GnuMusiq/design/2004

Archival Note

Things have changed a great deal since this was written (mostly in 2003 and earlier). Some of the ideas it suggests are now commonplace, while others remain largely unheard-of -- and since I am essentially gutting this document (rewriting most of it, keeping only a few pieces) it seemed worthwhile to preserve this version separately, as ugly and unfinished as it is. --Woozle (talk) 11:04, 8 September 2013 (EDT)

Document History

• 2004-11-11 Last save of original document (MS Word)
• 2009-02-09 Transcribed to wiki, without text formatting (to be done)
• 2009-02-10 Text formatting done
• 2013-09-08 archived prior to major rewrite/update

Web Site

Core Services

Purpose

Musicians want their music to be heard (and hopefully make money from it). People want to hear music (and hopefully not pay too much for it).

Unfortunately, there are some obstacles to this. The "philosophy" section goes into these issues in more depth (which is necessary because they are very complex), but here's a brief summary of the problems and how GnuMusiq proposes to solve them.

Problems

One problem is what we'll call taste.

There is currently an immeasurable quantity of music in the world. Any given listener will only enjoy a small percentage of it.

The canonical way of dealing with this is to distill the music into a more manageable quantity of titles across a handful of "popular" categories which are then promoted through various channels friendly to those categories. The music industry invests heavily in a few titles which fit well into these categories, mostly neglecting everything else.

This means a few titles (and artists) do extremely well, and the rest don't quit their day jobs.

Another problem is payment.

In the recent past, this wasn't as much of a problem because recordings were much more difficult to copy and distribute. Since copies of recordings ("records") cost money, it made perfect sense to charge for each copy – and charge a little extra to pay back the cost of producing the original recording.

This was always a bit of a kluge because nobody knew how many copies would sell, so there was no way of knowing how much to charge (or how much to spend on the recording) so as to break even. It was also paradoxically seen as a good thing because "good" artists would make a lot of money, and "bad" artists would go broke or go into a different business. Music is not a commodity; the quality varies dramatically and for the most part cannot be evaluated objectively.

Another problem with this solution is that a lot of really good music didn't receive enough exposure to reach the "breakthrough" point, and a lot of really bad music made huge amounts of money for any number of arbitrary reasons usually having more to do with business concerns than artistic ones.

A new problem with this solution is that copying music now costs next to nothing, and doesn't even require a physical medium for transport. The standard business model has become an overwhelming hindrance, and music lovers (even those who gladly paid for their music when that was the only option) are ignoring it in increasing numbers.

Solutions

Taste

I see a system with several key components.

Many entertainment retail sites already have features whereby users may recommend items to other users-at-large. This type of feature should be part of a rich palette of what I'll call media vector tools.

What I mean by "media vector"¹ takes a little bit of explaining.

Think of places where you hear music, or hear about music: Radio (broadcast or internet), TV, in-store music; listening stations at larger music retail stores (or streamed samples in online stores); loaned CDs, MP3s, mix tapes and CD-Rs; music reviews in newspapers and magazines; the Billboard charts (Hot 100 etc.); posters and ads for local bands, for shows, or for the latest release from a larger act; recommendations from friends.

I will boldly go out on a limb and assert that most people who still trade money for music make their buying decisions solely upon the basis of one or more of these experiences.

I will go further out on that same limb and assert that most people trust a few of those experiences more than they trust others, and that these channels are one of the main vectors through which an artist gains popularity. (This is an important point; see Note 2 for examples.)

So what we want to do is provide a venue, a forum, a structure, an ecosystem, whereby those cross-fertilizations of musical interest can take place.

I see the system as consisting of the following primary elements: A Musical Reference Library and Series Subscriptions. Secondarily, there must be a User Community that is Self-Governing and supports user-moderated Forums. From the User Community will emerge the site editors who will make the Reference Library possible, as well as (we expect) other agents formal and informal.

Payment

Preface

This is an especially charged issue right now (2003), so I should be clear about one thing from the start:

Although I believe the present system to be flawed (and the music industry to be largely to blame for its own problems by refusing to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the recent technological advances, seeing them instead as a threat to be contained), it is a fundamental goal of this project to see that artists to get paid for their work. The average reasonably-good artist should be able to earn a living, or at least a steady supplemental income, pursuing their art. So bear in mind that although I may babble excessively about free downloads and guilt-free music copying (here and in other writings), this is all part of a larger plan in which artists are compensated fairly under terms to which they have agreed without pressure tactics being applied, and into which they are not locked by unreadable contracts assembled by teams of corporate lawyers.

