Justin Rubner interviewed me last week about my relationship with Disc Revolt and my strategies as an indie artist. (I saw a blog recently refer to me as “uber indie”. I thought that was funny. I guess I am. )
Angels take on music pirates
Atlanta Business Chronicle - May 18, 2007by Justin RubnerStaff writer
An Atlanta startup backed by $1.5 million in angel financing is banking on the legal side of the digital music revolution.
The startup, DiscRevolt Inc., co-founded by CEO and musician Mike Shamus and Joe Kirk, the former associate publisher of Decatur-based entertainment magazine Paste, is ready to go to market after five months of beta testing. The company sells download cards to independent musicians who in turn sell them to concert-goers. The cards, which are individually designed for each artist, have codes that fans can use to download songs legally off the DiscRevolt Web site.
Popular music download sites such as iTunes charge 99 cents per song — a price Kirk says is too high for the average consumer. DiscRevolt plans on selling the cards in bulk for 50 cents each to artists, substantially cheaper than blank CDs. The company then recommends that artists sell them to fans for $5 each, about 33 cents per song on a 15-track card.
DiscRevolt is entering a market dominated nine-to-one by so-called pirated music downloads over legal ones. Thanks to the Internet, copyright lawyers for record labels such as Warner Bros. and Atlantic Records have carved out a lucrative niche: Since the start of the year, major record labels have filed more than 60 federal lawsuits in Atlanta against residents they believe have illegally downloaded music.
Whether you call it “stealing” or “sharing,” the fact remains that the majority of artists don’t have the backing of a record label to protect their music.
Enter DiscRevolt. The company is going after the “long tail” of the music economy, favoring the infinite number of unsigned artists — and infinite dollar potential — over the music superstar market.
Although unsigned artists may reach fewer people than their signed counterparts, there are far more of them. And while labels and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have been fighting piracy through litigation — the RIAA has threatened to sue 20,000 downloaders according to news reports — technology companies such as DiscRevolt have been developing ways to encourage fans not to engage in piracy.
The business model, Kirk says, is a win for the artist and the consumer.
It could also be a win for the music industry, sans copyright lawyers. Kirk says companies such as DiscRevolt are a major part of the global effort to fight piracy.
“We’re creating an environment of trust between the artist and fan,” he said. “It may sound idealistic, but we just think if you give a fair price, people won’t steal it.”
So agrees Andy Zipf, an independent musician from Washington, D.C. Zipf, a champion of the Internet and a DiscRevolt customer, says the music industry is making a big mistake by suing its most precious resource: its fan base.
Zipf, whose music can best be described as acoustic rock, says he has decided not to sign with a major label because he would prefer to distribute and market his music via the Internet, with social sites such as MySpace and Facebook available. In addition, he prefers to own his music and complains about losing profits by joining with a label.
“The Internet is a great distributor, the best in fact,” said Zipf, whose DiscRevolt site at www.discrevolt.com/groups/view/111 says he has recorded with a producer who has worked with Guns & Roses, Lisa Loeb and other well-known musicians.
Zipf is not alone. Another DiscRevolt customer, Derek Webb, offered his music to fans for free on the Web on one condition: that they send him the e-mail addresses of four friends. Webb ended up with 85,000 people who took him up on his offer, Kirk says — and 340,000 e-mails that the Nashville, Tenn.-based musician uses to let people know when he is touring.
To get the word out to musicians, DiscRevolt is touring with them in such music festivals as the Warped Tour 2007 and Sounds of the Underground.
But cards alone won’t sustain a thriving business. DiscRevolt also offers Web sites for artists that include their songs and bio. Once the sites get more users, Kirk says, the company will likely offer advertising.
But even with the digital revolution in full swing, Internet advocates such as Zipf and Kirk still say that consumers — even digital carnivores — want to own something they can touch.
DiscRevolt’s cards, like CDs and records, have the musicians’ artwork and info on them and look like backstage passes.
“People still like to have something real,” Kirk said.
