The New Magnatune: $5 to $10 for a Month of Unlimited Music
Successful Creative Commons music store Magnatune announced today that they have made another radical transformation in their business model. Customers can now pay as little as $5 per month for unlimited streaming and $10 per month for unlimited DRM-free downloads, they can purchase as little as 1 month of membership and they can use Paypal's recurring payments feature to stay subscribed if they wish. The company, whose motto is "we are not evil," then gives 50% of revenues to the artists.
We really like what Magnatune is doing and we think this business model is great, but we're concerned that the service is still too antiquated in its music delivery to get customers beyond the fact that it has a really obscure catalog.
The Problems With Magnatune
Unfortunately, Magnatune doesn't offer much in the way of discovery of the best music on the site. There's some playlists by genre and that's good. You can see a handful of the top sellers. In this era of recommendation technology, though, the company should really facilitate discovery better than it does. Millions of people are now used to visiting Last.fm, entering a known artist's name and then getting hours of high-quality related content. It's going to be hard to get too many of them to go back to a black box point and click catalog.
That's especially the case when you're looking through a catalog of items you've never seen or heard of before. Independent music stores are at a huge sales deficit because their products have no name recognition. Additionally, and no one likes it when I say this (but it's true), most of the music on sites like this isn't any good! If you've ever looked for Creative Commons music before you know that's the case. I dare you to post links to your favorite independent and CC music in comments.
None the less, you've got to admire what they're doing at Magnatune. For fans of classical music and new age piano, there may be a lot there for you. Otherwise, we're not so sure.
Additionally, it's going to be hard for even a business model this cool to top the all around awesome new music service that Lala just rolled out, for example.
Comments
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I couldn't find this band on the magantune site, but is Creative Commons Music. It's name is pornophonique: http://www.last.fm/music/pornophonique?setlang=en
If it's about Creative Commons music I preffer Jamendo as a site: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/7505
Posted by: Marcelo Sanchez | November 18, 2008 4:17 PM
"I dare you to post links to your favorite independent and CC music in comments."
Well, perhaps you should check out alonetone: a very independent musician's site that's purposely (& philosophically) outside the norm; heck, it even rejects the concept of "genre"...
Just poke around the site for a while - but be sure to take your time. The site prides itself on rewarding the adventurous, and it offers a wide variety of innovative ways to check things out (including an ever-changing "favorites" list that's created by the site's users & their comments, as well as creating an iTunes RSS podcast for each user).
Most of the musicians on it are vastly different from each other in sound and approach - and yes, IMHO, a boatload of the music there is just plain excellent... and it's all freely downloadable as well.
So... is this where we "dare" you to check it out? ;)
Posted by: exbucks
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November 18, 2008 6:07 PM
exbucks, checking it out now. thanks
Yes, Magnatune could profit from an improved recommender system.
However, the music on Magnatune is really good. No big names, but carefully selected artists worth listening to. Add to that the great pricing model where I can chose how much to pay for an album. This way I can personally express my thanks to a great artist. That is how the music businesses should work.
Ah, and for great Chinese independent music, take a look at Neocha (http://www.neocha.com/).
Posted by: Carsten | November 18, 2008 10:14 PM
Re; 'Additionally, and no one likes it when I say this (but it's true), most of the music on sites like this isn't any good! If you've ever looked for Creative Commons music before you know that's the case.'
I realise that that was intended in jest, but it is a huge generalisation nonetheless. Because of the nature of CC music, there is an abundance of it. And as with anything where there is an abundance, the chaff to wheat ratio is huge. Unfortunately for Magnatune, that makes a good recommendation system even more important than for the likes of Amazon and iTunes.
eMusic still struggles with it. There is a ton of good music on eMusic, but to look at the homepage and charts, you would never know it.
Posted by: Kenny | November 19, 2008 3:12 AM
I agree that Magnatune website seems poor. I have mainly interacted with it through media players (such Rhythmbox).
Aside some classical music, 'Seldon Plan' grabbed my attention
[http://magnatune.com/artists/seldon]
Posted by: dcruz | November 19, 2008 9:16 AM
This way I can personally express my thanks to a great artist. That is how the music businesses should work
Posted by: mirc dosya | November 24, 2008 4:46 AM