How to Get Paid When Copying Is Free

Some History

Back in the late 1960s³, the music industry was threatened as never before by a new technology: the cassette.

After much fussing and fighting, some concessions were made here and there and all was well once again. Nobody complained about all the copying that was still going on because (presumably) it was generally realized that most copying fell into two categories: (1) professional bootleggers, who are relatively easy to find and prosecute and anyhow cassettes weren't that huge a boon to them; many of them make bootleg vinyl as well; (2) small-time petty criminals making tapes to give their friends – which, it was further realized, is a really good way for music to promote itself; if you really like a song or an album, you're going to want vinyl or (later) a CD, because of the higher quality. Music sales soared, and (to exaggerate and oversimplify only slightly) everyone was happy.

Some More History

Back in the 1940s (?), the music industry was threatened as never before by a new technology: radio. Why would anyone buy music, said the established industry, if they can hear it for free on the radio? This will ruin us!⁴ Harsh words were exchanged, and a boycott ensued: radio would play only works in the public domain. Radio listeners became familiar with low-budget classical music and the works of Stephen Foster.

A new licensing agency, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) was created in response to this situation. BMI offered better rates than ASCAP, and granted memberships to many artists who had been repeatedly rebuffed by ASCAP (which up to that point had had a virtual monopoly on music publishing, tightly controlled by the film industry; BMI's policy was open-door). Presumably, at some point ASCAP realized that radio "spins" (playing a song on the air) did not represent a lost sale; it represented advertising of that song. There were no "lost sales". Radio airplay was, in fact, the key to driving sales by 1957; radio was a prime factor in the expansion of the music industry during the 1940s through the 1960s. To exaggerate and oversimplify no more than usual, everybody was happy.

Why The History Lesson?

In case I haven't been clear, I'm trying to draw a parallel. In the late 1990s, music industry became threatened as never before by a new technology (in this case a melange of technologies, with MP3 and the Internet being the most visible culprits). The established interests are responding by digging in their heels and trying to use their weight to keep things the way they always have been.

What they don't seem to have realized yet is that this has happened before, and the results will be much the same: the playing field will shift around again and become more level, everyone's choices will broaden, and there will be even more money to be made. (It has been pointed out by at least one source that the the fear in the music industry is most likely not that money won't be made, but that the current players will be unable to adapt and will not have a place on the new playing field. Hence the inertia.)

What We Can Do Now

Well obviously, we can learn from history. How do you get paid for your music when people can hear it for free? We can think of free copying as another form of advertising – like radio, or mix-tape copying -- and wield that advertising as a tool. (Except that what is possible now is so much richer and more powerful an environment for promoting music that calling it "advertising" would be as much oversimplification as calling the Internet a "new radio station".)

Think of traditional music packaging (the CD and its predecessors) as a bottleneck. The bottleneck has been removed. The industry used to depend on the bottleneck as a turnstile for charging admission, a way to measure and portion out what the listener would have to pay for the privilege of listening. The turnstile still exists, but the room it lets you into is no longer the only way to hear the music.

By the same token, the bottleneck is also gone; artists may now have a much richer, more interactive relationship with their audience. This opens up vast new areas for consideration. Think about web comics: by its nature, the entertainment is free – yet some artists manage to make a living at it. Not very many of them, mind you, but a lot of the problems they run into are infrastructural – managing mailing lists and subscriptions, keeping servers and web sites running, delivering product (printed collections, stuffed toys, etc.). That sort of function can be provided to many artists at once, with economy of scale making it more efficient.

A lot of people like to have something tangible; MP3s don't really make a good birthday present⁵. Packaging can be jazzed up to make it more appealing to spend actual money on it.

Other merchandise can be offered – t-shirts, posters, stuffed toys – whatever is appropriate for the imagery the artist has built up (album covers, lyrics) around them.

There are many non-tangible inducements one could offer to bring in extra income. Members of the internet equivalent of a "fan club" (Sluggy people: think "Defenders of the Nifty") could -- depending on their level of financial support -- receive early copies of each release, have the ability to download special tracks or remixes, vote on which songs to include on each new release, have the ability to download non-lossy versions (WAV, FLAC) of the band's music, have their name posted on the web site or mentioned on the sleeve of the next CD, and so on. Businesses could buy sponsorships for the privilege of having their logo on the band's web page (this is technically advertising, but can be handled in a much more classy way – think NPR – so as not to become an irritant).

