informative)
I checked it out (Score:5, Informative)
Now, how long before big labels realize that they have to start making more variety of music? With Apple music store I can already preview, download and burn on CD so they would be making some money.
Re:mp3 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It may be non evil... (Score:3, Informative)
I am enjoying this group [magnatune.com] however. It vaguely reminds me of a combination of dylerium and dead can dance mixed in the style of hybrid.
There is one thing thats good about this label thus far - they're not going for the stereotype. They're looking for artists that produce a unique sound, which is the only place to put your label on the map.
Marketed != Good (Score:4, Informative)
What main stream America wants is the marketed music. Well, guess what? marketing machines are about making money.
Imagine who cool it would be if all the effort thrown into pirating the marketed stuff went into creating an underground force for marketing independent music?
The cool thing about the creative commons license is that it is a start in making such an underground force.
Re:This is great except.. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, yeah, there are a few pitfalls here. It's not just a matter of recording your stuff and throwing it out on the net. The Big Evil companies also do things like pay for promotion and help underwrite the cost of touring, exercise influence with the radio stations and MTV and whatnot to get the music played and brought to the attention of consumers. I'm not sure these guys have all the resources at their disposal to perform these functions. It wouldn't hurt to have an already highly successful artist or two sign on to this to help push it along. A stable of competent but unknown artists is fine, but is unlikely to generate the kind of revenues necessary to be able to afford to provide the kind of services the Big Evil companies provide.
Re:*THIS* is what i've been waiting for (Score:2, Informative)
I found its offerings to be professional and compentent, if unremarkable. So far the site seems to deliver on what its promising. FREE downloads, FREE streaming audio. Their business model appears to be ethical (by my standards).
Basically I'm waiting a week or two to see in the media if things are kosher before buying something: e.g. this is a legitimate venture?; they're on the up & up?; people don't have nasty customer service problems, etc.
I've bought one CD from them after listening to the entire thing first a few times (in case your curious, it was "Shall We Dance" by Beth Quist). Other than the fact that it seemed that you had to use PayPal to pay for your purchase, the service was quite good. Once they received the payment, I was emailed with instructions on how I could download WAV and MP3 versions of the CD. No restrictions on the files, and the download process was straightforward.
The fact that you could also name your price (from $5 to $18 in $1 increments) was also really cool. Hopefully, they'll keep this method of payment (it is something that they were trying out to see how well it would work). Most people seem to pay about $8 (the amount they recommend). And the artist gets half of whatever you pay, which I think is much better than your typical CD (at least from what I've heard).
Works fine, music sucks (Score:5, Informative)
Downloading works fine. Everything plays with open-source Freeamp/Zinf. If you care.
Metropolis Records - another example (Score:4, Informative)
Absolutely, and if you have any talent, it'll probably be wasted at a major RIAA label as well.
There's been a lot of coverage the past few years about the real problems of these labels, including the absurd advances to dated artists like Michael Jackson (who never make back the advance money and end up costing other less prominant artists their chance), promotional efforts being spent on the tired old artists at the expense of up-and-coming ones ("Hey folks. That new Madonna album's out. Let's put lips on that pig!"), termination of thousands of smaller and newer artist contracts, fewer releases, etc.
Compare that with a label like Metropolis Records [metropolis-records.com] which has amassed a base of artists like Funker Vogt, KMFDM, VNV Nation, Juno Reactor, Apoptygma Bezerk, Frontline Assembly, Project Pitchfork, De/Vision, etc. - much of the EBM and techno-industrial sounds come from this label.
How do they play with the Internet community? They support royalty-free shoutcasting (which is how I found them and ended up spending a few $$$ on their artists!).
Support these labels by buying direct whenever you can, and let them know each time you buy that the reason you're sending them business is because of their support for great artists and the promotion of a music marketplace free of RIAA manipulation and anticompetitive behavior.
*scoove*
Re:It may be non evil... (Score:3, Informative)
Finally, UNCOMPRESSED online music! (Score:5, Informative)
Let's compare this service to iTunes, the most popular current service.
Price:
iTunes - $0.99 per song
Magnatune - $5.00 an album
If it's a good album without crappy filler then Magnatune is the big winner here. Classical fans get a great deal, but pop fans may not, depending on the band. Overall, I'd give the edge to Magnatune, but not a big one.
