Radio Jaba suggests a system where music is distributed and listened for free. Although the production costs for the Record are lowest as ever in history, the human costs on producing it are still the same than 100 years ago. Song writers, guitar players, Audio engineers, they all eat, and they will never starve to death simply because nobody wants them to: everybody loves their work (music).
So how? So are customers simply mean and greedy? Should we stop every P2P network? Is charging a dime the solution? Are free artists just crap musicians who couldn´t get a label? Are the artist on labels just crap musicians? No, no and no. Read on...
Illegal copy is not the cause of the fall in CD sales - or it is, but it's not that simple
- Fact that cannot be denied: the Internet enabled us to download tons of music without paying anything.
- Fact you cannot run from: the Internet made us get used to have immediate access to anything you can spell a name.
It's easy to think that each CD downloaded is a CD less being sold and go to courts after that lost penny. By that logic you would easily guess that if it wasn't for Internet, the music industry would be selling, each week, more albums, even from unknown or 'out of catalog' artists, than it ever sold since Franklin's first phonogram.
People download music that they would never pay for, complete collections of forgotten artists, new releases from unknown bands, music they would never be able to hear, and most of the times, music that they will probably hear a couple of times and never hear again. They are downloading things they just would never pay for. And they also download music they shouldn't. They do it because they can, because in the Internet age, customers want immediate access to all information.
The Internet changed our habits in a way that made obsolete the whole idea of buying a piece of hardware with awfully limitations of how or when you can hear your music. Yes, the P2P download and the end of the CD medium for selling music are intimately linked. But to say that one is the cause of the other is to be short-sighted.
The world evolved, we have to evolve with it.
Most of them are not doing it for the money - not everyone is a pro. not every non-pro(fit) is bad music.
To make music is a pleasure, and so someone, somewhere is doing that right now. And we're not talking about the average teenager punk-garage-band, we are also talking about lawyers, designers, engineers, salesmen, marketing consultants, telephone sanitizers, you name it. People who have musical education, years of practice, but just don't make a living out of it, gather to record their jam sessions.
Because the first aim of radio Jabá is to create a musical community, where anyone can share their art, and let it free so as that it may find it's way to those, somewhere, that will appreciate – even for the teenager punk-garage-band.
Thousands of great artists are thriving to be heard
If you've seen enough amateurs musicians you met at least one that made you go "wow, that's better than what's playing on the radio". You might say that this is because there is a lot of bad musicon the radio but we rather say that this is because there is a lot of brilliant things to be discovered on the streets. And out of these, from time to time comes some artists that become successful in the alternative market but for a reason or another do not get a recording deal with one of the big ones.
And most of them put their music freely available. Why they do it?
Some know that this is the best way to find their public, because they live from live shows. As their music travels on the Internet is not uncommon they find their target audience in another country, sometimes another continent and, as that happens, they are able to make a living out of their music.
Others just want their voices to be heard, to spread the word. They are political activists, religious, or just poets that have found their medium thought music. For those, who don´t live on the music, but on what it says, they are just making their interpretation of free speech. Free to speak, free to listen.
Most of the artists you see in TV are not selling music. Their business is another.
When in a debate over musical quality on the actual music industry, you may think about the famous pop celebrities, but we don´t. To criticize their musical quality is to completely miss the point on what they do. They are not composers, they din´t born singers or dancers, they are the outcome of a tuned team of talented choreographers, musical dj´s, fashion designers, movie makers. A celebrities role is not to sell music albums, but selling a lifestyle.
They sells the clothes they wear, the lipstick they put, the movies they star. They´re MTV, Nike, the night clubs you go out at night. They are in a business completely different than our own: we are about a musical community, just that. We not a threat to their business model, we won´t miss them on our free music community.
People wish to pay
In 2004, U.S. mobile phone users spent US$850 in ringtones, more than two twice the number in 2003. Just think about that information for a minute, why is it that millions of users are spending (up to US$2,50) in buying a low quality 30 seconds of music, when they usually have the same music downloaded without paying a penny? Why aren´t they raving on, searching in the Internet a way to hack into their own cell phones?
Because they don´t want to, they think the price is fair and the service easy to use. They are not downloading music simply because it´s free, they do it because it´s purchasing music is fairly more complicated than just downloading (witch is almost incredible given the fact that the average kazza is one of the worst interfaces out there). Apple knew it when they created iTunes.
It has been suggested that the solution to the music download problem was reducing drastically the price of each item, trying to compete with free with the almost-almost-free. This is what is called micro payment. A common misunderstanding of micro payment is the idea that when you reduce the price by 90%, you´ll have twenty times more customers and thus you´ll profit. That´s not how it works: when you change the price of your product you have totally different customers, maybe more (but sometimes less – see prada) to find the sweet spot, where profit is maximized is the dream of every MBA graduate. Classically all this discussion was simplified with the notion that the price must be above the production costs, but the production costs of a record being so low, and distribution being almost free, that notion disappeared.
The great breakthrough that goes undiscussed about micro payment is to create a medium in witch is easy, safe and quick for someone to electronically transfer a few pennies, be it thought cell phone, credit card or on line payment clubs.
We are not imposing any business model, we are giving freedom to the consumer
If there is music out there for free it´s simply because it´s economically viable. Technology has made recording music so cheap that independent labels or just hobbyists can afford it. So we are simply suggesting to automate the marketing, by bringing you music that you simply did not know you could like.
A market were there are free goods available does not forbids goods to be sold. On the contrary, we believe that by giving customers an full option of quality free legal music, is a way to diminish piracy of illegal music.We are not imposing any business model, we are giving freedom to the consumer, a free market where if anyone comes with an idea that justiy it's own value, they can sell it.
So what are you selling? Higher quality-realistic recorded music? Musical shows? Lifestyle? A book with a cd? A artfully handmade CD case? A free trial? Subliminal propaganda?
It has been proved that a lot of things can done for free. Now if you want to sell me them (be it an encyclopedia, a software or an operating system) convince me it´s worth my money, and everybody will be happy.
