Tuesday, 21. February 2006, 09:39:32
This article was originally pitched to Newforge. After review the Newsforge editor decided to publish a summary of this interview instead of the actual transcript. Here for your reading benefit is the original article in whole.
Title:
Independent Music Store is Strong with Free SoftwareBy: Sean "Nz17" Robinson
Independent Music Online is an online music store. So why should anyone care? Because Ind-Music.com is a friend and deployer of Free software.
A Friend of FLOSS is a Friend of MineIndependent Music Online promotes various Free, Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects throughout its site, including Mozilla Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, and jlGui. The main way that it does this is through banner graphics spread throughout the various sections of the site. Yet not only does this music service "walk the walk," it also "talks the talk:" Independent Music Online itself is thoroughly powered by FLOSS. The Ind-Music.com servers run Mandrake Linux under Apache and PHP, and all of its music is in the popular, free Ogg Vorbis audio format.
All of the music available on Independent Music Online is in a Digital Rights Management-free format, 160 kb/s Ogg Vorbis. Ind-Music.com did this for many reasons: first, because it feels that DRM is an unfair limitation on digital music; second, Ogg Vorbis provides for a much better compression ratio and sound quality than similar formats, saving the site on bandwidth usage; and third, because Vorbis is an open, free format, allowing users to use the music as they see fit.
Indie is the Name of the GameInd-Music.com's primary focus is not on the big-name, RIAA-backed musicians, but in the lesser known, independent artists on the Internet. Indeed, the entire Web site seems to promote the artists even above the site itself. All of the artists have small biographies that link back to the artists' own Web sites, and the majority of the site's written content appears to be interviews with and coverage about these musicians and the events in which they participate.
While Independent Music Online offers a wide variety of genres, its selection is currently still somewhat limited as it is yet growing its artist base at this point in time. However it still has much to offer to a large number of music listeners: it already covers genres such as Adult Comtemporary, Heavy Metal, Funk, Blues, and Electronica.
Listen, Select, BuySo what's the music store itself like? The process of buying music is simple enough. One just goes to Ind-Music.com, and follows the link to its music store from the home page. From there, one can listen to all the music in the store before making a purchasing decision. The sample music is not mere clips as can be found at numerous other online music sources, but actual full versions of the songs available for purchase. These files are played using the Free Java music player, jlGui, which has an interface that should be familiar to anyone who has used WinAmp or XMMS.
For each audio piece, the user has the choice of buying the single piece by itself or adding it to an active shopping cart for later purchase. Either way, the user will eventually be able to purchase the music using the PayPal online payment system. For existing PayPal members, this means that they will not have to sign up at yet another site just to make a purchase.
It should be noted that not all of the music tracks in the IMOMS are for sale. Much of the available music is openly available for free download. This decision is made by the artists who make their work available on Ind-Music.com, and many take advantage of the opportunity.
Patrick Hefner, the Soul Behind Ind-Music.comIn order to get further insight into Independent Music Online and its internal operations, Nz17 contacted Patrick Hefner, owner and CEO of Ind-Music.com, for this exclusive interview.
NewsForge: First, we know what Independent Music Online is. Yet who is behind it, and how would you describe why it is?
Patrick Hefner: Well, Independent Music Online was originally a concept for a media corporation my wife and I came up with a few years back. Over time it has morphed and transfigured into what is now the Independent Music Online Music Store. Right now, the Music Store is owned and operated by me (Patrick Hefner) and my business partner, Michael Brown. In our roles for the music store I am the Founder/Visionary, and Michael is the Technical Guru that makes it happen.
We are here, because we are trying to make a way for Independent artists to get their music out, and not have to sell their souls to do it (or send them into bankruptcy). We are believers in Independent Music, and want to see it become a viable commodity and competition for the mainstream.
Nz17: The music you sell is encoded in the Ogg Vorbis format. Would you describe how this decision was made, and what benefits you've seen from using the format as opposed to something proprietary like Windows Media Audio or MP3?
Hefner: The decision was simple. With Michael and I both being Tech-Heads (and with me being a Music nerd), we knew that Ogg Vorbis was superior in quality to other formats, such as MP3 and WMA, but most importantly, Ogg Vorbis is something that is supported in Linux. You can find an MP3 rpm, or you can compile it from scratch if you want, but Ogg Vorbis is something that almost every media player, for Linux, supports. Besides, I won't go into the nightmare that it is, of trying to find a good WMA codec for Linux.
Some of the benefits that we have seen include:
- Smaller file sizes for our Music.
- Better sound quality for our listeners.
- Lots of resources in the Open Source community for it, that we can share with others.
