Selling songs as iPhone apps

Eliot Van Buskirk over at Wired has an interesting post today about Seattle band Presidents of the United States of America.

It's like a radio station with all PUSA, all the time.

(Credit: Melodeo)

In addition to selling its songs on iTunes in the normal fashion, PUSA has just released a $2.99 application for the iPhone and iPod Touch that will let you stream songs from four albums (the ones whose rights are owned by the band), plus assorted other flotsam (live tracks, demos, whatever).

The application was built by Melodeo, whose vice president of business development is none other than PUSA's Dave Dederer.

The songs are streamed, not downloaded, which means that you need a live Internet connection to hear them. In other words, imagine Pandora or Slacker, but focused on one band and with no restrictions on song order or skipping.

The trick with this kind of compilation is clearing the rights--radio station compilations, for example, would probably be impossible because so many licensees would have to be contacted. But I think that this could be a very interesting way for bands to earn a little bit of money from music to which they have exclusive rights.

Imagine your favorite band releasing an application with demos and outtakes from its latest album, on the same day the album itself goes live to iTunes and other download sites. Imagine it releasing concert recordings the day after a concert takes place.

Record labels could also benefit--Melodeo is apparently already working on a compilation for a Seattle-area label. Perhaps this is the digital replacement for the old SubPop singles club?

[manualfunky]

now this is a great idea.. if only the ported it to cydia so there was no way apple could put its foot down if it started to think it was gonna lose revenue!

[Vegaman_Dan]

This is a fantastic idea! Instead of buying the individual tracks from iTunes, you can pay this low price to have them streamed instead, saving you money.

By that very same token, I expect Apple to pull this app fairly quickly once they realize that people would no longer need iTunes or buy the tracks, costing Apple money.

[lukekurtis]

It's an interesting idea but there are several downfalls that make it not work for me. First, the fact that I have to have an Internet connection ruins it. I listen to music on the subway (not to mention airplanes) all too often. When I'm at home I listen to music from my computer--not from my iPhone. On the other hand I do see how the low cost would appeal to listeners with different criteria. Ultimately I think this would be for a small audience and is too limiting to be widely successful. Besides, with so many games and other apps on my phone, the last thing I want to do is add music apps to clutter up my screen when the iPod app interface works so well.

[blost]

Hey, you don't get what you don't pay for. I think this is a great compromise between paying a ton of money for PUSA's full catalog or simply stealing it (which in this case only hurts the artists - no labels are involved). For songs that you need to have available at all time (on a plane or in the subway), there appears to be a "buy it" link right in the app.

These guys are forward looking. Check out one of Dave Dederer's other related projects at http://www.audiofuse.com.