Do You Want Your Paper Bag Digital (and DRM free)?

Paper Bag Records home of, among many others, the Woodhands, Laura Barrett, the Acorn, You Say Party, We Say Die, Slim Twig, and Tokyo Police Club is launching it's own, DRM Free, digital music store on June 17. From Exclaim:

"Paper Bag plans for the new shop and its 320k/DRM-free files to complement and enhance the label’s conventional releases, offering fans a chance to buy exclusive content such as live sessions and additional recordings by Paper Bag artists. The shop will also simply give you an alternative place where you spend your green on some good tunes. After all, we can only let Steve Jobs get so rich."

I'd also point out that if you want less expensive, digital, DRM free music that Zunior is already serving it up (if you want to buy the full album).

Pay to Play? You can't steal what doesn't exist.

Discussion has headup up recently on the topic of copyright/copyleft and downloading. John Paolozzi at Radio 3 and I were talking about this on the Radio 3 blog in the wake of yet another collapsed copyright bill. A bill, I should add, that failed because it was only a business document that took neither artists nor comsumers into account.

So, with all of that in mind I have a hpyothetical for you.

It occurs to me that a person cannot steal your car if it is still a pile of parts in a factory in Windsor and you cannot download an album that hasn't been made yet. So what if the album went on sale before the band went into the studio. What if the band went to the core of their fan base and said

$15 will get you a copy of the album as soon as it's done - before it's on iTunes or in stores.

$25 will get you a signed copy of the album

$40 will get you a signed copy of the album, and an invite (free admission) to the CD release party (or to any single show on the tour)

$60 will get you all of the above and a limited run T-shirt available only to people who take this option.

Now let's say your 100 biggest fans take the $60 option. Another 100 take the $40 option, 200 take the $25 option, and 400 people take the $15 option. Bearing in mind that you have to actually produce all the stuff you've offered (not to mention the arthritis from signing 400 CDs) that gives you $21,000 before you've even gone into the studio.

Now this is just a hypothetical. Some bands will do better than this, some won't do as well. All of it will depend on the artists ability to connect with and communicate with fans and to continue to build that fan base ('one fan at a time'.) It would probably be a good idea, for example, to keep your fans informed. Give them the occasional update on how things are going. Maybe an advanced preview of what it might sound like (an early .mp3 for people who have already bought the album).

The goal though, I think, would be to get to a point where you've broken even on the CD before it's even finished and you're broken even on the CD before anyone can possibly download any of it.

Traditional Record Industry: Collapse Continues

Via Radio 3 and worth reposting in it's entirity:

Is it me, or is this October 2007 going to go down as the month the record industry as we know it collapsed?

Major international acts are say "no thanks" to record labels, including Paul McCartney, Madonna, and Radiohead - and Oasis and Jamiroquai are rumoured to be following suit. In a recent post on his website, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails said he is thrilled with the idea of being "free of any recording contract with any label."

At the same time, record companies are reportedly telling their employees that they had better innovate, or risk losing their jobs.

Now, according to ArsTechnica's Jacqui Cheng, Apple plans to expand its iTunes Plus - that's the branch of iTunes that sells DRM-free tracks - and drop the price for a song from $1.29 to $.99, which is the same price as the songs with DRM. That means music buyers won't have to pay extra to get digital rights-free tunes.

So far, only EMI has signed up to sell the DRM-free songs - which have no limits on how many computers play them and are downloadable at twice the bitrate of standard tracks - but now that they're on par with the other songs, they may end up pushing the envelope.

So grab some popcorn and an extra large soda, because it looks like this show is going to continue for a while...

I think it can certainly be said that the demise of the record industry as it has existed is eminent, it has been for a long time now. The only thing that's really kept it going this long has been a series of lawsuits and copyright legislation that has unfairly punished consumers and rewarded media companies. At this point it's just a reality of the business world. If, given all of the free money, artificial subsidies and rediculously unjustified court settlements they've been awarded the old record labels still can't make money then they don't have a viable business model, plain and simple.

Michael Geist and veteran musician Nathan Lawr have also had some interesting thoughts on this topic in recent days.