Chris Penn-

I don’t think charging podcasters to play tunes would do anything to help the revolution along. I would, however, like to see some kind of payments coming in from podcasters that are sponsored. If GoDaddy’s writing someone a check for a music podcast, why does the announcer get paid but not the creators of the actual content?

Unfortunately, the rates BMI or ASCAP would charge don’t reflect the kind of money that’s actually present in podcasting right now. You’re lucky, you’ve got a company that can afford it, but even $600 a year is too much for most podcasters. Even sponsored shows.

Dang, there are a lot of good comments I just don’t have time to address right now… fortunately everyone else is.

I’ve done this but not charged, free giveaway.

I also released a live recording policy of CC 3.0 by-nd-nc on my website ages ago
http://www.sonicviz.com/music/members/6/blog.php that releases the users to record their own “album” live and bypass the selling/download stage. Trust them to pay you, if not now at some point in the future maybe. And they may share it which is free marketing.

They do it anyway, may as well go with it because you sure ain’t gonna fight it.
It gets back to my first post about the value not being in the download anyway, and you always have the option to release higher quality recordings for sale later.

As a club owner in Second Life I’ve thought about charging for events. Ticket prices basically with the money going to the musician that night. I’m not sure how the community would react to this as I have not seen it done except in charity situations. But, I feel it’s yet another way to help the artists. I always pay/tip the artists that play at my venue. It’s the lease I can do for them.

This is a new path that we are walking down and one that no one has figured out yet. Some great comments in here so far which is great.

I think PodShow needs to finish up the PMN. When I read their license at one time I believe if you are non-commercial you can use the music for free. Thus one would assume a fee would have to be paid if you are commercial. The question is what is commercial and how do you pay those fees? I am sure there is a handful of podcasters out there that qualify as commercial, but I am also sure many of them are buying music and CDs from the artists as well. I don’t mean to just pick on PodShow for this, I believe most of the “Podsafe Music Networks” have similar licensing. They should finish defining these rules and systems and get them in place.

As a podcaster, I can’t afford and would have to quit podcasting if they charged everyone a fee to use the music. However, if I was turning a profit, I would have no problem paying for playing. But I don’t think podcasters are the problem. We are a handful to the thousands of listeners and consumers of the music.

I realize what Matt’s concern is and the many others that have gotten to where they are today because of podcasting. I think what one person suggested about the PSA would help, but we are talking about a small percentage of the whole listening audience would listen or care.

What is the solution? Personally, I don’t think there is a silver bullet. Americans are cheap and lazy. They will go cheap if it is easy. File sharing is pretty easy these days. If you make file sharing difficult (like in the pre-Napster days) consumers will buy the music. Since that isn’t going to happen, we need to figure out a better solution.

The biggest one is their manual submission and filtering process.
It is scaleable only to a certain point, due to the following.

I asked John Buckman about this, at a web 2.0 conference in Tokyo a few months back, in relation to the next point, and he agreed that even their system was based in part on an old model if I recall correctly – and could be done differently if it was implemented now.

One of the hottest trends in music at the moment, tho not on everybody’s radar, is music recommendation services. These can range from simple user playlist sharing to sophisticated taste recommendation services combining playlist sharing and sophisticated Artificial Intelligence algorithms to parse huge music audio fingerprint databases like http://www.musicip.com/

Due to information overload we are experiencing on all levels I predict you will find more and more people turning to systems like this, combinations of personal trust systems and automated analysis/recommendation, to filter the mass of content out there. The old model of “exposure” via mainstream media as the only path to success is failing both due to overload and the fact that people, to a large degree, do not trust what they see in the media.

2d/3d Social networks mean people can build customised trust networks to get filtered content they believe in and not have to rely on thinly disguised advertising such as the tradition media “article” system has been ie: payola for play or write still exists.

Which probably makes http://www.bob-baker.com/musicpromotionblog/2007/06/hottest-music-trend-right-now.html
a very timely topic:-) [tho one of the commenters has a very good point also in relation to songwriters, but that is a different career path from musician really]

I love Magnatune (“we are not evil”) at http://www.magnatune.com/

Read the founder’s own story at http://www.magnatune.com/info/why.

The team has a presence in Second Life too: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kula%201/58/159/22.

It’s a fantastic service that benefits both musicians and music buyers.
Enjoy it as much as we all enjoy Matt’s music.