Element Details

Musical Reference Library

At most music-sale sites, when you go to an artist's page (if any), you see only a list of titles by that artist. We think there should be photos, history, links to the artist's home page, fan pages, tour schedule, reviews, and cross-references to related projects (e.g. solo works by the members of a band). Artist pages for bands should have a listing of everyone who has ever been in that band, cross-referenced to pages for each of those members. Each release, whether in print or not, should have its own page...

When you go to the page for a particular CD release, you see a list of tracks. A few of them have brief excerpts (generally 30-60 seconds) available as lo-fi streams (as opposed to downloads – as pathetic as these samples are, you still can't save them to your computer). You may also see "if you like this, you might also like" lists.

We think there should be detailed performance credits for the album and for each song, with cross-references – for example, if Jim Keltner played drums, you should be able to click and find all about Jim Keltner – what other songs he has played on, anything else he has done, how to subscribe to his fan club (send him a stabbed undressed elephant, according to the back of a George Harrison LP... but I digress).

Series Subscriptions

Let's say there's a band you really like. Maybe you'll buy any CD they release. Or maybe you just want to know it's available, so you can decide whether you want it or not.

As things stand now, how will you find out when they release their next disc? Maybe the band has a free email newsletter, and maybe you can figure out how to subscribe to that newsletter. But maybe they sell their mailing lists to spammers. (Maybe they don't, but how can you tell before it's too late?) Or maybe they only have a paid fan club, not a free newsletter. Or maybe the newsletter comes out too often with much too much information; you don't want to know every gig they ever play, just when they have a new CD out.

I propose Series Subscriptions, a service whereby anyone can sign up to receive notice of new releases by any artist, no matter how low-budget, and optionally to purchase new releases in advance.

The reason to call it "Series Subscriptions" rather than "Artist Subscriptions" is that "Artist" is not the only possible category. Perhaps there is a reviewer whose judgement you trust sufficiently to buy anything s/he recommends* in a certain genre or list⁶. The reviewer wouldn't even have to be a "name"; s/he could be someone you know personally. The cost of setting up shop as a reviewer should be zero financially, and minimal in time-involvement. It should be even easier than putting up a list of "my favorite music" on your web site.

One key benefit of this concept is that it lets the artist know how many "units" they are likely to sell, which allows much better planning of the release. Overprinting represents waste, in that the extra copies often have to be sold at a discount or else take up expensive warehouse space until sold; underprinting represents waste in that the money those missing copies would probably have made will have to be deferred to another press run, by which time the disappointed customers may have lost interest (or bought used copies). Carefully tracking audience interest helps the artist make the optimum press run and thereby maximize profit.

Furthermore, this concept works extremely well in other media, too. For example, I'll buy anything Lois McMaster Bujold writes – in hardback, if I have the money. Often I don't find out about a book in time, and it's only available in paperback. Or not at all. If I had a Series Subscription for her works, I'd know in advance and perhaps even have time to scrape the money together for a hardback.

User Community

(to be written)

Self-Governance

(to be written)

Forums

(to be written)

Community

(to be written)

Philosophy

(to be written)

Notes

1 I thought about calling them "media channels", but the word "channels" has become overused in this context and I'd rather start with a word that didn't have a set of not-quite-right associations already attached. Think of "vector" in the medical sense – a means by which something is spread through a population.

2 Once upon a time, for instance, if I heard three new songs I liked from the same artist (back when radio stations used to tell you who performed each song) I would buy the album. There are certain bands whose quality I trust enough that I will always buy their latest CD, sound unheard. When I had more time, I used to be in the habit of making mixtapes for a select group of friends and relatives – and I believe (with supporting evidence) that most of them ended up buying more music because of it.

3 Actually, it wasn't until the late 70s that the cassette caught on in the U.S.; before that, the U.S. had 8-track cartridges, which were difficult to record on and generally impractical, and cassettes were only used in the rest of the world, which apparently didn't matter enough to be much of a threat. Go figure.

4 This is actually a bit of an oversimplification... in the 1920s, radio was a niche market and ASCAP allowed airplay of its properties in exchange for a flat percentage of advertising revenue. The problem came in the late 1930s when, in the face of radio's increasing popularity, ASCAP decided to raise the percentage to compensate for what they apparently thought of as "lost sales".

5 ...unless you're impoverished, and if you're impoverished you're probably not going to buy a CD even if you had no other way of getting music. At least, not for $15.

6 Again, this could be a notification- with- option- to- buy rather than an automatic purchase; it should always be the customer's choice. Perhaps there would be a discount for agreeing to buy in advance.