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Music Media

Where Indie Artists Get Everything 142

Posted by michael from the no-middle-man dept.
anonicon writes "From the same people who brought you the Web's first corrupt CDs tracking list comes the first site where independent musicians receive 100% of the money that fans pay for their music or merchandise (of course, after the credit card company takes their cut from the payment). More information can be had here or here."
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Where Indie Artists Get Everything More

Where Indie Artists Get Everything

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    • Guess my efforts shall now be in vain... or perhaps a bit of help/constructive competition won't hurt.

      -Daedalus
      • I don't know ... somehow i don't think they are much competition yet. I mean I had to click on 16 links to have them tell me that they don't have any artists ... it will be quite sometime before I consider doing that again
        • I went there after posting and noticed that it seems to be a much work in progress... not quite the same scope for what I am planning out, but should be fun... and of course "ANYTHING to obliterate the RIAA and make them WORK for their money".

          -Daedalus

          PS - Salary and "compensation" should be relevant to the amount of work, personal danger, and risks of the job. Therefore a CEO should make LESS than a good janitor. All CEO's should also take a pay cut for every job they slash. Thus it will be in their b

  • Love that Math (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spoonist ( 32012 ) on Saturday April 26, 2003 @07:43AM (#5814240) Journal

    Obligatory link to an article by Courtney Love:

    Courtney Love does the math [salon.com]

    The final score?

    Band: $0.00

    Record Label: $6,600,000.00

    • obligatory correction: (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mekkab ( 133181 ) on Saturday April 26, 2003 @08:17AM (#5814295) Homepage Journal
      Totally ghost written. That doesn't make it BAD, and I'm not casting dispersions on Courtney Love- I think its admirable that she would use her fame as soap box to tell the Truth, so props to her. But something about her doesn't strike me as a researcher.

      Obligatory Steve Albini article [arancidamoeba.com]

    • Re:Love that Math (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LinuxHam ( 52232 )
      Obligatory link to the Steve Albini article she ripped it from.

      The Problem with Music [petdance.com]

      She once tried to slap David Gedge of The Wedding Present backstage because she heard he was friends with Albini.
    • The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.


      Hmmm, smells like someone has a racket going and they don't want Napster etc. undercutting them.

  • Good on 'em (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Michael's a Jerk! ( 668185 ) on Saturday April 26, 2003 @07:45AM (#5814243) Homepage Journal
    It's nice to see someone try to make it without the RIAA et al. I hope this kind of thing becomes more common.

    People: Please support these guys even if you hate their music. If they turn a profit, other bands will follow suite.

    • Re:Good on 'em (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Support them, but don't buy their music if you don't like it. The last thing we need is a fake success story. If it is the better way, it has to work without fixing the statistics.

      • Re:Good on 'em (Score:3, Informative)

        by uncoveror ( 570620 )
        Musicians should be the ones making a living from music, not those parasites at the RIAA and the big labels. Fat Chucks Music is a good idea. Unless they come direct from the artist, or another such honest non-RIAA source, don't buy CDs. [dontbuycds.org]

    • Re:Good on 'em (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 26199 ( 577806 ) * on Saturday April 26, 2003 @08:36AM (#5814320) Homepage

      One slight problem: follow the link and you'll find there aren't actually any artists signed up to buy from.

      • EMusic rules (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Chazmati ( 214538 ) on Saturday April 26, 2003 @10:28AM (#5814564)
        Your sig mentions EMusic. I listen to a lot of jazz. For the price of a CD every month, I get unlimited *legal* MP3 downloads of classic stuff. Bought a Penguin guide to jazz on CD to help sort through EMusic's collection, and have pulled maybe 11G of tunes in three months (and I haven't been hitting it that hard). It's practically more than one can listen to.

        I guess it's a product life-cycle thing. Relatively few people are buying classic jazz these days (compared to top 40/pop/alternative), so the record labels are figuring they'll take what they can get for it.

        • Good, isn't it?... I've downloaded a whole range from emusic, and it's really helped the depth and breadth of my collection...

          Definitely good value if they offer something you like.

        • I was an emusic subscriber. Even though I have now terminated my membership, I have to say it was worth what I spent on it (approx $70) I found several artists I never would have, and burned some CDs I still enjoy regularly. I eventually quit because it was taking more and more searching between each "find," but I might sign up again in a year or two, and see what new stuff they have.

