dot Music: A Domain Name Extension for the Music Industry

While attending MIDEM last week, I met Constantine Roussos, founder of the ".music" top level domain name initiative. Essentially, he's attempting to generate enough public support to successfully petition ICANN to add .music to the existing list of Generic Top Level Domain Name extensions, such as .com, .net, .org, etc. Constantine has already received over 1 million signatures supporting the .music extension, but it has not yet been approved, even though extensions like .biz, .jobs, .mobi, .museum, .name, .travel and others already exist.

While the majority of musicians, bands and music industry companies rely on .com and/or .net for their URLs, domain names for these extensions are scare, and I think the music industry would not only benefit from a specific extension, but would welcome it. I would definitely use .music to augment my current registrations (e.g. BandMetrics.music MusicScout.music). Would you?

Go here to sign the petition.

ArtistDish Releases Podcast #3

We recorded our latest episode of the ArtistDish last week, and it may just be our best show yet with a ton of great discussion surrounding Pandora and Muxtape. You can listen to it here. During the show, several questions were raised either directly or indirectly like:

• Who should determine royalty rates: music tech companies, major label artists, consumers, independent artists, RIAA, etc?
• Are royalty rates too high for online based radio services like Pandora and/or Muxtape that depend on advertising revenue to become profitable?
• Should royalty rates for online companies be comparable to terrestrial radio?
• Can online advertising support the costs associated with streaming audio?
• Since online advertising revenue from CPM and CPC has decreased overall, should this mandate reduced royalty rates so companies like Pandora and Muxtape can pay for their operations and become profitable?
• Are bands and musicians entitled to royalties from their music played online?
• Should companies like Muxtape be exempt from paying royalties as they figure out a viable business model with the labels? If so, how much, how long and how will bands be reimbursed?
• Since ad revenue has decreased, is a percentage of ad revenue model viable for both the artist and the online music provider?
• If companies like Pandora go under, will online radio service providers go underground and launch in foreign countries, or will there always be innovation and entrepreneurs creating new startups?
• Given the vast amount of music content that Pandora already has, as well as the large amount of music they're adding everyday, is Pandora's Music Genome Project successful in helping individuals discover independent music? For example, if there are 10,000 songs that fall under a particular Pandora station a user has created, what are the odds that your band's music will be played and heard while the listener happens to be listening? Would it be easier and more powerful for a social network to make the suggestion instead? Also, if certain songs continue to be favorited by Pandora listeners, does this not have an impact on Pandora's algorithm that automatically decides the songs a user should hear? If so, is it preventing a user from hearing songs he/she might actually enjoy?

As you can see, the topic covered in this podcast is complicated, but we believe it's solvable and we hope it facilitates discussion, as it's going to take a multifaceted solution. To voice your sentiments about streaming radio and digital music licensing, take these polls here.

Pandora, Muxtape and Royalties: tell us what you think

This past Wednesday, we had a great discussion on the ArtistDish about the recent news regarding Pandora and Muxtape (you'll be able to hear the entire podcast in a few days). It's definitely a complicated situation that's going to require time to sort out, coupled with creative solutions and compromises from both sides to solve, as similar situations are on the horizon, and no one has a monopoly on the solution.

So, I wanted to poll my readers to see what you all think about the issues and how to solve them. As a former musician that tried to make a living in a band, I'm definitely pro-artist, and an advocate for musicians and bands trying to earn money from their digital music, so I applaud Pandora for paying royalties to date. Not to mention, I'm a huge fan of Pandora, and I use their service everyday. I also really enjoyed using Muxtape.

But, I'm also a technologist developing a music tech company that I hope will be cash flow positive by the end of 2009. With that said, it seems like a potential conflict of interest could arise if music tech companies try to determine what royalties should be for artists (e.g. COGS as it relates to the cost of song plays relative to earnings from advertising). However, royalty decisions should also not be left for the RIAA, Congress and/or major labels/artists to determine on their own either.  Rather, I submit that the long tail of the music industry (i.e. independent musicians and bands) needs to come together and join the conversation as well - you can begin now: