The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Can't Song Fight have any millionaires who are quirky and eccentric and lovable because they did something which changed the world for the <em>better</em>?

Working on that, fluffy.

deshead wrote:Isn't it a truism that people won't pay for independent music on the Internet? The whole cow-milk-free thing. Unless, as Future Boy implied above, Gery has some other trick up his sleeve, the Tuneflow business model is fundamentally flawed.

Brad's making fat cash on his album, which is available for free at bradsucks.net, but is also sold on CD there, and sold on iTunes, and emusic, and cdbaby. Octothorpe's sold at least one copy of their latest; I know, because I bought it.

Crap - forgot to declare that on my income taxes. Shhhh, Marcus.

deshead wrote:Isn't it a truism that people won't pay for independent music on the Internet?

If good independent music (I mean "commercial" grade from a songwriting and production standpoint - uh, flame bait, I know) is properly presented, it is my hope that people will pay for independent music on the internet.

It's the age-old question:
If we can ween folks off the RIAA, how many people would gladly pay $10 for an album (download or CD) of independent music, knowing that a good 80% of their money goes straight to the artist(s)?

Is this a sustainable model? We'll never know until it happens I suppose.

Will it inevitably revert back into a huge commercial machine? Perhaps for some. But if/when the mechanisms are built to support real indie distribution, there will always be a boat load of awesomeness available in that channel.

roymond wrote:If good independent music (I mean "commercial" grade from a songwriting and production standpoint - uh, flame bait, I know) is properly presented, it is my hope that people will pay for independent music on the internet.

I share the same hope, though most of what I've seen to date suggests it's not the case.

I realize Marcus has a good point about Brad. But for every Brad Sucks or Arctic Monkeys, there are (and I doubt I'm exaggerating) 10,000 bands who will never sell more than 20 CDs. All to their friends and coworkers.

Look at the number of bands on myspace, garageband, purevolume, soundclick, etc. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands. I'll bet there's more independent music released to the internet in a year now than there was commercial music in existence before the Web. Think about it for a minute, it's mind-boggling how much music is out there.

And most casual consumers grok this. Certainly, anyone savvy enough to use Paypal, or download an mp3 to an iPod, is aware that they have access to an endless stream of quality music at zero cost.

how many people would gladly pay $10 for an album ... knowing that a good 80% of their money goes straight to the artist(s)?

As it relates to the topic at hand, Gery seems to have built his site on the premise that people will pay ex post facto. That is, they'll pay for the songs after receiving them.

While I appreciate that model can succeed (see Winzip for the classic shareware success story,) when it comes to independent music, I don't think it will. In my experience (and I don't just mean as a musician. I've worked with the RIAA and the MPAA,) people are willing to pay for convenience in receiving a product when it's a product for which they have a pre-existing desire. That's why iTunes works. Most folks hit the ITMS looking for a particular song or album, and the iTunes fee is low enough that it still seems convenient. It's basic economic theory.

But Tuneflow (and Garageband, and Purevolume, and all the others,) are missing a key element from that formula. Tuneflow doesn't have any products that people previously wanted. Yes, someone might decide after hearing a song that they now want that song. But, as with Songfight, by virtue of having listened to the song, they already own it. The Tuneflow model, then, basically relies on people wanting to tip the artists.

If Gery could make people want the music before they come to the site, then he'd be in business. This is largely what Brad managed to do with some clever promotion (like spam songs,) and the Arctic Monkeys with all the myspace buzz. The perfect model for Tuneflow would be to charge people before they listen to the songs. Something like: Pay $1 for access to 2 dozen tracks, keep whichever ones you want, and decide after listening which artist should get the $1.

But read that description again, and be honest: is it something you'd consider doing with your money?

I wouldn't. I'd sooner go to the Garageband top 10 or CNet music, or my new favorite New Music Canada. All free, and I don't even have to review.


(And FWIW, I really do hope I'm wrong.)

Deshead wrote:The perfect model for Tuneflow would be to charge people before they listen to the songs. Something like: Pay $1 for access to 2 dozen tracks, keep whichever ones you want, and decide after listening which artist should get the $1.
But read that description again, and be honest: is it something you'd consider doing with your money?

I'll buy artists' CDs because I like them. I'll buy Des' CD, because it's good music, I'll buy DCFC's CD, because it's good music, I'll buy the guy in the coffeeshop selling $5 CDs after an open mic, because it's good music.

I'm not sure where I was going with this. Basically, who would pay for music before hearing it. Indie music is awesome, and I love playing a Deshead or a Octothorpe or a Marcus Kellis or a Blue song and people going "Whoa, who did that, I wanna hear that again!" But I'm not gonna pay $5 a week to get all of SF's entries because who knows if they'll be good or not, or if they'll be my taste. Or something. I really don't know where I was heading with this.

