Talk:Open-source record label

question merge: open source r.l. is necessarily independent, but an independent r.l. is not necessarily open source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.83.207.57 (talk • contribs)

Money?

Is it possible to make money by releasing music under anything other than an actual copyright? --Nerd42 14:59, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

It depends upon who you are (and, actually, in the US at least every published work is automatically considered under copyright regardless of whether that's explicitly declared). The corporate recording industry works like a conveyor belt: high volume, low quality with a quick turnover. For their business copyright and anti-piracy efforts are essential because they induce people to buy their products through the hit single (which gets old and undesirable quickly); if their customers can get that hit single through pirate channels than they listen for a few weeks and forget about it, never buying the CD. A significant proportion don't care enough about that artist (or music in general) to spend any money on concert tickets or merchandise.

The independent music world runs on a completely different level. They have rosters of artists with an extremely loyal fan base; as much money is made on touring as on actual record sales. Further, those fans are likely to buy the record regardless of it's availability on the internet (for various reasons including loyalty, album art, included extras and so on). This works for those labels because even if they never have a platinum album, their roster of artists all have solid, dependable sales numbers. In aggregate they allow the label to survive (or even prosper) financially despite never hitting the Billboard Top 10 (this is sort of similar to the long tail theory). In their business restrictive copyright is not particularly important except when having to deal with artists moving to major labels (if it weren't for that I think most indie labels could become 'open source' labels). --Bk0 (Talk) 16:45, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Really, this [first paragraph] isn't necessarily true. Read up a little bit on RIAA and what they've done to their own artists (i.e. taken all their money and attempted to claim all artists work as their own).

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.208.44.77 (talk • contribs)

The way Magnatune makes money is explained here: http://magnatune.com/info/model --h2g2bob 00:44, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Really ... hmm ...

Got some friends who know some friends, and the short story is we're thinkin about makin us some muzzak. Frankly its totally a hobby kind of thing, not a serious buisiness. I see web sites where you can submit, like, one song and other people can vote on it, but I was thinking more along the lines of releasing an entire album on the Net for free, and then maybe also selling physical copies that cost money. So that if you wanted, you could print out an album cover and burn a CD and print a CD label and stick it on, and I'd like that to be perfectly legal but if you buy it from us it's done for you AND autographed by us if you want. I'd like to make other people selling our exact album for money illegal without permission but allow sampling. So ... that's ALLOW distribution ... ALLOW sampling ... ALLOW certain uses but DISALLOW selling for anyone but the author?

Also ... is sampling or remixing commercial songs legal or illegal? I took a MIDI ringtone of a song, changed the instruments, took out some notes, added some notes, and mixed it together with some video game music. Is that legal? --Nerd42 15:59, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

If you do, I'd suggest you follow the lead of Magnatune and lots of other open record labels and use a Creative Commons license (like this one). --h2g2bob 00:42, 4 November 2006 (UTC)