That’s why any effective business model is independent of “goodwill.” By all means, put a “donate” button on your website, but don’t consider that your primary source of revenue.

The reason you, or anybody else, pays is because that is the only way to get the new content. As I often say in these discussions, it’s silly to publicly release something and then expect to receive money for it after the fact. Once released, the benefit of recorded music is that it increases exposure and serves as advertising, driving sales of other actually scarce things. If you want to be paid for making more, you need to get the money for that work up front.

I think many people would be surprised at how little it actually costs to record quality music, and how many fans, fansites, or companies would willingly contribute to its creation.

That’s an interesting idea, but I wonder if it wouldn’t slam into the classic social psychology problem of diffusion of responsibility that plagues both communism and capitalism in different ways. In other words, if nobody has any more responsibility to donate than anyone else, and nobody gets any more benefit from donating than anyone else, why should I [generic I] pay, and not let somebody else pay, instead?

My variation lets an artist release the “same” music (really, similar music) multiple times by letting different groups get unique remixes. Or acoustic sessions or promos or alternate takes or whatever. After someone (fans, site, etc) had paid enough to have the music released, it would be available to everyone on CC or similar.

If you’re going to do an upfront payment idea like bjoern describes, set the price you want, and then let it go. You got the money for doing the work, and everybody else gets the music they commissioned released into the shared culture, as it should be. The key is that ANY use, regardless of what you label it, reflects favorably on the artist and drives up demand for new works. By allowing the music to be used, everybody benefits.

If you cannot sell your music piece by piece, then sell it only once. But then to the whole market. The idea is to satisfy the artist’s (note, not some large corporation’s) financial interest right at the products digital release and give up control afterwards.

How? Like this: Say you just completed the recordings of your new album. It hast not yet been published, though. You offer the world the following:

“World! This is my new album. For $10,000 I will release it under Creative Commons* license by-nc. That means everyone will be free to legally copy and share the album as long as it is for non-commercial purpose. If you want to make money with my recordings, please contact me and we sort out a deal. Everyone of you if free to pay whatever s/he wants. But remember, the album will only be released if we reach this target together. We’ll be collecting for the next three weeks.”
* if you want to learn more on CC, check: creativecommons.org

This is a totally fair approach, engages fans and enables artists to make some money from their unique role as gatekeepers. There are a couple of reasons for people to actually pay: They can legally share afterwards, they can get it for maybe $2 if enough people join in, the love the music, they love net-neutrality, etc.

What I love about this solution is that (1) it does not require a change in copyrights law – a major legal act; (2) it leaves all power to the most important parties involved – artists and fans; (3) it does not require a central organization.

I brought this up in an earlier threat (http://a2f2a.com/2009/10/27/louie-louies-jack-ely-joins-a2f2a/#comment-263) but it did not really get picked up. Hope to get some responses here.

why not try licensing to the file sharing sites themselves?

For the same reasons this idea stinks as an ISP tax or media levy. People who keep proposing this endlessly in one form of the other just don’t seem to get that any “compromise” which keeps the RIAA fat in perpetuity is not going to be accepted by the p2p community. I think one of the things we are trying to work out with Billy is how to get the artist money without paying the RIAA leeches. While there is debate as to just what those rights should be, I think both sides can at least reach a consensus that the rights holder should be the artists, NOT third parties like RIAA members. I think PPUK has some pretty good ideas, pretty much in sync with my thoughts on this matter.

Almost no one in the net community wants their IP logs turned over to some “collection agency”.

As mentioned before, leaves the door wide open for every copyright holder group on the planet to come rushing in demanding a piece of the pie. I want to get RID of those leeches, not feed them.

The biggest issue is that by collecting a flat fee, you are trying to set up a situation where creators are continually rewarded for past work or creating “hits” instead of encouraging artists and fans to work together in win-win situations. The only way to move forward is to give up the idea that filesharing can be somehow limited, monetized, or tracked. Simply accept it as the baseline situation that it is, and design business models to compete in this climate.

The rest of the issues are already addressed by the previous two commenters. Enacting or supporting a system like this is inviting in all of the invasive, controlling technologies we decry in the hopes that “this company will be nice.”

The only people with anything to lose by continuing to cling to these ideas are the artists, who are forsaking powerful revenue-generating opportunities to defend business models that became unworkable a decade ago.