Republic Project Launches: Putting a New Spin on Album Pre-Sales
The Republic Project, which offers one of the most interesting ways for artists to monetize their efforts that we have seen recently, is coming out of closed beta this week. The Republic Project gives bands and fans a new way to connect. Fans can pre-order a band's forthcoming album on the site and then watch as the band produces the new album. Once an album is finished, the Republic Project will deliver DRM-free MP3s to its users, and musicians will be free to sell their music on any other service.
Out of Beta - All Bands are Welcome
We first looked at the Republic Project in February this year, when it was still in closed beta with only a handful of artists, including Tim Myers, Dexter Freebish, Steriogram, and Still Time. During the beta period, the service provided a lot of help to these bands, but now that the site will be open to all bands, this amount of hand-holding won't scale and bands will have to use the project's self-service tools to manage their accounts. Bands will get a widget that they can put on their site or MySpace page to bring fans to their Republic Project site. On the service, they will be able to upload new videos, track orders, and set the price for their albums and a release date.
When we talked to Republic Project CEO Ryan Swagar yesterday, he stressed that the project is now open for everybody, no matter the size of their fan base or style of music. Bands can set the price for their albums anywhere from $2.99 to $9.99. All of this money will go directly to the band. In addition, the Republic Project will charge fans a fixed $1.99 transaction fee. Swagar also noted that bands don't have to produce full albums but could also use the service while they're in the studio to record just a few songs.
Focus on Video
Of course, bands are free to upload as much or as little content during the pre-release phase as they want, though to make the best use of the service, we would expect bands to update their fans at least once every couple of days. The Republic Project will hold all the money it collects from fans in escrow, just in case a band never actually finishes an album.
Once an album is finished and all the music is uploaded to the service, the band flips a switch and the finished music goes out to all the fans. At the same time, though, the band's site on the service will shut down and the band can sell its final product anywhere else as well. The service does not plan to become a full-blown music retailer and won't sell any of the tracks after the album is finished.
From what we have seen so far, we think the Republic Project looks like a great idea that is very well executed. We are also not aware of any other company that currently provides these services. The Republic Project fills a niche for both musicians and bands and it will be exciting to watch how bands use the service over the next couple of months.
Share
Facebook
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Cool approach combining the video with the actual album. Will be fun to see what artists sign up.
Frederic, you know ArtistShare was doing this 9 years ago, right?
It's just not set up as a "web service", per se.
http://www.artistshare.com/home/default.aspx
Ethan - thanks for pointing me to ArtistShare, I wasn't aware of that project. It's indeed a bit different from the Republic Project, but it looks like the basic idea is very similar. Thanks!
I thought it was a very interesting business idea. I read a little while ago a blog post by David Meerman Scott on webinknow.com where he interviewed Amanda Palmer from The Dresden Dolls. On this blog post he and Amanda discuss her band, her music, her successfull social media activities and the music market. She exposes some interesting thoughts on what the music business is becoming and how it will deal with the internet's growing effect on artists, bands, labels, etc.
Anyway, the Republic Project seems to be a company that might start a trend on the music business. I guess we'll see.
Frederic, glad you checked it out!
Topspin Media is also doing something similar, vis a vis "access to artists as business model".
Wow the site really looks great.
Thanks for the site info.
Yes, ArtistShare has been doing this for a long time and with great success (4 Grammys?). I think they might have some sort of patent pending as well. You may want to check into that. (Copyright © 2005 ArtistShare - Patent Pending)
Yet another money-grubbing music site to take advantage of artists for their own gain. The litmus test being; all Republic Project fees are up-front and not held in escrow, but arists fees are on the back-end and held in escrow. How classic. To top it off, none of the advertising fees are shared with the artist even though the artists drive site traffic. Well, that's the way the "big Guys" have done it for the last 50 years or so. You'd think artists would get smarter. News flash; they have.
Other digital stores are charging 30% or more, so this is a no brainer for bands. I also like that you get the video during the recording process. The site is really clean with no advertising which is refreshing!