IP Democracy: Interesting Meditation on Netlabels

Nathan Torkington has an interesting essay on netlabels, online record companies, on O’Reilly Radar. What Nat says, in essence, is that netlabels benefit musicians by providing a marketing vehicle for live concerts. Given that most musicians don’t really see revenue from CD or album sales from traditional record companies anyway, netlabels might be a better alternative for musicians than the much-revered record company contracts.

They succeed because they make everyone happy. Listeners get music for free, of course. Artists get to have their music distributed in high-quality versions with good metadata, album covers, etc. rather than crappy low-fi rips with no guarantee their name is on it. But most of all, artists and the labels build brands. The music sells the artist’s live shows (if they have any), and the quality of the music found and distributed by the netlabel builds the reputation of the person behind the netlabel. And netlabels are starting to launch careers—there are a few artists, in particular a guy named Pheek who has become fairly big in the last year or two, who came entirely from netlabel releases.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on November 1, 2005 12:36 PM to IP Democracy