What do you all think of this new concept? MP3 files that allow 3 plays, and then need to be unlocked for $ via paypal & a free plug-in...

weedshare

"When you use Weed's software to buy a Weed file and then share the file with someone else who buys it, you'll earn a payment based on the sale price.

"20% of the sale price goes to you, 10% of the price goes to the person who shared the file with you, and 5% goes to the person who shared the file with that person.

"50% of every sale always goes to the artist or publisher who owns the song. The remaining 15% goes to Weed."

The author determines how much to charge for each song. The files have a rights management deal built-in to them, so as they get redistributed their history stays with them - at least the history of the last three purchases.

They're trying to keep people from feeling a need to hack the rights protection by rewarding the efforts of those who purchase & redistribute the files.

Even though Gruntruck and Skin Yard dominate the current top ten downloads (that's grassroots marketing for you), I'm into this idea.

What happens if you hook up a "direct out" from you computer into another computer interface and record one of your free listens to some recording software?

Chris Hardings wrote:What happens if you hook up a "direct out" from you computer into another computer interface and record one of your free listens to some recording software?

Then you get the song for free - but you don't get your cut when the song's redistributed. They're not trying to make bomb-proof copy protection; they're trying to make it appealing to listeners to keep the copy protection in place.

For the world of mp3 distribution, it's got a nice grassroots appeal: everyone who buys a song they like becomes a paid distributor, & 50% always goes to the artist.

spoot wrote:"20% of the sale price goes to you, 10% of the price goes to the person who shared the file with you, and 5% goes to the person who shared the file with that person.

"50% of every sale always goes to the artist or publisher who owns the song. The remaining 15% goes to Weed."

I don't understand the economics of this thing. The percentages above cover 100% of the purchase price - I get that. But doesn't each distributor reset the percentages? Weedshare encourages people to put up their own distribution sites, so:

Artist "royalties" = 50%
Weed's cut = 15%
Original download = 20%
Next file-share = 10%
One after that = 5%

but the next file-sharer is encouraged to offer the file to download, so then moves up the chain to become the recipient of the 20% slice from whoever gets it from them. Is the point to be whoever is after the third downloader has to pony up for the full price and then it trickles down to the previous sharers?

Please explain.

Everyone who purchases the song pays the full price.... are you asking what happens to the "next" and "one after" 15% when only the original download has occurred? That I do not know.

People who set up distribution sites are in the same category though - they still probably got the file from somewhere else, so when someone buys from them they'll get 20%, the person they got it from gets 10%, etc. I suppose if the artist is distributing their own weed files, they'll get 70% when someone buys directly from them.

This is an interesing setup. It's almost like a musical pyramid scheme where the "artist" always gets their cut.

I would not pay any amount of money to download any compressed format (other than, perhaps, one that does not decimate the orignal source). At $.99 per song - that ends up being about the same cost as a CD, typically. So I'm supposed to shell out the same amount of money for a format that sounds significantly (put lightly) worse than CD; where the chain of manufacture, distribution, and retailler have been removed from the process (though, understandibly in this instance, the "artist" would receive a larger "cut").

The only way I would buy into fee based music downloads is if I could at least download the same 16/44.1 PCM format that would end up on a CD (though 24/96 would be even more attractive). This would require the service provider and the consumer's ISP to provide enough bandwidth to make this an attractive option. Ideally, if artists and record companies went about this the right way, they would digitize their entire past and present catalog and offer it in the aformentioned PCM formats, and then setup an OC12 or larger 'pipe' to the internet to allow effiecient downloads. Then I might be willing to pay about a buck a song.

MP3s sound like such shit, even on crappy little computer speakers, that I could barely stand it when I was getting the stuff for free, let alone the idea of paying for it. I really don't see this format as more than a glorified Realaudio format for sampling snippets of things one might be interested in purchasing through normal retail channels.

iTunes has an option of buying an entire album for $15 or something like that. So people who like to shop from their computer can buy the albums they like by doing nothing more than clicking a few times. I won't do it, but guaranteed, lots of people are already in the process. A sizable amount of the music-buying public hears no discernable difference between .wav files and a CD. I think we can all agree that the real issue is how files will be controlled in the future.

I still don't fully understand this Weedshare thing, though. If I buy a file from Weed for, say, $1.00: I pay $1.00, Weed gets $0.15, the artist gets $0.50 and then what? That's only $0.65 accounted for. This is assuming the artist put the file on Weed's website directly.

Okay, let's say I get a Weed file from one of my buddies. Again, I pay $1.00. Weed gets $0.15, the artist gets $0.50, my buddy gets $0.10 and again: what then? That's only $0.75 of my dollar accounted for. Is my math that bad that I can't figure this out?

I still don't fully understand this Weedshare thing, though. If I buy a file from Weed for, say, $1.00: I pay $1.00, Weed gets $0.15, the artist gets $0.50 and then what? That's only $0.65 accounted for. This is assuming the artist put the file on Weed's website directly.

I think their assumption is that these things will be getting distributed and redistributed over and over again. Weed doesn't do their own distribution, so that initial $.20 goes to the first distributor, whoever that is (it's never Weed). That leaves $.15 unaccounted for on the first transfer, $.5 unaccounted for on the second. I dunno where this goes. To charity I suppose.