  • After the "revolution" is over (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 26, 2003 @07:46AM (#5814244)
    Don't you think that this wonderful concept should have a few artists to start with --- exactly whom is participating in this revolution? They should have prominence on this site -- the "founding fathers" as it were.

    I want my old mtv! (where they played MUSIC videos)

  • Let's here it for FatChuck (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The Tyro ( 247333 ) on Saturday April 26, 2003 @07:50AM (#5814251)
    Good idea... no artists yet though (at least in the half-dozen genres that I checked).

    That site has been great... particularly for finding crippled/broken CDs BEFORE you buy the stinkin things. I'm a fan, primarily because I don't own a regular CD player... but I own four computers with CDROM drives.

    Well done, charles... well done.

  • A just little exaggeration here?! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tgrotvedt ( 542393 ) on Saturday April 26, 2003 @07:52AM (#5814255) Journal
    revolutions take time

    Could the Slashdot editors possibly have taken this seriously??! This is a small website with zero artists. A good thing I guess, but definetly not an industry revolution

    These things do "take time".

    • Could the Slashdot editors possibly have taken this seriously??! This is a small website with zero artists. A good thing I guess, but definetly not an industry revolution
      Perhaps they thought it sounded like a good idea that should be encouraged. I think it's entirely possible that the first people to sell their music through FatChucks will have come from Slashdot.

      ZzzzSleep
    • For the record, the site launched about 48 hours ago and the revolution (if anyone chooses to join) is that for the first time in history, there aren't any middlemen pawing at the money that the artist makes from their fans. No distributors, no labels, no managers. It's the fan, the payment processor, and the artist - no one else.

      So, outside of car trunks and live shows, your music is available to anyone anywhere in the world if you decide to join.

      Show some patience. Have a drink. We're working on it.

      Pea
      • Good stuff and I hope people take advantage of the channel you've created.

        Now that this is setup, however, perhaps you could clear the cruft out of the shituation that middlemen serve as a function of (they're there for a reason). The social lubrication that causes CDs to be purchased. I think a few people have sort of approached the issue in the comments (I read them all the way through (so far)), but haven't been blunt enough about it.

        I'm sure you've already thought about that, and perhaps your model is
        • Hi Irfco.

          The idea behind FCM (Fat Chuck's Music) is to get rid of all the middlemen and allow artists to ship directly to fans and to be paid directly from fans. As you can see, we're not in the payment loop or the ordering loop besides letting artists list their goods with us (shopping has to begin somewhere that's convenient for fans).

          I've been surprised by all the negative reactions here since I've seen so many comments about how great it would be to allow artists to sell directly to the world without

  • Artists get 100%? Not for long. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Saturday April 26, 2003 @08:05AM (#5814276)
    If this thing ever takes off (they're at zero artists right now... not a good sign), I'm just curious as to how Fat Chuck is going to pay for bandwidth. Anyone can put up a website. I'll believe that they take 0% when I see it. That's like opening a retail store and selling everything for what it costs you. Sure, the customers are happy, but you have expenses, and with zero profit, you won't be able to stay open for long.
    • They do take some money. It costs $60 for the first year and $40 for every year after that (as seen here [fatchucks.com])

      Even if they didn't ask for payment they might still take donations or some well meaning people might choose to fund it out of their own pockets (as with the Wikpedia [wikipedia.org])
    • I'm just curious as to how Fat Chuck is going to pay for bandwidth.

      What's stopping them from doing what many other websites do? They could just place advertising on their site.

    • ...on April 24th, 2003 we launched Fat Chuck's Music

      It's been up for maybe 2 days, give'm a break. OTOH, maybe they should have done a bit of promoting and signed up some artists before their 'launch' so the site wouldn't look so barren.

    • check the site. (Score:3, Informative)

      by vena ( 318873 )
      he's charging artists to list their merch there. i assume this is how he plans to run the site.

    • Re:Artists get 100%? Not for long. (Score:5, Informative)

      by anonicon ( 215837 ) on Saturday April 26, 2003 @11:00AM (#5814649)
      As for 0 artists, you're right. We launched about 36-48 hours ago, the idea's been in development for about 6 months.

      Per bandwidth, 300gb/mo is $95.00. If I need more, I can get 2tb/mo for about $600/mo.

