The signs are everywhere that a revolution is taking place in music. DRM is history, the price of music is falling towards zero (and sometimes even free isn’t enough to slow piracy), and even big music sites like Yahoo are beginning to break ranks with the RIAA and labels. But Amazon may be doing more than anyone else to change the way music is discovered, promoted and sold. Not only do they have a music store that only sells DRM-free music, but they are experimenting with startups who are trying to break the stranglehold that labels have on discovering, promoting and marketing new artists. These startups are giving artists a different path to find their fans. And Amazon is helping them. Today Amazon announced that it is partnering with a European startup called SellABand and will sell music from SellABand artists. We first covered SellABand in August 2006 – unknown artists upload music to the site and ask fans to chip in $10 if they like what they hear. Once the band gets to $50,000 they’ve proven themselves, and they get to record a CD in a professional studio. Each fan gets a limited edition CD. If the artist doesn’t reach $50,000, the fans can get their money back or give it to another artist. Earlier this year we noted that the model seems to work. Today, more than 6,000 artists have uploaded music to the site, and a lucky few have been picked by fans to record albums. The top artists will now have their music sold on Amazon UK as well, making the model even more attractive. See our coverage of Strayform, a different startup with a variation on the SellABand business model. Amazon also invested in a different startup in the music space – Amie Street. Amie Street is a company I have long admired – we first covered it in July 2006, and last year I added it to my list of “web 2.0 companies I couldn’t live without.” Amie Street has a model for selling non-DRM music that simultaneously earns artists money and ranks artists by popularity of downloads. All songs start at free. As users begin to download a song, the price rises steadily until it reaches $0.99. So the more a song costs, the more popular it is. Most of the muck is filtered out by $0.25 or so, and the site has → Read More
Mzinga isn’t the only new product launching tonight at the Boston TechCrunch Party. Massachusetts based OurStage is debuting a new iPhone site where anyone can listen to top ranked Indie songs as well. Ourstage, which launched in March 2007, is a site that lets users rank and buy Indie songs. Artists upload the songs, which users then judge – two song snippets are heard and the user votes for which one he or she likes the best. The result is are constantly updated top lists of songs. The top songs overall or by category are then listed on the site, and two $5,000 prizes are given to the top artists each month. Users can also purchase any song in unrestricted MP3 format for $.99. Currently the artists receive 100% of proceeds, but starting in 2008 OurStage will begin to take a 30% cut. Now iPhone users can visit the site and stream any of the top songs – just visit ourstage.com from your iPhone to access the custom user interface, which uses Quicktime to stream the music. OurStage is taking a different approach to ranking Indie music from other startups we’ve covered. Amie Street, by comparison, simply sets the price of every news song at zero and then begins raising the price as the number of downloads increases. Amie Street was recently funded by Amazon. Also see our coverage of Strayform and SellaBand. CrunchBase Information OurStage AmieStreet Strayform SellABand Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Strayform is a Texas startup that, like SellaBand and the recently funded Amie Street, is giving unsigned artists a way to promote and sell their music. Like SellaBand, artists sign up, upload some of their music and then create proposals for new music they want to create. Fans can listen to and download the music (DRM free), and donate directly to proposals they like. The proposals are all different. One artist, for example, says he will mention the name of person who pledges the most in the song itself. The service is more like SellaBand than Amie Street. SellaBand also lets artists upload music and takes donations. If donations get to $50k, as they have for several artists already, The artist gets a contract with a label. Amie Street, by contrast, simply lets artists sell their music on the site. Downloads starts at free and the price increases steadily as more downloads occur. Strayform has had little press, but, inexplicably were covered by Fox News in a 3 minute segment. The video is available on their home page. I like the service, but the site sure could use a redesign. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
