Radiohead Manager, MAMA and Nettwerk Team Up to Create New Alternative to Record Labels

Posted on 08. Jul, 2009 by refe.

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Radiohead manager Brian Message has reportedly teamed up with MAMA Group and Vancouver-based Nettwerk Music Group to launch a new kind of record label, called Polyphonic. Polyphonic will allow artists to retain their copyright, and will give new artists a fifty-percent share of profits. Established artists may earn an even higher percentage, with hints of [...]

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Moby’s Best Selling Track? The One He Gave Away For Free

Posted on 02. Jul, 2009 by refe.

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For all those in the music industry who are still not convinced that ‘free’ can play a defining role in an artist’s business model, here is yet another success story.

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Creative Culture and the Growing Copyright Extremism

Posted on 19. Jun, 2009 by refe.

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Creative culture is on the rise, thanks largely to recent technology. Anybody can shoot a video or record a song and upload it to YouTube and millions of people might see it. Digital technology has put the arts back into the hands of the people. Copyright lawyer and chairman of Creative Commons Larry Lessig gave a presentation [...]

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Sufjan Stevens Gives Copyright to Fan Who Won’t Copy

Posted on 16. Jun, 2009 by refe.

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In November 2007 Sufjan Stevens announced that he would be trading the rights to one of his latest songs for the winning entry in a contest called the Great Sufjan Stevens Song Xmas Xchange. More than 600 fans submitted original compositions and a song called ‘Every Day is Christmas’ by Alec Duffy was chosen. Duffy’s [...]

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BitBlinder Baits RIAA With Free Anonymous Filesharing

Posted on 12. Jun, 2009 by refe.

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The RIAA is not going to be happy about the newest evolution of file-sharing technology. BitBlinder is a free new service that claims to hide users’ IP addresses, allowing them to use BitTorrent anonymously. There is only one reason for this, of course, and that is to hide illegal activity from the authorities. In the [...]

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Trent Reznor Quits Twitter – How Real is Too Real in Social Media?

Posted on 11. Jun, 2009 by refe.

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If you were on Twitter at all yesterday you probably heard the big news. Trent Reznor – often hailed as the most tech-savvy man in the music biz – has given up on Web 2.0. How could one of the most prolific rock star Twitter users (641,977 followers at time of writing) pull such an abrupt about-face?

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3 More Ways to Make Music Worth Paying For

Posted on 10. Jun, 2009 by refe.

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Recorded music has lost so much of its value in the digital age. For the past few posts we’ve been talking about six different ways for artists to add some of that value back – what I call ‘supplimental scarcities.’ You can find the definition along with the first three here. The final three scarcities [...]

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3 Ways to Make Music Worth Paying For

Posted on 08. Jun, 2009 by refe.

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The future of the music industry as we know it will depend on how it responds now that the product on which they’ve built their empire is no longer profitable. While the major players are intrenched in red tape and beauracracy, independent artists and record labels have an incredible opportunity to adapt and thrive under the [...]

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Why Free Music Was Inevitable

Posted on 04. Jun, 2009 by refe.

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Digital files are infinite goods – the can be copied ad infinitum at no cost, and no significant investment of time. This is why the price of music has dropped, and this is why so much recorded music has been made available for free. The transition from physical to digital made free recorded music an inevitability.