      As far as keeping 0%, that's absolutely no joke. When you pay for an artist's CD, the money moves from your bank through the processor (2CheckOut) directly to the artist. We keep nothing because we're not even in the payment stream.

      My expenses for now are $10/month for cheap hosting. I think I can handle it. :-) Remember, if there was no opportunity to stay in business, the idea wouldn't have been started. We're not interested in being a dot-bomb.

      Peace.
      • Cheap hosting, hmm.

        Slashdot effect, hmm.

        Your bills may increase next month, I fear.
  • I don't understand the "broken" list -- it includes DMB Busted Stuff. I bought this when it came out, ripped it and it worked fine. The second disc is a DVD, maybe that's what caused the problem...
    • There are 22 CDs on that list that I have been able to rip. Not listed are some CDs I had a bear of a time trying to rip (I couldn't rip an image using Exact Audio Copy [exactaudiocopy.de] and could only rip individual tracks. These included discs by Front Line Assembly and Queens of the Stone Age.)

  • A nice idea, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by geekwench ( 644364 ) on Saturday April 26, 2003 @08:11AM (#5814284)
    ...somebody seems to have forgotten to get the word out to the artists. To paraphrase Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park: "You will eventually have CDs on your CD sales website, right?"

    In all seriousness, I think that it's a really good idea, if they can pull it off. The problems with signing to a major label are covered nicely in an article that can be found here {http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic .html), and trying to market your music by yourself can be an exercise in utter futility. There's both safety and promotion capital in numbers.
    Here's hoping... *crosses fingers*

  • fatchunks blows fat chunks (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zach_smith ( 159760 ) on Saturday April 26, 2003 @08:12AM (#5814287)
    This service doesn't add much to what's already out there. You have to pay them $60 for the first year, just to get a subdomain listing that shows your CDs, links to your website, and lets people order your stuff. Then, if somebody does order something, you get an email and have to process the order and send it out. The only thing they do is handle the monetary transaction.

    How is this any better than musicians setting up their own site and using paypal (which takes out a lower percentage for credit card charges)?

    This doesn't seem like a revolution, just a way to make money off wannabe musicians that think they might sell something.
    • Good point but a site like this gives a nice central location where consumers can find music they want. If everyone has their own sites then you'll never be able to locate them (think about it, Google ranks sites based on how many other sites link to them and if your obscure that wont be many). Also a central site can maintain an independent chart system record other users recommendations, etc, in an independent fashion. A personal site or a site belonging to a major label cant really claim the same. Places

    • Re:fatchunks blows fat chunks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by the_consumer ( 547060 ) <slash&smitty,mailshell,com> on Saturday April 26, 2003 @08:25AM (#5814309) Homepage
      How is this any better than musicians setting up their own site and using paypal (which takes out a lower percentage for credit card charges)?

      Many people don't use paypal, and setting up your own account to process credit cards is expensive, time-consuming, and nearly impossible if you're just some unknown musician who isn't incorporated and can demonstrate a long and flawless credit history.

      I think this is a pretty good idea in theory, but in practice... we'll see. I think they could stand to have a bit more professional look to the site, and "fat chuck's" isn't a name that exactly fills me with confidence.

    • What they need to do is:

      1. Offer (optional) CD creation services at various levels: CD with generic label, CD with custom label, and CD with custom label and insert (album art and lyrics)

      2. Publish web services for publishing and consuming orders. That way you could set up partner services for promotions, and bands could automate CD printing and delivery if they opt not to pay for the CD creation services.

      With those two things this would be a very powerful service.
      • Sonic, interesting idea and one I will not be in the position to chase for at least a few years since it's not in the core of what I'm trying to achieve.

        Sometimes diversification of one's business plan can be considered di-worse-ification.

        As far as partnerships wth businesses who can help Indies, I'm working on it, but the site laucnhed about 48 hours ago, so give me some time. :-)

        Peace.
    • Hi Zach, let's take this from the top.

      That $60 is to pay for your Internet merchant account (I actually make $20/account for year 1) so that you can accept credit card orders from anyone in the world - not just the limited number of countries that paypal supports (I believe it's 37 compared to the 200+ countries you get with your merchant account).

      As far as getting the email and processing it, well, you can pay to ship all of your CDs to someone who will distribute it for you and they will A) keep $3-4 pe
  • Thats all well and good, but just wait until the indie artists start having someone press thier cds for them.