Nz17: Ind-Music.com has made the decision not to encumber its music released with DRM. What is your stance on this technology and its application?
Hefner: We decided not to use DRM for two reasons.
- It takes away certain consumer rights that were granted in the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. That act gave consumers permission to record and make backup copies of their music, without paying fees to the music industry. Few people may be aware of this, but the Recording Industry actually gets a percentage of every CD-ROM, CD-RW and DVD player that hits the market. The federal gov't forced that law into effect a few years ago when the DMCA was passed. So don't believe all of the "oh we're losing money" garbage that they throw out in the media, and notice how much of the money actually gets back to the artists that they are "representing". The industry tried that same trick with radio back in the 1920's. They wanted every radio station shut down, because they were afraid that people wouldn't buy records, if they could listen to the songs for free. Looks like they were wrong on that one.
- We have no desire to use it. However, I will say that one of our beliefs is to give the artist as much freedom and right to their music as possible. If they want to encode their music with a DRM, then that is fine because it is their Intellectual Property, but we don't supply one.
Nz17: Your site seems to have a strong focus on supporting and fostering the independent artists of the music world. What went behind the decision-making process to go with this route?
Hefner: I feel that there is a tremendous need for it. When I was a teenager in the mid-1990's, I would have loved to have had a service like this for my band. Instead we had to put up our .wav files on a free site, like Angelfire or GeoCities (now Yahoo!). Mainly, I have felt the pain and struggle, that it is, to get my music out through the normal channels, and I wanted to provide an alternative to the mainstream way of distributing music. The answer was the Internet. It's a whole lot faster, cheaper, and gives you access to millions of people.
I also wanted to make a new way that music could be distributed through the internet. A way in which music, no matter how good or bad it may be, can be listened to and listeners can decide for themselves what they do and don't like. Even though I may hear a song and think it is horrible, that doesn't mean that someone else might not like it.
Nz17: According to the information section of your site, artists that partner with Ind-Music.com get a much larger percentage of the profits made from each sale, some as much as 50%, than in comparison with their brethren that go through the larger online music stores. Why is it that "Big Music" gives so little, while Ind-Music.com gives so much?
Hefner: The reason why we are able to give so much back to the artist is because we use OpenSource software. This enables us to have a reduced overhead for our costs. We have also cut out the middlemen as much as possible (i.e. managers, publishers, agents, etc...). Since the artist is the legal copyright holder for the music, this practice is the most sensible and fair approach to digital music distribution.
We have made it our mission to be different from the typical industry music store. When I was a Recording Industry major at Middle Tennessee State University, I had a lot of professors that actually worked in the industry. I learned a lot about how major labels work record deals, and how publishers work out deals with companies like Columbia House and BMG. Here's an example:
Hootie and the Blowfish released their album "Cracked Rear View" in 1994 to critical and commercial acclaim. Over 12 Million copies of the album were distributed. About 4 Million of them were given away by BMG and Columbia House. Hootie and the blowfish didn't get a single dime for the copies that were given away for free. The remaining 8 Million albums brought in a lot of money, but they didn't get anything until their advance was paid back to the label, then they have to pay their management, and publishers. When it's all said and done, they may have a few hundred thousand left over to live on and tour with, not to mention splitting the leftovers 4 ways, and still having to finance your videos.
To make a long story even longer, I was able to see a seminar with Ian MacKaye of Fugazi (who also heads up Dischord Records in D.C.). He spoke about how his label operates. They have no Contracts other than a handshake agreement. They split everything 50/50 with the artist. If the artist wants to pursue a major label deal, they will shop them, and not charge a development fee (because the band gets hit with that as it is deducted from their cash advance from the Major Label). I really agreed with these ideals, and wanted to implement them in my own business model. So that is what we have done. We have no contracts to lock artists in to us, they are free to leave at any time, right now we split sales with them 60/40, but the band's % increases as they sell more music. Then it caps at 50/50. The only rights to their music that we ask for, are the rights to sell them as digital downloads. If a band wants to sell their CD's through CD Baby, they can do that. We aren't going to tell a band that they can *ONLY* go through us. That isn't fair to them.
Nz17: Many of the artists on Ind-Music.com have some of their music available for free download by the public. How does that work, and how many artists make use of the option?
Hefner: We recently added that option a little over a month ago. We decided to do a free music category, because I was getting feedback from several bands stating that they wanted to make their music available for free. I felt that it was a great idea and implemented it immediately. Currently we have 5 artists that have their music available for free, but anyone in the store can add their music to it at any time. The artists control the price of their music, and can change it whenever they want (up to 4 Million dollars for one song). What some of our artists do, is place their Demo versions up for Free, and then replace them with their studio cuts, then they are done. It's a great way for a band to introduce themselves to listeners. I personally love the raw sound of a demo. I'm not a big ear candy person, in fact some of my bands music is up in the site, and they are all demos. That is the beauty of our music store. If a demo is all that you have, then put it up for sale, don't let it waste away on your shelf.
