(Updated below)
So the digital music realm has been going ga-ga over the recent MySpace/Snocap partnership that allows independent musicians to sell music directly from their MySpace pages via SnoCap’s digital storefront.
This is basically the meta version of something I’ve been talking about for the last 3-4 months. I’m not trying to stake claim to the idea (though I honestly did think of this exact model, and wondered aloud to several friends about when MySpace would catch on). It doesn’t really matter, and I don’t think it’s all that revelatory a concept. But the fact that a site so large as MySpace is now allowing (and hosting) independent music sales directly to fans, is a pretty big step.
Other small digital start-ups have been pushing digital storefronts for at least the last 9-12 months, with Musicane being the first to come to mind. More recently, Broadjam has a similar model and I imagine that whatever emerges from the eMinor/Reverb Nation start-up will be in the same vein. Perhaps these other services will offer musicians a bigger piece of the sales rev, because I’m not sure the breakdown in terms of percentages of sales via the MySpace/Snocap alliance appears to really be all that great for indie artists. MySpace/Snocap take a solid $0.45/track, which may not sound like much, but it will definitely squeeze the sale price up substantially, perhaps to the point where a good number of artists will be edging close to the $0.99/track price-point. Digital Music News has some good analysis of this argument, and discussion of who will benefit.
I agree that independent artists will gain what they want from MySpace while, maybe, making some additional cash. But, I doubt MySpace will really go out of its way to add services and customizations that could really improve the overall band merchandising on MySpace. My original idea was more focused on setting up the back-end software that could be modeled on Blogging software so that it would be easy-to-use, and also viral and open-source so that it would allow for customization. A big part of this was the options for alternate file types, something that MySpace/Snocap does not appear to offer. How about an option to sell FLAC, SHN, or other lossless file formats ? What about adding widgets to sell other related merchandise? I strongly feel that independent bands will continue to pick up steam only by playing great concerts, so why not have a widget that allows them not only to sell digital tracks, but concert tickets? It will be interesting to see how this plays out, particularly to watch the smaller upstarts (mentioned above) and what types of services they provide.
And as always, Bob Lefsetz provides some good musings on the subject too.
Update: Hypebot has a rather glowing review of ReverbNation/eMinor, which points to the additional services from ReverbNation that add fan-mail tools and customizable blog/website widgets. These elements definitely up the ante for the interests of Independent Artists, and are in line with my original thinking on this topic…to make it more like an open-source/customizable blogging platform. The Fan-mail tool is a key element which this has also already been done by Musicane, Jambase’s FanMail service and now FanBridge. But LMM wonders whether these added services will be enough to woo enough independent artists either away from their already-designed MySpace pages or from entering the highly-popular (and populated) giant?
Maybe. But, as suggested above, I’d submit that it will take a very special addition of many services to woo new (and already-existing) independent artists to any of these sites (Musicane, ReverbNation, Broadjam, Jambase marketing). If these services want indies to go their way, they should take the next big step and start offering independent artists the ability to sell all of their products to their fans directly. That means not just audio files in a variety of formats, but other merchandise, including probably the most important item for independents: concert tickets. Defintiely more on this later…