  • 100%? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 91degrees ( 207121 )
    Surely the bands have costs of their own. They have to spend money on marketing, recording, persuading radio stations to play the music. Stuff like that. A record contract bundles this al up into one packages (and then overcharges horrendously - that's monopolies for you), but if you don;t use a record comapny, how will people know to buy your music?
    • Promotion is the biggest problem, no question. Unfortunately, the record labels have exclusive deals with retail outlets and radio stations. Some radio stations have a weekly show where they play local bands, so you can do that. But getting your music in a chain like Barnes & Noble is difficult.
  • It makes my day to discover that artists are getting their pay for doing some fairly skiklled and specialized kinds of work. I recall that when I was a practicing artist (oil and charcoal on canvas) my paintings, etc. were typically appraised in the $400 - $1000 range. Not that I ever got that much, despite the sheer cost of the raw materials and 4 years of art school.

    Nowdays, I go to Broadway shows and the local philharmonic to support them, in addition to donations.
  • ...there is, among a longer list [fatchucks.com], "Live Animals", yet fails to mention dead ones. Apparently Fat Chuck has not heard of Ozzy Osbourne.

  • Not exactly a new idea (Score:3, Informative)

    by jmike ( 266847 ) on Saturday April 26, 2003 @10:07AM (#5814514) Homepage
    Just pointing out that this isn't the only guy in the world to think of the idea; in fact he's rather late to the table.

    My brother-on-law sells on CD Baby [cdbaby.com] and seems pleased. Not sure how they structure the deal, but the basic idea is to allow independent artists to get most of the money.

    None of these sites solve the much larger problem of artist marketing, IMO. That's the one service that the record companies offer to the artists that no one else can get close to (in part because they lock competitors out of radio access, for example). There's room in the market for someone to do that, but they're going to have to find other means of getting to the customer other than radio (sites like Epitonic.com [epitonic.com] are a good step in that direction).

    • Last I heard, CDBaby takes $4 per CD [cdbaby.net]. Of course, they handle warehousing and shipping for you, but then you have to pay to send the CDs to them. For most sales, they also add the standard handling fees that the musician won't see.

      So, you could sell your CD for $14 + $2.25 shipping and make $10, or you could sell your CD for $14 + $2.25 and make $15+ before shipping costs. Or, you could sell your CD for $10 + $2 shipping, get about $10 and maybe sell more because of the cheaper price.

      As for marketing, y
      • For Deep Audio, or Atoosa, or Molly Zenobia, CDBaby was absolutely worth it.

        These are three artists whose CDs I picked up while looking for Alpha Conspiracy music.

        Since you don't have to pay shipping if you buy 4 or more CDs, there's that subconscious urge to keep looking to find something you like.

        I've bought 15 CDs from CDBaby and I've had rather good luck.

        That's not to mention that I know that CDBaby runs a professional outfit and I'll get the CDs within a week. Who knows if it's directly from the ar
  • Let's see... no artists in hip-hop, none in easy listening, none in popo, none in... hey, HEY!!!

    Ain't nobody home!

    Is this a bad joke by a sniggering Hilary Rosen? Is this her plan to give artists 100% of.... NOTHING?
    I thought eMusic was the height of marginality, but these guys have them beat.

    As for Chuck, I'd LOVE to see the pitch for this business model:

    1. pay for lotsa hosting & bandwidth
    2. 100% to artist = no margin
    3. ???
    4. profit!!!

    Now I can't wait til monday...
  • I have been using World Party Music (http://www.wpmusic.com) for several years and it is much more convenient. They charge a flat fee of $1.00 for handling, they do all the inventory handling, shipping, and just send me a check for the amount of my sales minus $1.00 for each sale. They charge the customer the shipping charges and they are responsible for any taxes on the sale.

  • CDBaby (Score:3, Informative)

    by jsebrech ( 525647 ) on Saturday April 26, 2003 @10:20AM (#5814536)
    This has already been done before. Go take a look (and listen) at cdbaby [cdbaby.com]. They have over 34,000 artists, and a lot of them are pretty darn good. I buy most of my music there.
    • Consider checking out this post from above you:
      http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=62025&cid=5814 602 [slashdot.org]

      When artists sign up with us, 100% of the money that fans pay for their music goes to the artist (after the CC company takes their cut). CD Baby keeps $4/album and they keep the shipping. When you're selling your album for $15, which scenario do you believe you'll make more money in for each sale?

