Non-Evil Music Label That Promotes Sharing Starting To Get Some Press

Culture

from the good-for-them dept

Recently, someone sent me a link to Magnatune, and pointed out that this seemed to be the type of “new” music label that I’ve been talking about for quite some time. At the time, I had never heard of them, but since then I’ve been hearing the name mentioned quite a bit, and now it looks like Magnatune is getting some well deserved press coverage. It’s a new independent music label (run by one guy), with the motto “we’re not evil”. They promote their artists with free music, and have MP3s and streams you can download and share under a Creative Commons license – even encouraging people to make derivative works. They then ask, if people like the music, that they pay for it – at whatever price they feel is appropriate. The label is also friendly to artists, letting them keep control over their music, and giving back 50% of any proceeds from music sales to the artists. It’s clearly still a small time operation, but it’s a sign (as plenty of folks have been predicting) that as long as the established recording industry continues to miss the boat, newer, smarter record labels will come in and fill the gap.