20110304 Selling Tunes the 21st-century Way (2)

Selling Tunes the 21st-century Way

Musical fair trade
"As a musician, I make and record all the music, drives of miles to do concerts, eat ramen and sleep on floors. And here these companies were charging up to 15 percent of my sales in perpetuity, just for sending a file from one server to another," Price said. "It really upset me that people were getting ripped off like that."

So he set up a website that charged artists a flat fee to distribute their songs. That meant Jay-Z paid the same amount to post his music on iTunes as someone recording in their suburban garage. When TuneCore launched in January 2006 it disrupted a tradition of taking percentages of sales, which can mean thousands of dollars for a song by a major artist.

While TuneCore also doesn't front money or market bands in the way a label would, its service is part of burgeoning digital toolset that allows artist to be more self sufficient.

A lifeline for indie artists
TuneCore isn't the only outfit that distributes digital music for artists. Companies such as CD Baby, Ioda and Orchard also sell distribution services for do-it-yourself musicians. But TuneCore is perhaps the most well-known in the pack.

Its success isn't just about doing business with [established musicians]. It's also about people like Dave Days, a 19-year-old pop musicians who isn't represented by any labels.

Days, who markets his musics on YouTube, has sold more than 250,000 singles on iTunes alone, using TuneCore. While iTunes takes a 30 percent cut of every song sold, TuneCore collect only its flat annual fee -- $9.00 a song, $19,99 album -- no matter how many times the music is sold and for as many online stores as artists select. TuneCore collect the revenue from iTunes and elsewhere on behalf of musicians, allowing artists to withdraw the money whenever they want for no additional fee.



ramen n. 拉麵

flat fee 固定費用
=> a pricing plan that charges a fixed amount for a service, regardless of usage

perpetuity n. 永遠/永存/不滅
in perpetuity
=> going on forever

rip (someone) off 敲竹槓/剝削
=> to cheat someone by charging too much money


indie
=> short way of saying "independent"

front v. 預付錢/付訂金
=> to pay someone an amount of money before they start a job

outfit
=> group
=> an organization, company or team

burgeoning adj. 增長迅速的/發展很快的
=> developing quickly