After years of mostly avoiding interviews, Prince was all over the magazine racks this past spring. When someone as notoriously press shy as Prince suddenly becomes more ubiquitous than gas at a chili cook-off, it usually means he has something to promote. In Prince's case, it's a Web site — the NPG Music Club (www.npgmusicclub.com).
So Prince has a Web site. Big deal. My cousin's best friend's six-year-old daughter's elementary school music class has a Web site. Just about everyone who sings, plays, or grunts into a microphone has his or her own Web site. These days, being a musician and having a Web site are practically interchangeable.
True enough, but just having a site is not the same as having a good site. Prince's site is not only good but also innovative. Prince is doing something that few other major artists have had the guts to do: he's distributing almost all of his latest music online. The wave of the future is here — for Prince, at least. What about the rest of us?
OH, 2 B PRINCE 4 A DAY
He changed his name to an indecipherable squiggle just to get out of a record deal. Now that he's got it back, he's gonna stick it 2 The Man.
Perhaps more than any other major pop artist, Prince has embraced the new era of online distribution. While he still plans on releasing CDs from time to time, his NPG (New Power Generation) Music Club is now the primary outlet for his music. NPG promises fans access to “an xclusive array of xperiences from PRINCE & The New Power Generation, including new unreleased trax, live events, multimedia features, special merchandise items, concert deals, and much more.”
Joining the club at the basic level costs $7.77 a month. Members are entitled to download a minimum of three new songs and an hour-long “ahdio” program every month. A premium membership goes for $100 per year; it includes all the basic benefits as well as “BONUS trax … Concert Pre-sale opport2nities, A Members-only Retail Section, and Members-only event oppor2nities.” (Can U say Pre10shus? Hey, we kid 'cuz we love … )
BUT WHAT ABOUT U?
The fact that a musician of Prince's stature has decided to embrace online distribution so completely further convinces me that the method can eventually work for all of us. Like a lot of unsigned indies, Prince believes that eliminating the middleman is in his — and his fans' — best interest. The difference between him and us is: we do it because we must, but Prince does it because he can. And when a guy with his track record takes such a drastic step, it tells you something.
Of course, Prince is lucky; he has the resources to do it on a grand scale. He's popular enough to make it work. What about those of us who are not so famous? How can we get on board the digitally encoded gravy train? It's easy to post MP3s on your site, but making money with them is another matter.
There is a way. It's not as cool or elaborate as Prince's system, and it doesn't exactly eliminate the middleman. It's easy, though, and it has paid off in a big way for some artists. Be warned, however: it involves getting in bed with an Internet monolith. I'm talking, of course, about MP3.com.
As far as I know, nobody has yet come up with a practical method of allowing a modestly funded individual to sell MP3s directly from a personal Web site the way one might sell a CD or other tangible merchandise. (Liquid Audio's proprietary system used to make something of the kind possible, but you needed its Liquifier Pro software — which it no longer sells to individual artists.) Other, smaller sites provide the same services, but MP3.com is far and away the biggest and best known. It's a brand name. Unlike other similar Web sites now disappearing beneath the waves, MP3.com can be expected to stick around awhile. All things considered, if you're an indie musician with a yen to make some cash from your digital recordings, MP3.com looks like your best bet.
Y IS THERE ALWAYS A CATCH?
MP3.com may be a monolith, but at least it'll put out your music with virtually no questions asked — unlike those other, more venerable monoliths, the traditional record labels. MP3.com has been around longer than most if not all of the digital delivery sites. For a long time it was hailed almost without exception as one of the Net's great champions of the little guy. Indies could get their own Web page on the site, upload their music, and collect royalties. It required no cash outlay from the artist. MP3.com even ran its own CD label — a kind of disc-on-demand service that manufactured records and didn't charge artists a dime — and split the take 50-50.
Unfortunately (for us), MP3.com has come to the conclusion that if it ever wants to turn an obscene corporate profit, it has to quit giving things away (apparently those ugly banner ads don't bring in enough to pay its CEO his multizillion-dollar salary). Therefore, it's come up with what it calls the Premium Artist Service, which basically does everything the site used to do for free (with a few added perks), only now it costs $19.99 per month. Sure, you can still upload your songs and get a page and all that for nada, but if you want to share in the royalties — what MP3.com calls Payback for Playback (P4P) — you have to shell out the bucks.
That revolting development has caused no end of complaints among indie artists on MP3.com, for whom 20 bucks a month is a significant chunk of change. Both sides want to make money, but MP3.com has the upper hand. Naturally I sympathize with the musicians. I must say, however, that when I look at the site and see that an artist named Bassic made more than $4,000 in August through MP3.com, $20 a month doesn't seem like much. Obviously, the potential to make money is there, but (as in the offline music world) your success or lack of it depends to a major extent on how good a self-promoter you are.
HOW IT'S DONE
Joining MP3.com is simple, if a bit tedious. Bring up the home page and scroll to the bottom. Under the subhead Artist Community, click on New Artist Sign-Up. That brings up a page that explains the site's features. Click on the Sign-Up Now icon; up comes a page that tells you what you need in order to get started (an MP3 file, for starters, and a band photo if you have one). If you're totally new to MP3.com — that is, if you've never even downloaded a song from the site — you're asked to provide some basic info before you can join as an artist.
At this point, you're taken to a Master Administration page; from there, follow the directions and read the fine print. You'll be asked to load your pictures and sound files; that takes awhile, so don't be in a hurry. After your MP3 is uploaded, it's reviewed by people at MP3.com; in a day or two, your files are posted.
Royalties are paid from a “monthly pot” (the funding of which is not made clear on the site); each participating artist's payment is calculated according to a complex formula that takes into account how many people listen to your tunes. To be eligible for the payments, you need your MP3 to receive a daily minimum of three listens by unique users. The royalties are calculated daily and paid quarterly.
TAKING THE PLUNGE
I can't yet say yea or nay about MP3.com, because I haven't used it. As I browsed through a few of its artist pages, however, it became apparent that most people on the site make little money (MP3.com lists every artist's total earnings on his or her page). Artists as successful as Bassic are the exception. Nevertheless, the concept seems sound. The trick is drawing visitors to your artist page.
In fact, my curiosity has been piqued to the extent that I've decided to give it a try. Every month dozens if not hundreds of people download MP3s from my personal site, free of charge. Why not put a few on an MP3.com artist page and see what happens? The worst that could happen is that no one downloads anything and I'm out $20 a month. Who knows? Maybe I'll strike it rich. If I make back just my subscription fee, I'll be happy.
Who am I kidding? I want to be rich.
IT'S A MYSTERY
Despite the hype (and Prince's manifest confidence), nobody really knows for sure whether online music delivery will ever really replace the physical realm. Maybe it will; maybe something else will come along. I'll let you know if I make any money on MP3.com. (If my next column includes a picture of me sipping a margarita, using a rolled-up Honus Wagner baseball card as a straw, the answer is yes.)
Also keep an eye on NPG Music Club. If in a year or two Prince has dumped it for a fat multialbum deal with a major label, it might be proof that the future is further off than I'd like to believe. But I'm pretty sure that won't happen.
