We listened the founder and CEO of Magnatune on IT Conversations and it blew our minds.
The interview is from the series Voices in Your Head, hosted by Dave Slusher.
Just as iTunes fixed the flat tire inhibiting the legal purchase of music on-line, John Buckman and Magnatune Records, has embraced Creative Commons licensing, internet streaming and distribution of music, and introduced innovations such as
customer-chosen pricing for albums. Buckman recent article for Five Eight Magazine answers critics, proving that Creative Commons can work in the real world.
Even though they are an official record label, Magnatune's slogan is "We Are Not Evil."
For a small design studio like ours, they make the task of searching for and licensing great music to use in Flash and video projects cheap and easy.
For example, we needed a 30-second Flash animation that serves as an invitation to a business conference. A small project with a small budget; we predicted a usage of 1 week with less than 1,000 visitors to the site.
It cost us only $30 to license the usage of a song by AntiGuru titled Blue Line as the beautiful ambient track. Magnature claims that upwards of 50% of the profits go directly to the artists.
Other key attributes include:
- Variable pricing scheme means you can pay as little as $5 for an album if you choose
- Not venture-capital backed big business
- Not part of the "evil" major label machine - for those that hate the music biz and want to help topple it
- Founder/owner runs it -- support a small business
- Low pressure environment - nothing flashing, no audio ads while listening to albums
Buckman's story of how he crafted Magnatune's strategy and business model as well as his take on the evolution of music in the connected economy can be heard here. And the story as it eloves is writ large on the Magnatune blog.
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