Music fans can name their price for downloads on a new Nashville-based web site.
WPLN’s Daniel Potter reports on NoiseTrade, a new venture that aims to give musicians a bigger slice of the pie, even as fans pay less.
NoiseTrade lets artists share their albums online, but it’s the customer who decides what to pay, even as low as a dollar. Or instead they can download the album for free, by providing their zip code and recommending the album to three of their friends by e-mail.
NoiseTrade is the brainchild of Derek Webb, who shares his music on the site, and works from a laptop in a downtown coffee house. He says so far, fans who pay to download from NoiseTrade usually go well beyond the minimum.
“The average money that people will donate for a record on NoiseTrade, if they choose to give money, is around five bucks. Now people could take this stuff for free, or they could pay as little as a dollar, but they choose to drag that slider up, and get it up to five bucks.”
Webb says that translates to more money for the artists because they net about 90 percent of the sale. Even when fans download the album for free, they’re giving artists valuable information. Those e-mail addresses and zip codes help bands market directly to their fans while knowing where to best book their next show.
Webb says the site saw more than 30 thousand downloads in its first month, with over 60 artists on board, including the pop group Sixpence None the Richer.
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Webb says NoiseTrade embraces technology that many record labels have shunned. Those companies have been reluctant to sell music online, and some have sued individuals for illegally downloading music. But Webb says online sharing is inevitable, and the industry makes a mistake by trying to litigate against it.
“Why not you – the artist, the copyright owner – at a moment when piracy, you know, and all these issues are so big, are huge headlines – make a statement and say, ‘I’m going to give this record to my fans for free. I’m going to take the FBI out of the equation, and I’m going to do it in a way that I can benefit.’”
You can visit the NoiseTrade site here.
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