Musicslu Pledges New Sales Channel for Artists

New music site musicslu aims to give artists another avenue to sell their ‘warez’. Through pledging, it allows artists to sell their music for a price they deem fair, while allowing customers to purchase for a price they deem fair. Afterwards, the music is released under a creative commons license.

There are already a number of websites out there looking to distribute creative commons music. Jamendo has thousands of albums, available via torrent at ISOhunt, and other specialist music sites like what and waffles have creative commons music available as well. There is very little effort made to monetise the music however. This is the aim of musicslu.com, to give artists a chance to recoup costs and by offering the music for what they consider to be a fair price. Once the price has been paid, the music is then released under a Creative Commons license

The idea that musicians should be able to earn from their work isn’t one that’s entirely an anathema, despite what commenter here may say. Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead have both had great success with their alternative funding models – Radiohead said their had a greater income from their In Rainbows release with their ‘pay what you want’ method that from all their albums released via the standard recording contract. Thus, then, musicslu and it’s pledging system.

The system is simple. The artist sets a target amount, and a length of time for the pledge to run. Fans can then pledge money towards the work (from $1 up), and if the target is reached before the time expires, it succeeds. At that point, the artists release the work to those that have paid, and then the artists get the money, less a small percentage which musicslu keeps to cover costs. The benefit is, that until the target is reached, no money is paid by the customers. If you later change your mind, you can cancel your pledge until midnight of the completion day.

Once the pledge has reached it’s goal, the money is paid by the pledgers, and the music released. It is then up to the artists to decide how to handle things. Currently there is the option that for upto two weeks the music is only available to those that have pledged, before being available for all under a Creative Commons license (SA-BY-NC). There are also plans for a straight donation system, but it is yet to be implemented.

With financial transactions, there is some element of trust needed. Musicslu uses amazon to handle the payments, and facebook to handle the logins, although you only need an email address to pledge. Samples are handled via the Yahoo music player.

At present there is only one album, a variety compilation entitled ‘We are Artists’, to show how the system works, but Andrew Moffat, the site’s founder, is hoping it will show what is possible with the system to other artists. The album has 16 tracks of various genres and a closing pledge date of November 27th, 2009.

For an artist looking for some income, and that wishes to release under a Creative Commons license it could be a good way to earn some money back first, and gauge people’s interest. The ability to get some income before releasing as a CC song will help artists, and allows them to gauge interest in their songs.

Will it take off, or will streaming dominate, or subscription services hog the market? Maybe straight bittorrent releases will reign supreme. Who can tell. All we can say is that the more options there are out there, the more control artists actually have. And really, isn’t that a good thing?