      Sorry, the devil is in the details. This has never been done before outside of live shows and car trunk
    • CDBaby Rocks!

      I run a small indie record label and I have been using CDBaby.com. They're HONEST - send checks out on time for the correct ammount - and keep track of sales for you via an administrative login. They also email you when they only have a few copies left.

      We have regular distribution thru indie distributors that I won't mention - but they take a big cut and you have to make sure you keep your invoices up to date and chase them down for payments.

      Here's how it works:

      CDBABY - sells cd's for $10 -
  • Has anyone else noticed that under the "kitchen sink" page down by the assorted links section, slashdot is linked with the tag "News for Nerds Nothing matters"

    Interesting slam...
    • Hi Eagl.

      I guess I should add a ;-) next to that link since it's clear that it matters to me (or else I wouldn't put the link there in the first place).

      In all seriousness, it's a joke and a takeoff on what some people think Slashdot is. My bad for perpetuating that image when I'm actually joking.

      Peace,
      Chuck
      • Oh, ok :)

        My mistake for being snippy in my comment, sorry. I should probably leave editorial comments about other people's web sites to the professionals. When I saw that link I had a micro-flashback to a site that got slashdotted a few weeks ago that put up some rather sarcastic commentary/flamage about slashdot, and I made an incorrect assumption.

        Mea culpa. Thanks for keeping your site up. It's a great resource to protect everyone from companies who are trying to hide the fact that they're deliberat
  • I support my indie artists.

    Jim Thirlwell (a.k.a. Foetus, Manorexia, Baby Zizanie) has a couple of cd's for sale at foetus.org [foetus.org]. Radiolarian Ooze is awesome. Check out his aud/vid link for some samples.

    Another oldie but goodie is Alternative Tentacles [alternativetentacles.com] where you can find Jello Biafra and lots more.

    Any other good indie stuff for sale out there?
  • I think a couple of other people have mentioned CD Baby [cdbaby.com] already. They are by far the most popular way for indie artists to get their stuff out.

    While Fat Chuck's is subscription based (you pay a $60 annual fee), CD Baby charges $4 per CD sold. So Fat Chuck's is a better deal if you know you are going to sell more than 15 discs (probably a fair bet).

    The other difference I see is that Fat Chuck's only processes the transactions, they don't ship the CDs. CD Baby is a real on-line store and maintains inve

    • Hi Grapes!

      First, check out the overview [fatchucks.com]. It's $60 for year 1 and $40 year after year 1. You get your *own* Internet merchant account and you keep all the money that the CC processor doesn't take.

      Per shipping, the only way to do shipping is A) yourself and keep everything, or B) pay to send your CDs to a company somewhere and watch them keep $4/CD and the shipping charge for each CD.

      If you want to pursue your own online transaction capability, I encourage you to. CCNow charges $9.95/month, PayPal does a ~
  • I've been looking for something like this for a while. My band (see sig) uses Papal, but we only get one or two orders a week, we sell most of our stuff at shows. I think Paypal is a little cheesy and unprofessional, but setting up your own credit card payment system is way out of a small band's league.

    Chuck is just spreading the costs of the credit card system amongst all the bands.

    What I didn't see is ho well it integrates into an existing site, so theoretically people buy a CD without even knowing th
    • What I didn't see is ho well it integrates into an existing site, so theoretically people buy a CD without even knowing they're in a frame on a different site. Maybe I just answered my own question.

      Check out the demo page [fatchucks.com]. It probably answers your question.
  • I am crushed to see Einsturzende Neubauten on the list.I remember when they were an anarchistic band all about the beauty of destruction and decay.
    Now they are just corporate dupes playing dance music.
    *sniffle*

    • Under Berlin Babylon, you'll find this [fatchucks.com].

      At the bottom, a guy from the US says he went to E.N.'s website where "Blixa also claims the band wasn't even told about the protection by the label and they didn't know until they saw the finished product. Furthermore, it appears the band will not be applying copy protection to CDs produced in the immediate future."

      I dig E.N. too.
  • I went to their website, and their is a $60 account payment fee to start, $40 a year afterward. I'm sorry, a band could set up a website and sell online with Paypal for a cheaper price than that. It bothers me that they tell the bands "keep 100% of your profits".

