Evidence Mount That Free Music is Unfeasible
wired.com
wired.com
But 'free music' is definitely feasible, it just won't be 'big label' music.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thesixtyone.com
Maybe IUMA has finally found a valid successor. If IUMA was started today I think it would have a much better chance at survival, bandwidth now costs a very small fraction of what it was in their heydays.
What a waste the way that ended by the way.
Your point that free music is feasible for some music is valid, but I'm not sure it's that important if it's relegated to niche status.
Mog.com is relatively steady and ilike is going up fairly fast but that may have to do with their recent acquisition.
The fact that thesixtyone is doing this under their own power and with indie music is very impressive, of course it could be that they will never be as big as their 'big label' brothers but so far they've been doing pretty good.
And 400% growth per year essentially without marketing is not too bad either. They've got about 60,000 uniques daily now, I would not be surprised if they manage to push that to a quarter million by the end of next year.
And why would people have to give up on mainstream music in order to listen to indie music, there is plenty of room for both.
That puts music startups in a tricky situation. Either you don't provide access to that mainstream content, provide it legally w/ label deals that hopefully don't cripple your business, or you offer it illegally. According to the wired article the ad supported streams model seems to be dying, which means music subs must be coming back for companies that choose the legal model.
I'm personally not excited about this and hope they so do badly labels give ad supported another try.
As soon as people figure out a way to do a 'redhat' with music it will accelerate a lot. So far most of those efforts have fizzled, but with so many people trying to start fires it is only a matter of time before someone will succeed.
I like the lala.com model the best. 10 cents to stream a song an unlimited number of times. No fixed monthly fees. Joined a couple of weeks ago; so far, I'm loving it. (If you want to "own your bits", you can get a DRM-free MP3 for an additional 79c).
Is it feasible for free music to make big money for the majors? Different question, but we know the answer: "who cares?"
Yes, absolutely. Would be nice if more people made their own music.
Free music is totally feasible, it only depends on the artist's approach to pursuing revnue (ie: freeing themselves from the lables.) Another thing is ad-supported alone is not feasible; neither is selling T-shirts...As long as people still want to store mp3 files on their music players, there's no reason why people won't want to pay for them. (Only if their demands are met)
To mikebo: "I don't see flocks of people giving up on mainstream music."
Music is music, mainstream music is no sweeter than indie music; they just have more marketing behind them. If the same marketing opportunities that are provided to mainstream music can be accessed by indie musicians, people will discover that Indie music is actually worth listening to.