In my previous post I outlined some of the problems with current music solutions in the digital age. In this post I will detail my vision for how I think things should work.
To begin with, I am going to make the following assumptions:
- People will pay for music but have a limited budget for it
- People want to be able to own their music, and do what they want with it (e.g.. no DRM, no network connectivity required, etc)
My solution also attempts to meet the following goals:
- Get artists as much of a cut of the proceeds as possible (i.e. fuck labels for the most part)
- Allow people to choose how their money gets distributed
- Keep it affordable yet sustainable (tough to find numbers for this one)
The Details
The general framework for accomplishing these goals is to offer a music subscription service similar to Microsoft’s Zune Pass or Napster, but without all the bullshit and DRM. It would have the following general features.
- For a monthly fee you can stream/download as much music as you want
- Your account is accessible from anywhere with a connection (any computer)
- No ‘net connection is necessary to actually listen to your downloaded music
- Music is DRM free and sharable/transferable/etc to any device
- Music you have downloaded is still available on your devices after your subscription ends
None of the above presents any really new ideas, but the interesting part of the scheme is in how the money is handled. I will go into this in some detail below.
Distribution of $$$
The big thing I would like to see is to let people dictate how their money gets distributed. This is important for two reasons. First, it lets people actually understand that they are supporting artists allowing them to make more music. Second, it shows people that their money is not going to some middle man, it is actually going to pay for the value the are getting out of the system.
There could be different options available for where your monthly fee actually goes. A few that come to mind off the top of my head are listed below.
- Audioscrobbler style – This is really where my idea originally stemmed from. In this model, your money would be distributed based on what artists you listen to in a given month. So lets say 35% of the songs you listen to in that month are by Murder by Death. 35% of your individual contribution would then go to Murder by Death for that month. Sites like Last.fm already have the infrastructure in place to track what you play and log it to your personal profile. It would not be a stretch to extend this and monetize it.
- Socialist style — In this model your money would get distributed based on the artists who needed it most. There are a number of ways you could determine need, but an easy way to do it would be based on popularity. A user could apportion their subscription fee to the 10 least popular artists they listened to the past month or something. The idea here is that the user is then helping support artists he/she likes so that they are able to keep making music and delivering value to the user.
- Choose your own adventure — Why not let users just choose which artists the money goes to specifically? Let Sarah give 50% of her subscription fee (minus the service cut) to Rob Costlow if she wants. If Sarah really likes Rob’s music that much then she can decide to spend her money that way.
It is very important with the above distribution schemes that users be given a choice in what to use. I think the audioscrobbler method would make a good default, but if you tried to force people to use the socialist system or something, it would raise an outcry from many other users/artists in the community. Giving users the choice makes the most people content.
As far as the distribution of the money is concerned, Goal 1 is to let artists keep as much of it as possible. Obviously the service itself would need to take a cut, but this can be mitigated in a few different ways.
- BitTorrent — BitTorrent could be used to legally distribute and share the music where possible to help cut down on server and bandwidth costs for the service. However it could not be used exclusively, since many artists would not be popular enough to have seeders willing to share. Basically when a user requests to download a song, the service should check the BitTorrent ratio first, then fall back to an actual server if the ratio is insufficient. Alternatively you could have a set of servers dedicated to being BitTorrent seeds and used as a backup for when the number of seeders is too low.
- Advertising – The service itself could make money through advertising on the website you use to browse/download songs. This could be further enhanced by providing profile and social tools for people to use based around the music (see Last.fm again) to get people to go to the site for reasons other than just search & download.
- Peripheral products — Artists could also be given the opportunity to sell other items through the site, such as concert tickets, limited edition vinyl, shirts, etc directly to fans. This would also help supplement artist income and could possibly drive revenue for the service.
- Bulk passes – Offer people the opportunity to pay for a half or full year at a slightly discounted price. This money could then be invested and paid out to artists monthly based on the chosen scheme, with the interest from the investment going to the service provider.
Ideally the combination of these would increase revenue and reduce costs far enough that a maximal amount of the proceeds could be distributed directly to the artists.
How much would it cost?
I don’t have the answer to this one offhand, I think it would take a decent amount of research to find a price-point that would most likely be profitable to both the service and artists. One option might be to experiment with a “pay what you want” scheme, although that might be too risky without setting a minimum price as well (say $10?). However by setting a minimum price I have the feeling that it would entice people to pay just the minimum.
Summary
The general theory behind all of this is that music has value and people will pay for it. Artists should be receiving most, if not all of this compensation since they are the ones providing the value. Paying for individual songs/albums is no longer a feasible model in today’s world, but people should still have a way to make sure their favorite artists are getting paid and supported. I believe this model has the potential to do that, even in a world where people can download music for free (albeit illegally).
Just a final note, I think user feedback would be very important in this system. Showing people a results sheet of exactly how much of their money is going to which artists could increase buy-in and participation.
In the next post I will explore the feasibility of implementing this, who stands in the best position to do it, and possibly speculate some more on the current state of the industry.