Bjam wrote:Basically, who would pay for music before hearing it.

The place I work for knows of a few people who have bought CDs based solely on algorithmic recommendations.

Algorithmic recommendations are a very good thing, by the way. Several obscure and low-profile things have become non-obscure and high-profile simply because enough people bought the obscure thing who also bought the non-obscure thing.

Algorithmic recommendations on music downloads would be pretty awesome.

But you still have a vague idea of what you're buying. It's not like "You're gonna be given 20 songs. All may be lofi rap and 'rock'. Have fun!"

Did I forget to insert <snark> tags?

Bjam wrote:But I'm not gonna pay $5 a week to get all of SF's entries because who knows if they'll be good or not, or if they'll be my taste

i think you're missing the point on that one.. the idea is that all of the songs you can download are low-quality. you put in, say, $10. at any time, you can apply that $10 toward downloading a high quality version of any song. you keep doing that until you've downloaded, say, 20 high quality song copies - no matter how many LQ you listen to.

this is an OK micropayment scheme, but it prolly doesn't do much to alleviate any of tuneflow's problems.

Spud wrote:Crap - forgot to declare that on my income taxes. Shhhh, Marcus.

Well, I paid the Octothorpe Limited Liability Corporation, right? There's even a divider in your wallet.

blue wrote:

Bjam wrote:But I'm not gonna pay $5 a week to get all of SF's entries because who knows if they'll be good or not, or if they'll be my taste

i think you're missing the point on that one.. the idea is that all of the songs you can download are low-quality. you put in, say, $10. at any time, you can apply that $10 toward downloading a high quality version of any song. you keep doing that until you've downloaded, say, 20 high quality song copies - no matter how many LQ you listen to.

this is an OK micropayment scheme, but it prolly doesn't do much to alleviate any of tuneflow's problems.

But it could work for Songfight, for people who opt into it. Remember the days of 64kbps mono? Those sounded good enough to compare but damn those were assy for archival purposes. But I bet a lot of people would be more than happy to tell Song Fight 'hey it's okay to enroll this song into paid downloads' and then paid-download songs would be put on the public site at 64kbps and then send $1 by paypal to get the full-bitrate version (just a normal non-DRMed mp3) and the artist gets a cut or something.

Of course that's assuming the fightmasters ever decide they want contributions, and if they were to do that they'd be much more likely to just put a little paypal button off in the corner.

[edit] I mean, you know, it's just a hypothetical way to monetize something like Song Fight without getting into scammy MLM territory.

I like paying artists. Sometimes for the hell of it, like the weird looking bass player in the subway.

But I also want songfight to host higher resolution, not lower + some cost to gain access to high res. This isn't the place for that since it has clearly evolved (whether good or bad) into a show case for production. I think it's great that some of the stuff here it awesome quality sound. And some stuff is awesome songwriting. And occassionally the peanut butter gets chocolatey.

I like artists like Jane Siberry and those on Magnatune, who allow you to download first, then pay. Apparently it works for some artists. Jane even lets you name the price.

blue wrote:the site is going to get gamed, hard.

So has anyone checked out the first few months on Tuneflow? Blue (and others) called it: There are some fundamental shortcomings with the site's operation that render the whole thing laughable. Most notably, artists can review and vote on the songs in their own "tournament." With prizes at stake, those reviews and votes are exactly as you'd predict.

Though I'll give the site this: as an anthropology experiment, it's a grand success.

I didn't think any of us were writing and recording songs for the money, anyway. I've won a hundred bucks and sold a bunch of mp3s on Tuneflow for a grand total of like hundred-five bucks, and there's no contract so they don't have to pay me. If they do though, sweet. Even though I have to claim the money on my taxes. So if they don't, whatever. I don't care. I liked a few titles so I wrote some songs. Kicked my ass in gear into organizing some older songs into a couple albums.

deshead wrote:...artists can review and vote on the songs in their own "tournament."

Fwiw, they claim to have changed it now so that ratings don't technically count but I'm sure all you have to do is have a non static url or something like that, or change location / computer and then their whole system is probably out of the ballgame.

deshead wrote:...as an anthropology experiment, it's a grand success.

No wonder I can't keep away...

boltoph wrote:I didn't think any of us were writing and recording songs for the money, anyway.

Hear hear.

Boltoph's "The Sun Loves the Moon" is simply beautiful and worth the trip into foreign songwriting webland!

I totally second that motion. It's an amazing piece of music.

Thank you guys very much for the compliments. It means a lot coming from you guys, Mostess and thehipcola.