  • Fatchuck's 100% offer is a nice marketing gimmick, but it conveniently neglects to tell artists that they have to have the stuff first beforethey can sell it. If a musician pays out for 100 pro-grade CDs and 100 decent T-shirts, signs up on Fatchuck's for $60, and only sells a handful of each in 12 months, the artist is still out for the cost of making the CDs and T-shirts. It's one thing if it's a touring band that can sell their stuff at gigs, too, but if they can do that, why pay the extra $40/year?

    I

    • Hi Dave!

      One point. Whether you sell through Fat Chuck's or any other site (CD Street, CD Baby, Amazon), you still have to assume the risk of having it created no matter who your store front is. Sorry, but I think most artists already understand that and it would be pretty insulting for me to tell them. :-)

      As far as touring bands, this is a great idea. If the band's out touring, they can choose to suspend their account (since they can't ship their goods while on the road) or if they have a reliable friend

  • ignore music in the vault! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rjnagle ( 122374 ) on Saturday April 26, 2003 @11:42AM (#5814838) Homepage
    more [opsound.org] about creative commons music [creativecommons.org]. Opsound is a site that puts music into the public domain and properly tags them as such. The backlash from the Verizon decision [slashdot.org] is probably going to kill the music industry, as "free-to-distribute" music gains more cachet.

    Actually, because of the Verizon case, I have decided to boycott all commercially recorded music which forbid the rights to free distribution. By boycott, I don't merely mean "refusing to buy" CD's. I mean refusing even to listen or download such music (even illegally). Yes, that probably means that I will no longer listen to Philip Glass, Suzanne Vega, etc. Once they wise up and liberalize their licenses, I might consider listening to them again. And I might also consider checking their CD's out of the library (whenever I feel a pang of nostalgia, in the same way that a Russian might for a moment miss a gulag's watery soup).

    The restrictive licenses of music companies essentially lock commercial music in the vault. I'm not interested in picking locks anymore just for a momentary glimpse at these so-called "precious" flowers. I'm interested in enjoying what is free out in the free air. Let all those "precious" flowers in the vault lose their color, rot away and turn into crap. Good riddance.

    We as creative artists need to wean ourselves from this enslavement that we call "copyright enforcement." The people and companies who benefit by starving artists, drafting exploitative contracts and preventing works of art from being distributed freely deserve nothing less than our contempt.

    You may say: how could I survive without vault music? Simple. If the music rots away in the vault, it was already dead to begin with. Who wants to keep dead flowers around? Instead of locking flowers in the vault, it is better to appreciate them in the open where it's easy to pick and admire. We are like bees admiring the flowers all around us, flitting about, taking what we need and moving on (and propagating the beauty of what we see at the same time). Flowers look pretty among other flowers, not inside some ugly dirty vault guarded by lawyers with vulture-like beaks. As the public areas become more covered with flowers, the desire to possess the rotting heaps in the vault will seem more bizzare, less relevant. The best way to increase the number of flowers in this world is to open the gardens up to bees. Anyway, it is folly to think that a group of lawyers (and that is essentially what a music company is ) owns a song or a human voice or an image. The copyright to Beauty is owned by one person, and that is God. His lawyers are ruthless and know the law of nature backwards and forwards. The license they enforce allows infinite creation and multiplication, but banishes those who say beauty belongs to one.

    Freeing myself from the music of the vault provides an opportunity to learn about artists with more enlightened views toward distribution. I plan to patronize them in many ways, including donations. Also, I plan to attend more concerts and still pay for my commercial-free Internet radio ($5 a month) until decent creative commons radio stations [sourceforge.net] emerge. It doesn't mean that I am opposed to paying money for music per se. But when I pay for music, I want either to have free distribution rights and/or the certainty that the artist is receiving at least 50% of the money I am paying. What do artists for major labels now receive? 1%?

    Actually lawyers are not completely the culprit here. It would be a trivial matter for lawyers on either the artist's or industry's side to draft a limited duration copyright. All ownership rights could expire after about 5 or 10 years. Artists are partially to blame for not insis

    • Wait...

      There's no way for the artist to even break even on such a proposition!

      I'm not talking the big 6, I'm talking the independant label... The Ani DiFrancos, or Atoosas, et al...