Format:
iTunes - AAC with some annoying DRM
Magnatune - Uncompressed WAV's!!!
Absolutely no contest here. Finally an online music store has listened to audiophiles! They'd be smart to use a lossless compression format to save on their bandwidth costs though...
Ethics:
iTunes - Apple takes it's (big) cut and then the Artist's (frequently RIAA affiliated) label takes most of the rest.
Magnatune - The artist gets 50%!!!
Again, no contest. Instead of feeling guilty about fueling a powermad monster when you buy music you can feel good about supporting the people who actually made it!
Selection:
iTunes: Lots
Magnatune: Not a lot
iTunes is the clear winner here.
To sum up, you get more for your money with magnatunes, including peace of mind. You just can't get many albums there... yet. If magnatune manages to get off the ground that may change, but they have a long road ahead of them. Their biggest challenge is getting more content. In my opinion they need to forge alliances with other like-minded independant labels. There are a lot out there, but many use mail-order as their only form of distribution! Magnatunes needs to get these labels on board pronto.
Maybe not evil, but... (Score:5, Informative)
When I went to buy one of their albums, Magnatune wanted me to type my credit card number on a NON-SSL page. Naturally, my attempted purchase ended right there. $5 to Magnatune and $5000 to man-in-the-middle hacker is not cheap.
According to Magnatune's "forum", they plan to add SSL "in a few days". That this wasn't a higher priority makes me very worried; even if they do set up SSL, it suggests they might not be too careful with say, customer lists and credit card numbers.
And there doesn't appear to be way to search through the albums for sale.
Still, Magnatune's a step in the right direction.
Magnatune is selling the higher quality product (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is great except.. (Score:3, Informative)
My favorite band "Pee Shy" signed up with a small label that promoted them and generally treated them well and got their music sold to people like me. Then the label was bought by one of the big RIAA labels and all of a sudden no one at the label knew they existed but their contract said they had to make more CD's that the label approved of before they could move on. After about a year the band's leader gave up on music and the rest of the band made a valiant effort to start a new band "Three Wheeler" that was now just missing something, like the fourth member. They were maybe gullible to sign a multi-album deal, but from where they sat at the time it made sense. I'm pretty sure they weren't just out to make a killing with the type of music they played but sure they wanted a wider audience, and this was before Napster so there you go. I like to have a wide audience for my software, I don't see anything wrong with that.
What's sad is that labels like Ani DiFranco's "Righteous Babe Records" that were formed because of the corruption in the industry in the end join the RIAA and play the corrupt game required to get their CD's into the Virgin Megastores. I don't think this guy will go that way, and by putting everything out in the open like he has and not making the artist's sign over their copyrights he might just end up doing the right thing 10 years from now and not just today for the publicity. I think we've seen with book publishers like O'Reilly that a moral person at the core of a company can end up doing more good than outside observers have the right to expect. (* a friend of mine published a book with O'Reilly and was treated like a human being throughout the whole process).
Magnatune site a little slow (Score:5, Informative)
Things look better now, but still sluggish. (at least it's still working).
I've moved all graphics to my secondary server, running Squid. That helped Apache, but graphics are taking some time to come up. I'm bringing up another squid server now.
Audio streaming seems to be working ok (at least for me)
And THANKS for all the kind words on this thread (I'll respond to them once I get the servers running fast)
- John (the Magnatune guy)
Theres more than one (Score:1, Informative)
Thing is, non of us have used this ethical approach as our core marketing technique
The control that the majors have over distribution is the only thing that prevents us from truly competing with them properly.
http://www.newsense-recordings.co.uk - A label in desperate need of a free web designer/maintainer.
Re:Magnatune site a little slow (Score:5, Informative)
I'm now running a copy of the poorly-named but amazingly fast open-source "AOLserver" http://www.aolserver.com/ on port 81, feeding all graphics requests through it rather than through Apache. That seems to have alleviated all the (current) speed problems.
Now, of course, that'll just encourage more people to visit, and I'll have new speed problems in a few hours (grin).
-john
Re:Finally, UNCOMPRESSED online music! (Score:3, Informative)
Price: $9.99/month for a year or $14.99/month for 3 months. UNLIMITED download!
