ccMixter transtions from Creative Commons to ArtisTech: No business model, no thoughts – thumbs up.
What’s this ccMixter?
ccMixter a remix community. Celebrating mashup and free culture. It’s also a promotional tool for Creative Commons, and the software powering the site, is an open source option for connecting progressive licensing on media sites.
What’s this ArtisTech?
A new music label, that says it tries to benifit from and develop models within a Music Web 2.0 sphere. Keywords being mashup, collaboration, open formats; making tech work for a better, uhm… ehh… mashup of artists and listeners.
So what’s the deal?
To be quite honest: I have no idea. According to siteadmin on ccMixter neither does he or the woman running ArtisTech. Apparently, her not being able to define a 100% business model, was also a motivating factor in letting ArtisTech take over.
Even if it seems completely stupid not having a plan, it actually makes completely sense in the music web 2.0 climate.
Either way, businessmodel or not, you have to be increasingly flexible – otherwise you’ll just end up even worse the those dinosaurs we call labels (the big four).
Bottom line: ccMixter will continue to rock on, be free. I’m guessing this that there will be an permanent push-invite by ArtisTech, trying to pull artists over to a not-so-free and mashable platform (anyone think Magnatune?).
We are still looking for proper applaudable innovation – but nothing in the horizon so far… except for some aggregation services … and that’s so 2005.
Emily has drawn up some prospective business plans. We have some ideas and general concepts that we think can lead to strong revenue sources for independent artists.
Before being approached to operate ccMixter our business model focused around facilitating multi-level paid fan-club memberships. We still offer these at http://tunetrack.net/ and we expect that at least some ccMixter artists will want to try creating a fanclub.
Beyond that we want to help facilitate the dual licensing of creative commons content on ccMixter (as allowed by the artists), to help facilitate an intent of:
It’s cool to do what you want with my stuff so long as it’s free;
but if you make mone with it you have to share it with me.
CC licenses already well address the former statement, and we hope to enable the latter.
I think it’s a solid plan, but we are not arrogant enough to profess that it’s’ *THE* way for the artists and ourselves to make a living. We’re still just recently leaving a bit of a digital music dark age and I think we just want to help bring about it’s renaissance.
Now I am arrogant enough to say that the following elements are key to the success of any online musician or listener focused music site:
Rich Artwork, Liner Notes and Free Streams: http://tunetrack.net/emilyrichards/releases/one-or-ten/player/ (auto-plays music)
Full lyrics without abtrusive advertising: http://tunetrack.net/bradstanfield/releases/wizard/lyrics/2511-angels-are-crying-acoustic/
Wide variety of download formats, espescially lossless: http://tunetrack.net/emilyrichards/releases/you-give/