One thing I have to say, is that Tuneflow doesn't have community like Songfight does. Songfight is a community of people that really care about music and has a much wider variety of extremely talented people, devoted both to the songwriting and the production of the song. There have been a few people on Tuneflow that have done some good work but there's practically zero community there. It just doesn't compare.

You'd never get a great how-to thread where jolly roger is getting tracks remixed by the likes of talented sonic maestros like Deshead and Puce, all doing it just for the love of music and sound, education. You'd never get anything like that at Tuneflow. I don't think there'd ever be a "tuneflow live" or "tuneflow tour" and if there were, I get the feeling very few people would show up. Maybe like five people. Tuneflow is a mostly faceless place to throw tunes up and have every review come back to you telling you they want to hear the title more times, and more hook. It's a place for writing tv commercials or one hit wonder tracks. There are a few people who try to make it better and write decent reviews and who actually care about music, but the bar is pretty low there as well, especially in terms of production, or at least it has been.

Basically, there are way more talented people around here, than at tuneflow, by far. And there's a community.

I'm writing a tune for 'Warm Embrace'. It's got some cool guitar work in it - my guitar solos are starting to flow more from my fingertips ... I've been practicing a lot lately, and working on Queen's 'Killer Queen' guitar solo. When it's out next month, I'll post a link so you can listen to it. Or you could go to Tuneflow and try to find it.

I've been listening to the streaming TuneFlow Radio for about an hour now. Man, if you ever get in the mood to just hear a bunch of shitty songs played in a random order, this is the place for you. Actually, the current one is decent. It's called "ELECTRIC-FANS - 9.Baba yaga.mp3" What?!

Other highlights have included a song composed of two or three sloppy electric guitar tracks with some delay. It wasn't like, 'hey man, I'm improvising so it's okay.' It was like...'I wrote this lead part out beforehand, but I couldn't be bothered to learn it properly before committing it to tape." Basically arpeggios played faster than the guitarist could handle. Exactly what I want to hear. I mean, please, give me something...melody, production values, humor, chops, anything. This may sound a bit conceited, but I couldn't imagine writing something so unappealing. I think a composition needs to at least have a purpose to get by. A lot of this stuff has that, but quite a lot doesn't.

Another one was by a group that I can't remember the actual name of, but I'd probably call them something like Polka Manufacturing Facility. It was just amazing. Nice polka beat going on for a while, and suddenly, here come the distorted vocals.

There have been a lot of instrumentals, or near-instrumentals, played so far. I guess you can't enter these in the tournaments, but they'd love to play it on the streaming radio for you and not pay you anything. Then again, there have been no ads or anything, so it doesn't look like they make any money off the radio...which seems like a waste of resources, but whatever. Speaking of money...has anyone here ever received any money at all from TF?

Well, in any case, what a discovery! If they happen to be playing decent songs (one of the most coherent things that came up was a King Arthur track), the sound quality is so low as to bother the least particular listeners! It's like a nonstop party of terrible!

Yeah, I've been playing around over there a bit. Skipping January, it's just too stressful a place to hang out.

They've put something in place where, by reviewing songs, you can earn free downloads of the hi-qual versions of songs, and there have been a few worth getting. So at least you don't HAVE to spend money to get the hi-fi songs, if you're willing to write some reviews, and I do think the lo-fi hi-fi thing is a reasonable business model. I think TF Radio is 64k mono; the review and preview versions of the songs are 128k mono and the hi-fi downloads are generally 192k stereo. 128k mono is reasonable for reviewing songs, and then 192k stereo is nice for songs you like enough to keep around.

There was some weirdness back in October, which resulted in me selling 140 or so copies of my first song there to the same user. Two months later, the sales are still showing, but they don't seem to be interested in paying me my royalties. The same weirdness resulted in me now being the all time Top TF Artist with the all time Top TF Song, and nobody seems to care about correcting that either. I've also filed a bunch of bug reports over there. A few things have been fixed, and supposedly there are a bunch of site improvements coming in January sometime.

Agreed, TF Radio sucks. I suggested that, since they have "genre" information on each song, they could build blocks of "rock" (or other genre) songs, generate some sort of intro thing to say artist/title before and after the song. I think the point was to get people to listen to and buy new songs, but it is about as LoO described it. (You were able to listen for a whole hour? You must not have hit any of the preachy religious stuff; I had to bail after about 15 minutes). It is not a good advertisement for the site...

Politics and rigging of scores and all that are rampant. There are a lot of people who don't do English real well, which means that a lot of the comments on the forums get misinterpreted and any sort of subtle commentary seems to provoke a shouting match. But it served as inspiration to get me writing again, so I guess that's worth something. And there are some cool people there.

And if anybody from TF happens to see this and get all upset... this is all stuff I've tried to say on the boards over at TF, too.

Charles (KA)