How Fascinating

I recently watched a video from the Pop Tech conference.  A video of  Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, describing the difference of living life as a conversation of possibilities rather than a downward spiral. What was most interesting was that in order to demonstrate his thinking ne brought on stage a young celloist, and walked him through a practice session.

One great moment that came out of the practice was Zander telling the young person that when they made a mistake, instead of constricting and pulling downward, they should instead spring upwards shouting “How Fascinating!”

Retain the Rights By Distributing Your Own Music

One of the reasons to have a contract with a record label is the distribution resources. Big companies, with deep pockets can get your CD in online and brick/mortar stores. In publishing, when LuLu.com came out they offered a feature of making your books available for purchase on Amazon.com. Although there was no promise that your book would appear on Amazon.com, the idea that your book could be distributed to a larger audience outside of your own website was a big step.

Enter Musicadium, an independent music distribution service that works with iTunes and eMusic. The service fee is a minimal US$29.95 compared to the fact that you retain all rights to your music, which means no signing your soul away to big businesses.

I am eager to hear some success stories about this service. I personally, didn’t purchase the ISBN number needed to make my books available on Amazon, but the option is enticing. The implication that a budding artist in any medium (print, music, video) can get their work out to a larger audience through services like this is compounded by large artists that are moving away from record labels. An example of this is Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, who have made the decision to not attach to a record label and stay independent. Radiohead in particular is releasing their latest album In Rainbows online, without DRM, and a name your price model (think NPR listener supported radio).

link

Radiohead album available for download at Midnight

Certainly not the first band to offer music as a download on their site. Also, not the first to make it available DRM-Free (no restrictions on copying it from different devices). This is huge simply because Radiohead is huge. On top of that, offering the downloaders the opportunity to name their price.

To me this is like the NPR model of listener supported music, which certainly has its downsides. Imagine an NPR like scenario where Radiohead encourages you to call with your support for a tote bag or coffee mug. I hope Radiohead releases some statistics on the site and some numbers on what people paid, etc… I am sure I am not the only one who would be interested in seeing if this was a success.