Thursday, February 04, 2010

Mint Chicks dump Warners/Flying Nun for digital music startup
This story is worth a read. Some of the numbers are way off -  the figure on returns to bands from itunes sales is a fiction.

The ironic thing about the Mint Chicks trumpeting that they're ditching Warners is that they were signed to Flying Nun (which was owned by FMR when they signed, and was subsequently sold to Warners), and that label is now back in the hands of it's founder Roger Shepherd. So it's once again, an independent.

"Wellington-based global internet entrepreneur WebFund is backing what it hopes will be a new way to make money in the cruel and unusual world of digital music sales.

The MusicHy.pe proposition allows fans to remix their favourite bands' music and is being promoted as "the un-label", says Wedbfund chairman Dave Moskovitz.

To prove the point, MusicHy.pe's first signing is Kiwi band The Mint Chicks, who say they "sent their major label Warner packing last December", and are using the local start-up to launch their new EP “Bad Buzz”.

Moskovitz says the business model is based on the expectation that straight music sales are increasingly difficult, whereas artists are increasingly using digital presence to promote their live appearances and merchandise sales, and incentivising music sales using competitions.
Artists will see most of the revenue on download sales, says Moskovitz.  "Bands get very little money from downloads. If you publish on I-Tunes for 99 cents a track, you might see 2 cents of that. With MusicHy.pe, it's more like 90 cents."
Read more here.

ADDED Feb 7 - the above quote regarding the returns bands allegedly get from iTunes has since been deleted from the original story, and the headline changed to  reflect the editing - "UPDATED: Mint Chicks dump Warner for local digital music start-up"

2 comments:

Dave Moskovitz said...

Unfortunately, Pattrick (the journalist) misheard what I said in the phone interview ... I said "a few cents", not "two cents". See this article for a description of how much your typical artist might see from an iTunes sale. Most are lucky to see 8-15c from each iTunes download. I'd like to point out that it isn't really iTunes fault, it's the decrepit underlying structure where labels call the shots and collect the cash, distributing crumbs back to most artists.

We want to change that by putting artists in the drivers seat. MusicHy.pe is a platform they can use to build community and better engage, collaborate with, and inspire their fan bases. We're facilitators, not controllers of production nor distribution.

We'll be using BandCamp for direct music sales. Currently the only fees they charge are PayPal's micropayment charges which work out at about 10c on the dollar.

Fact or fiction? Middlepeople have been taking advantage of musicians for too long, and we're fixing that.

Dave Moskovitz

Peter McLennan said...

thanks for the comment. I will be reposting them tomorrow with reaction from Amplifier,co,nz.