Nz17: On the site there are many tutorials and links to programs that are useful with the music downloaded from the IMOMS. Do you get many questions from the public about how to utilize the music it has purchased? Has using Ogg Vorbis introduced any difficulties in a Windows-dominated world?
Hefner: I have received a few questions about it, but generally most people are able to figure it out. I knew when we started getting Ogg into the Windows world was going to be tricky, because people use different media players. Some use WiMP (Windows Media Player) or RealPlayer, or iTunes, or Winamp. Luckily we have been able to find easy-to-install codecs for all of those programs (Winamp supports Ogg by default anyway). So it hasn't been as difficult for Windows as I thought it would be.
Nz17: Independent Music Online is relatively young in the online music scene. What has the reaction to it been thus far, and have you seen a proportionate breakdown of your audience in respect to operating system, or has it been lopsided in distribution?
Hefner: The actual music store has only been live for about 7 months now. But the site itself has been up for about 3 years. I started on it back in 2002, and worked and tinkered and it went through many changes, even was an online label at one point, before settling on the music store.
The reaction we have been met with has been very positive. Initially I received a lot of "that's a stupid idea", or "why would anyone want to do that when you can just go to iTunes" and the like, but that didn't last for very long. Mainly those comments came from fellow music nerds that didn't understand what I was doing in the first place.
Our users generally are either Windows based, or Linux based. Macintosh holds on to third, and we even have some Solaris users out there, but generally it is either Windows or Linux.
Nz17: The store portion of your site uses the online payment system, PayPal, for processing transactions. Why was it decided to go with this service instead of one of the many other online payment processors?
Hefner: Truthfully? Because Michael and I already had PayPal accounts.... hahaha. We also went with them from the standpoint of user share. I would think that more people have a PayPal account, than any of the others.
Nz17: The technical side of your service uses many FLOSS applications. Is this why the site has promotional banners for various FLOSS programs about it, or is there another reason altogether?
Hefner: Totally. We are trying to support these wonderful programs and all of the people who put so much effort into them. We make donations to Mozilla, OpenOffice, and Mambo fairly often. These people have brought us quality products, and we feel that it's the least we can do. Open Source is such a great ideal, and I feel that it will be the norm before too long.
Nz17: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP seem to be the driving technologies behind the site. How has this setup worked for your company?
Hefner: It has been absolutely flawless. Why in the world anyone would want to use anything else, is beyond me. In the 7 months that we have been up, I have only had to restart the servers twice, and those were because of power outages. We currently use Mandrake 10.1, PHP 4.3.9, MySQL 4.1, Apache 2.0.x, OpenOffice 1.1.4, OpenOffice 1.9.113 (2.0 Beta, I LOVE IT!!!), Firefox 1.0.x and Thunderbird 1.0.x
We are definitely an Open Source shop. Although we do use Windows XP/Mandrake 10.1 dual boot systems for Workstations.
Nz17: How would an independent music group go about selling its music in conjunction with Independent Music Online? Will Ind-Music.com only work with with unsigned artists?
Hefner: Originally that was our intention. We set out to only work with Independent Artists, however we recently have begun talks with Independent Labels as well. One of the things that we don't do, is charge money up front, to anyone. All we do is take a commission once a song is sold (similar to Half.com), and that goes for Labels, or artists alike. All you have to do is simply sign up at the music store. Considering some of the limitations that are currently in place, we will be adding a login section for Labels as well, since they generally have a much larger catalog than some artists.
Nz17: There have been plans to make a streaming radio station of sorts on Ind-Music.com. How has that been going?
Hefner: This has been an interesting area. We originally had our station up and running, but found it too taxing to run that, and the music store, and recruit artists and labels, and work out advertising, etc. But we most recently made a connection with
Cygnus Radio to work on an Indie Music show with us. We are really looking forward to it.
Nz17: What advice would you give to others considering starting their own online music service?
Hefner: The main piece of advice that I would give, would be patience. Have plenty of patience. Because if you don't you will get really disappointed, and very frustrated at the whole process. We are trying to create a new way of thinking, for something that is very mainstream (meaning Online Music). There are very few sites out there, that do what we are doing, and what we are planning to do. We have big plans in store for the Indie Music community, and the Internet Community in general, but it won't go anywhere if we don't have the support of the Artists, and Listeners.
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