Comments on: Indie music riding the digital surge

iTunes is hot, but the world of independent music services is staging a comeback from the dot-bomb fizzle.

Weed works with any public network

Hi,

Weed is a powerful tool for independent music promotion, and its main strength is that it works with any distribution method you care to use -- P2P, FTP, WWW, CD, DVD, whatever. No private network is required.

Weed files can be played 3 times for free. If you buy a Weed file and share it with someone else who buys it, you receive a 20% commission on the sale.

Weed is based on the idea that sharing music freely is a good thing and it should be encouraged -- as long as artists get paid in the process.

The Weed system makes it easy for anyone to start selling music on the Web ... you can sell your own music, or anybody else's music.

Here's a guide to some of the biggest Weed sites:

weedshare.com/web/musicguide.html

Your mom was right ... sharing is good.

John Beezer
[e-mail]

Weedfiles spread like weeds across the internet

96decibels has embraced Shared Media Licensing's Weedfile distribution system. The Weedshare program has allowed 96decibels.com, an online music collaboration site, to provide its independent artists with a method to not only get their music heard by a much wider audience but make some money in the process.

Musicians around the world were making music a long time before there was a "music industry", the internet helps independent artist let the public decide if they like their music, not some fatcat Record Label Exec. It is the independent that is pioneering new methodologies and we applaude their efforts and their innovation.

96decibels.com is a pioneer in a phenomenon known as internet music collaboration. Musicians that have never met and are spread across the globe are creating absolutely GREAT music.

How does it work? The 96decibels online music collaboration module allows for a musician with a song idea to create a project and upload a scratch track (we call them "seed tracks") for other musicians to listen to and contribute additional tracks. The collaborating artist will download the seed track, add his/her rough mix to the seed track and reupload to the project folder. If the project manager, (producer)likes the "audition" he/she will request the artist to upload their unmixed track to the "solo tracks" folder.

The process continues with additional tracks being added until the project is deemed "complete". At that point, 96decibels an ICP of Shared Media Licensing ensures that all rightsholders have provided the proper paperwork necessary and then begins the weedification process.

Once the new song is Weedified it is made available for other Weedshare sites to share with their visitors. 96decibels with 800 plus members currently has over 1500 weedified songs in their Music Catalog and is adding more on a daily basis.

It may not be SONY but it is a distribution channel and a chance that was never available before. We salute those musicians that are leaders in bringing internet created music to the world.

Here's a sample of our latest Weedified tune by the Progressive Rock band Azureth - a virtual internet band creating music via online music collaboration.

Searching - http://www.96decibels.lunarpages.com/weedfiles/-weed-Azureth-Searching.wma

Here's a sample of a tune that hasn't quite completed the final mix process by the 96decibels family of collaborating musicians. This tune is not yet weedified - but we'll give you a sneek preview anyway.

Man of the House by Brian White, John Wooten, Donald & Bernadette Bly

http://96decibels.lunarpages.com/music/Man_Of_The_House_final_mix_438.WMA

Come join us at http://www.96decibels.com and see what all the buzz is about!

[markdoiron]

No They Don't

i like the concept. but i went to the website, watched as a file that interested me downloaded, then found that my "play" button was greyed out. i'll be honest: as much as i'd like to support indy artists (i refuse to listen to or buy riaa music), i don't have time for this nonsense. it has to work right the first time. i've got better things to do.

mark d.

CNET gets it wrong on Weed

One day CNET will use the Weed concept. As soon as it figures out what it is. :-)

Anyhow, Weed is not a p2p service. Weed is not a service at all. Weed is a format.

Weed is just a DRM format that allows people to legally share and distribute music. All the information is easily accessible from any Weed music site.

Wake up CNET, and smell the Weed. :-)


Kenny Lee

http://www.weedtunes.com

Weed files: 3 free plays free and consumer commissions changes everything

As someone who's been giving my music away online since
1994, from Hyperreal.org to MP3.com to other services, I can tell
you that not many people go out of their way to find free music.

When I heard about http://weedshare.com/, I realized it was
something different. It turns file sharing on its head. Instead of
prosecuting people who love the music enough to copy it and
share it, Weed rewards them with commissions. Also, instead of
a 30 second snippet of a song as a preview, or a low quality
steam, Weed lets you download it and listen to it 3 times, at your
leisure. If you want to listen to it more, then you have to pay for
it, but you get the bonus of being able to give the song that you
buy away to anyone you want, through any file distribution
method, and if anyone buys it, you get commissions from that
sale, and from two more resales of the file.

Musicians always get 50%, then 20%, 10%, and 5% go to those
consumer commissions. This said to me that if a musician and
their fan base exists within some community (real or virtual)
then 85% of the entertainment dollar stays in that community,
with weed. It just makes sense, and everyone I talk to agrees
that it's fair.

I founded and designed http://ShareNewYork.com/ to
encourage this kind of sharing by creating a locally focused (but
not exclusive!) site that makes it very easy for anyone to share
weed files, as well as create blogs, participate in forums, and
review music, as well as the venues and all other aspects of
making, performing, and distributing music.

We only allow weed files to be distributed on SharenewYork.com,
because they are verifiably legal to share in this way. Any other
unlocked file format (like mp3 files) cannot be verified legal, and
of course the vast majority of the trading going on in MP3s is
not sanctioned by the musician (and their producers). Weed is
always legal to share, and you always gets 3 free listens before
having to decide whether to buy or not. For music that people
don't know, it's the only way to give it a fair hearing. The vast
majority of people buying music at iTunes and online music
stores already heard the music they buy somewhere else.

And Weed really is the "cake you can have and eat" since you can
buy it, keep it to listen to forever, yet you can give it away to
anyone you want, and get commissions if anyone who receives it
decides to keep it. How many things can you buy for about a
buck, and then sell an unlimited number of times! Remember,
with a 20% commission, only 5 people have to buy the song
you're giving away for you to make your money back.

Weed is also an ideal tool for small record labels. Without weed
files, many sites selling CDs feel they can't give previews of all
the songs on the CD, because that would essentially be giving
away the music, and the incentive to buy the song is limited to
either a moral conviction, or sound quality. With weed files, a
musician can offer a preview of all the songs, but if a consumer
only like one or two songs, they can buy them directly. Of
course, fter previewing the songs, the consumer is can decide
they like the whole CD, and buy it, instead of buying the weed
files. Either way, the consumer gets better options, and the
musician/producer/record label get paid a fair price.

Many ICPs, Independent Content Providers, who are authorized
to create Weed files, do so for commissions only, without any
up-front costs to the musician. In many cases, including http://
ShareNewYork.com/ the ICP also doesn't charge for hosting the
file which they "weedify".

Weed changed how I think about "owning" music. It pays
consumers for sharing. Isn't this what the record companies
should be doing? Rewarding people who love the music enough
to share it, rather than trying to sue them and put them in jail??

[froppo]

Amazed

I'm amazed at how many indie music artists don't take advantage of the resources available online to promote their music. How easy is it for a musician to upload an mp3 to a podcast or web radio site? Just 5 minutes out of their day? And yet so many don't even bother doing something so simple.

Anonym97
Indie Music Radio

[KodeBlackMusic]

Indie

http://myspace.com/kodeblackmusic