Audio Lunchbox is a DRM free download services based around a 2-million strong track list of independent musicians. They offer both a pay per track and a subscription service, which allows users to buy ‘credits’ to spend on music which would otherwise cost a far greater cash equivalent. They don’t have deals with Universal or the other bigger players, so should you subscribe, you’ll find yourself looking around for new and interesting music to spend your money on, rather than being able to get hold of stuff that you’ve heard on Radio 1.
The subscription plan does work out far cheaper per track than the cash option; depending on which package you purchase you’ll be getting tracks for less than 25 cents, as compared to 99 cents. The month by month plan costs $9.99, for which you get 40 credits a month (enough for 4 albums) plus 50 bonus credits to start you off. This might seem like a pretty cheap way of buying music, especially compare with iTunes basic and inflexible pricing scheme, but if you’re prepared to commit to a monthly outgoing to buy music, you might be well advised to check out Spotify’s subscription service; similarly priced at GBP£9.99 (the dollar is at 1.59 to the pound as I write) you get access to all the streamed music you could possibly want, advert free, with a catalogue that includes artists on both indie and major labels, and a widget for your android or iPhone that will allow you to listen to playlists you’ve created offline.
Lily Allen has proven herself once again to be adept at both putting herself in the limelight and her foot in her mouth. Entering the debate on illegal music file sharing over the internet facilitated by such notorious offenders as the Pirate Bay, she cast her influence solidly against the pirates, going so far as to launch a blog condemning the practice of file sharing (called It’s Not Alright – a little self reference to her first album). The debate proved a little hot for her, and after being the recipient of some rather vitriolic and personal abuse, she’s removed the blog, and retired seeming rather hurt.
The heated discussion continues without her – politicians, ISP’s, heavyweight industry bodies, and artist coalition groups are pitching in, as well as individuals like Allen. Opinions range between extremes; some think that sharing files helps boost artists profiles, others that it is choking the life out of the industry by draining revenue that should go to fund the success of major artists and the development of up-and-coming new acts. What is unarguably true is that people are not going to stop sharing music across the internet. If a great new band starts up next door to me I want to tell people about them, the same if I stumble across them on the web, and the most convenient way to let my friends know about them is by sharing their content online. Where there is an easy, legal way to do so, any sane person would use it – that’s one of the reasons why Myspace was so successful, there was (and still is, although their star seems to be waning) so much great music up online for people to discuss – but where there isn’t an easy way to do it, like when people refuse to allow their music to be available for free, then people will look for other, less forthright, but still convenient ways to do the same thing.
What then, is the right way forward? Filesharers (many of whom are avid music fans, gig attendees and t-shirt purchasers) won’t stop wanting to hear and distribute good and new music online. For obvious business reasons, ISP’s are extremely reluctant to bear the costs involved in filesharing, or to pass it on to their customers. Artists are undoubtedly losing revenue, since if it’s quicker and easier to steal an album than to buy it, and the likelihood of any repurcussions is tiny, then album sales will fall. Someone needs to come up with a way that music fans can share music onliine, that is legal, and that profits artists. Who could that white knight be?
There are a few online music distribution companies out there, each professing it’s service and it’s model to be the cheapest and the best: what you need to do is figure out which of them is going to be the best for you. How many tracks can you reasonably expect to sell? What can you afford to outlay? Figure those things out and then decide which deal is best for you.
The basic models of distributor are:
Subscription – Keep your royalties, but pay a maintenance or subscription fee to keep your music online. Good if you’re going to be selling a lot of tracks. (CD Baby operate this model, also charging an upload fee)
Percentage – Don’t pay any fees, but pay for the service with a percentage of the royalties from sales (this is the model we use at RouteNote). Good if you don’t want to risk losing any money, or your sales aren’t likely to be massive just yet.
Upload fee – A flat fee for uploading your music, and then keep your royalties. Again, good if you’re hoping to sell a lot of tracks, but there’s no incentive for the distributor to promote your music, as they’ve already made their money, and can’t profit further from helping you out. (EmuBands do this)
Managed – The next best thing to being signed to a record label, some digital distribution companies will take labels and larger bands on, and for a larger cut of the royalties from sales, will make more of an effort to promote their music, or offer other benefits to their partners. It’s up to you to decide whether their efforts are likely to be worth the cut. (The Orchard operate this model)
Controlling your own output means that you don’t have to go with the same partner for multiple releases, you can pick and choose different partners for different releases. If you find that the music distribution deal you’re on with one company is working better for one release than another, you can change partners for the one that’s losing out.
Also consider that digital music sales increase your presence in the marketplace, and a record label will look at the level of your sales of both physical and digital music, and of your live gig audiences when they’re looking at signing you (if that’s what you’re after).
You already know the advantages that the internet has to offer musicians, you wouldn’t be reading this site if you weren’t interested in exploiting them. You’re still unconvinced? Digital distribution, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:
Your music reaches a bigger audience than ever before, more people than have ever been into Tower Records, HMV and Virgin Megastores combined have access to your music without either of you leaving home.
More than this, digital distribution costs nothing when compared to physical – you don’t need to press CD’s or LP’s, you don’t need to package them, warehouse them, ship them, you don’t need to take returns or manage stock, you can just put one copy of a track up with a digital distributor and have infinite copies of your music literally anywhere there’s a phone line.
Of course, there are many more ways for people to copy your music without paying for it on the web, but since the cost of getting your music out there is so much less, and a greater proportion of the profits goes to the artist having cut out so much of the bulky record company structure, you’ll probably end up making more money anyhow.You certainly keep a bigger proportion of the revenue from the sales you do make.
The truth is that the internet is inescapable as a medium for music; you just can’t afford to ignore it. Even if you think the internet lays your music too open to piracy, and stick with just releasing CD’s or vinyl, chances are some one of your dedicated fans will encode their copy and put it up on a torrent site anyway, so you might as well give people the option of buying it legally online…