Format: LAME
Ethics: Labels get 50%..
Selection: Lots!
Re:Magnatune site a little slow (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is NOT an RAII competitor (Score:3, Informative)
I'd like to see some jazz on there too, but it's a very good start.
you can't read (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Weak offer when compared to CD Baby (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not evil? They took my money! (Score:2, Informative)
Yah, I'm the "sales guy" (actually, the only guy at Magnatune) -- I don't (yet) have paypal integrated into my shopping system.
My credit card vendor gives me an API I can call to run a charge, but Paypal makes me send users off to the paypal shopping basket, and I therefore can't easily validate that you paid.
So... that's the long story why, if you pay for something on Magnatune with paypal, I get the email confirming payment, and then (manually) send you the download info.
I've got a piece of software called "DLMan" which I need to install (later this week) which does the fancier paypal authorization dance, and when that's done Paypal users will get the download URL immediately, like visa/mcard folks do.
-john (the Magnatune guy)
Re:As a musician... (Score:2, Informative)
Most musicians who come to me already have a self-released CD, so it's not an issue.
However, I also:
-john
Re:I don't know if it is a "record-label" (Score:3, Informative)
from http://forums.magnatune.com/read/messages?id=5438
Magnatune acquires portable recording studio
Magnatune has acquired a portable recording studio, and will soon begin recording artists specifically for release on Magnatune.
When under a recording agreement with Magnatune, artists will be able to record an album at no cost to them, Magnatune will distribute and promote the album, and the artist will still own all rights to the recording. For example, the artist will be able to print their own CDs of the recording and sell them at gigs.
Magnatune acquired the recording system so that it would be able to broaden its reach, and include talented artists who don't have the thousands of dollars (at a minimum) it takes to make a typical record studio-recorded album.
For the gear-heads out there, the recording setup comprises of:
- a 17" mac powerbook
- pro tools digital audio workstation software
- digidesign's digi002 8 track recording console
- an additional 8 tracks of recording capacity (16 tracks total)
- a variety of high end "Studio Projects" microphones and stands
- various off-board racks and effects (and software-based ones)
In most cases, it is easiest if the recording happens at our premises in Berkeley, California (it's still a lot of gear to move around), but in some case we will record at a band's performance site
-john (from Magnatune)
Re:you can't read (Score:2, Informative)
Re:HTTPS? (What is music?) (Score:4, Informative)
Says who? I always maintained that the western violin is not a musical instrument, but an instrument of torture, inflicting injury on players and mental anguish on listeners. Still, it would be idiotic for me to dictate that violin music will not enter our home.
On your rule of "no distortion": So Shakti would be kosher, but Mahavishnu Orchestra wouldn't be? Shankar would be OK, as long as it isn't that "screaming" album he did with Frank Zappa? The Roches would be forbidden because Robert Fripp used a distorted guitar on the second track of their self titled debut album?
Death Metal singers don't scream - they growl. Would that be ok? No? So I guess Tom Waits is verboten. Too bad.
Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz To Come: Fine - an acoustic, instrumental work. No screaming there. What about Free Jazz? They don't actually scream, but they might as well have. The screaming attitude is there. There goes a seminal 20th century recording. Plonk.
Listen to anything by Devin Townsend. Is he singing or screaming? Whatever it is, it's musical, except that your daughter won't even get the chance to argue that with you, because this screaming ain't getting in your home, no siree.
Krzysztof Penderecki made a symphonic orchestra scream in Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, but I guess that's not music. Damn - I rather liked it, and I was deeply moved by it.
I suppose you'd approve of Pat Metheny's work. No screaming or distortion there... Oops, I forgot about Zero Tolerance For Silence. It's a work of great beauty, if you dig into it, and see past the, well, distortion.
Give me a break. This isn't philosophy, or moral structure. This is an arbitrary, boneheaded and ignorant rule of aesthetics. If you give your children a philosophy of life (as you should, and you seem to strive to do), it must be consistent. It must have structure, and things must follow logically from the ground rules. Setting arbitrary rules to satisfy your preferences in music is neither consistent nor fair.
Re:how to find other indie music like this (Score:2, Informative)