Fairtilizer Launches Next-Gen Music Company
Fairtilizer isn't a record company - it's a new music company. What's the difference? A record company is about owning the rights to music and establishes an employer/employee relationship with the artists. A music company, on the other hand, is about having artists establish a relationship with a service. At Fairtilizer, they believe the services they provide will establish them as the "music company" of the future.
This week, Fairtilizer has launched the first part of their new distribution platform: an embeddable player which allows indie artists to share their music anywhere on the net from web sites to blogs to social networks.
About Fairtilizer
We told you about Fairitlizer over a year ago, when the company was still in private alpha. The easiest way to describe the site is to say that it combines the discovery aspects of Hype Machine with the distribution model of Tunecore. At the time of our initial writing, the company let artists upload tracks which visitors could browse through to find music they liked. Now Fairtilizer has opened its doors and is launching the next phase of their service: distribution.
Artists can now use one unified interface provided by Fairtilizer to distribute songs to blogs, web sites, social networks, and digital music stores...yes, even iTunes (The digital stores piece is coming soon, the others are available now). The distribution is aided by an embeddable player which can be added to any web site. The player comes in four different sizes and has shuffle and autoplay options as well as the ability to stream a customizable playlist. Once embedded, artists can then easily track analytics like downloads and plays per country.
The Fairtilzer Player:
Additionally, on the Fairtilizer web site itself, each track page comes with customizable URL, artwork, space for description and links (like to artist web sites, stores, and booking contacts, etc.), and a comment board for listeners. Tracks can be set to streaming only or made available for download, and soon artists will be able to mark them for sale, too, if they so desire. The tracks can also be set to public or private.
That private setting is designed to help artists in the initial phases before the launch of a new tune. Traditionally, launching a new track involves three steps: production, promotion, and distribution. With record companies today, leaks can occur in both the production and promotion phases as tracks are sent back and forth between artists, producers, DJs, journalists, and other taste makers who receive a first look before the track becomes publicly available. To combat those leaks, Fairtilizer provides these "private streams" instead. Artists will be able to send the track to specific people just as they did before, but the track will be protected from piracy and leaks.
The Future of Music
Although Fairtilizer will provide tools for artists wishing to sell their music, the focus isn't just on music sales. Instead, it focuses on providing all the tools an artist would need to get their music discovered, downloaded, shared, and distributed.
In the future, says Olivier Rosset, a former music exec and co-founder of Fairtilizer, it won't be about who owns the rights to a recording anymore. Music will instead center around the URL. And at Fairtilizer, they want to be the company that best helps an artist get that URL, that single track, onto the most sites across the internet.
Comments
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I think this is a great idea. I love how it really cuts out the middleman and allows the artists to sell directly to the consumer.
I checked out Fairtilizer and sure enough, it is very different and way progressive.
Fairtilizer rocks!!!!
Two things I'm not sure I understand about this system. O. Rosset says the future of music centers around who can get an URL? In what way? An artist can simply buy their own URL through any number of vendors. It's not too difficult to get "www.mybandnamehere.com" or such. I don't see how having a URL will be commodified.
Secondly, as to leaks, what is to stop some unscrupulous mixer somewhere along the production process from simply leaking the tracks from an artist, a la Guns 'n' Roses "Chinese Democracy"? Unless an artist is the sole person in charge of recording, mixing, posting, and distributing a new song, a new song passes through any number of hands along the way.
That said, i wish them good luck. Lord knows we need a new music-industry model.
Fartilizer?
Upon quick glance, my first thoughts were 'Fartilizer' and 'Fertilizer' both of which remind me things I'd rather not be reminded about.
Awful awful name....
this is in direct competition to topspin media.
I've been a Fairtilizer member for a while now (thanks RWW!). What makes the biggest difference to me (as a member, not as an artist) is the focus on brand new music and the way Fairtilizer allows the tracks that have the most buzz to go up its charts and get more exposure. and get me to find out about them and so much music and artists i had never heard of.
Those artists might actually be quite big in their part of the world, but how would i find out about them when all the radio stations around town all play the same stuff? Definitly a heapster hang out. Another thing is the quality of the music being streamed, i mean, no 128 kbps crap.
There's music.
There's new music.
There's ways to discover new music.
Then there's Fairtilizer.
Cool site. I really like the theme of the site. I own a music site and I believe it can do good to all the music lovers worldwide.
Keep it up !
Very Interesting site. How can I become an active member?
Interest idea, about time someone came up with a new business model for music.
It seems to be a very interesting and unique concept, particularly in discovering artists that one wouldn't have otherwise.
I would think that sales of tracks would be key as well, so that a person could download their favorite tracks to MP3's etc for mobility. Otherwise one would be limited to listening strictly while perched at a computer.
Besides that confusing name, I like their embeddable player and the charting feature to find new and upcoming artists.
Hmm..Pretty Interesting site! Can we upload songs written and sung by own? How can we do that? I am very curious man!
Its kinda cool and progressive, but those characteristics are not so difficult to achieve with Indie or UGC music.
Great, new (legal) models for distribution of popular music is what's lacking. Yes, of course its the record companies fault..or is it?
Rocks on..