      I'm not talking about millions of dollars, just enough to pay the costs of producing such music and some compensation for the time involved, even at McDonalds wages.
      • I think it could work, but it'll take a looooong time to make any inroads. Look at the open source models for inspiration.

        For example, let's say I have a bunch of tunes I've produced and I add them to the Creative Commons site above. Though I didn't see a license that quite matched the GPL, imagine I had my stuff under a license that said, "You can use this work as-is for any purpose, public or private. You can even make derivatives of this work. However, if you release the derivative (play in public

      • sure there is. First, I don't think artists require an enormous amount of money to produce and/or distribute a song. There have been Slashdot stories about how production costs have diminished dramatically.

        Fairtunes is a place where you can pay the artist directly. (Of course, that merely means you are shifting production costs to the artist, which I think is fair). Fairtunes doesn't seem very well established though. Perhaps a better organization exists to handle the transaction.

        The other thing is: cd's
  • In the interest of fair disclosure, it should be pointed out that the submitter of this article (anonicon [slashdot.org]) is a principal of the company.

    Which makes this article nothing more than a blatant advertising piece.

    Taco, why don't you put the advertising articles where they belong: In the banner ads. Stop wasting our time with "submissions" that are nothing more than thinly-disguised marketing pitches.

  • I guess it's too much for Slashdot submitters and moderators to actually read the site they're linking to, but if they did take this extrodinary and nigh-unheard of step, they would see that the the phrase "independent musicians receive 100% of the money that fans pay for their music or merchandise (of course, after the credit card company takes their cut from the payment)" is demonstrable false. Lets look at the other fees mentioned on the site itself [fatchucks.com], shall we?

    "Fat Chuck's Music costs $60 for the first
    • So basically you are nitpicking the difference between "100% except for credit card fees" and "100% except for transaction fees"? Heck, I assumed that credit=transaction right off the bat, although my GF is a business-type so I might have developed a slightly off-kilter filter than you.

  • Enough already! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Tinfoil ( 109794 ) on Saturday April 26, 2003 @12:52PM (#5815098) Homepage Journal
    Some claim this has been done before with CD Baby. CD Baby (as mentioned in another post) takes $4 per CD sold, plus shipping and handling. Others mention PayPal, obviously forgetting the problems exposed recently with PayPay.

    Chuck's site is a popular site already with the corrupt CD list, and it's only a matter of time before they come. So, rather then pan the idea because it may not look professional or because it doesn't have any artists signed up yet, applaud it and Chuck for wanting to do the right thing for the artist, giving them the money they deserve.

  • sevcom.com (Score:4, Informative)

    by moscow ( 68604 ) on Saturday April 26, 2003 @02:17PM (#5815477) Homepage
    Another alternative is to find artists who make their own CDs. There's no chance of anyone other than Severed Heads getting the money when you buy from sevcom [sevcom.com] because they burn the CD when you pay the money.

    Severed Heads also offer improved versions of their older stuff - and the latest album (Op) comes with a key to access 'upgrades' - i.e. extra songs and new versions. On top of all this, you can hear just about everything they sell as a (low bandwidth) MP3 before you buy.

    Cut up the middleman!

  • If could listen to the music first...
    (had to do it)

  • Give him a break (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You guys are always so harsh. He just opened, and I for one think it's a great idea. I can think of at least a couple reasons why this is a good idea above having your own site:
    • It's cheaper than hosting your own. Even the $60 for the first year is like $5/mo, which you'd be hard pressed to find elsewhere unless you have a static IP that you're using for other stuff anyway.
    • It's lots easier, especially if you're not a slashdot geek who's willing to go through setting up some sort of thing with paypal or

  • been doing this for the last year... (Score:3, Informative)

    by alizard ( 107678 ) <alizard&ecis,com> on Saturday April 26, 2003 @05:00PM (#5816279) Homepage
    We're doing our CDs via SwiftCD [swiftcd.com], our T-shirts and other merchandise via Cafepress [cafepress.com]. We may add a vendor or two later.

    MP3 sound samples (full songs) you can download off our site.

    All we did was upload (we snailmailed the CD for replication) our info, all we have to do with fulfillment is wait for them to send the checks. They handle the credit card stuff and create the goods on demand. The prices are a bit high, but creating stuff on a one-off basis is expensive even with everything basically automated.

    Check out our site... it's in the sig below.

  • Seems artists are not anxious to get 100%. What gives?

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