license of an entire album (various songs from his two albums) of DJ
Markitos' http://magnatune.com/artists/dj_markitos to a company making
(and selling) his music as exercise music. Markitos remixed his songs
to the client's spec of 138 BPM. The money is not huge (about $2 per
CD) but they pay up-front and the music gets more visibility, so I
feel it's exciting.
NetMusic http://www.netmusic.com/ is now selling most of our catalog
on-line. We signed an agreement with them in January, and everything
Magnatune has (as of the beginning of this month) is up. The owner of
the site, Glen, personally listened to most of our catalog and was so
excited by several of the bands that he's been featuring Magnatune
artists on the home page, giving us 50% of the featured artists on the
"tracks" section (currently, Brad Sucks, Rocket City Riot, and Cargo
Cult). Note that unlike Magnatune, NetMusic *does* sell single tracks.
We gave NetMusic a 50% margin when selling our music, which is higher
than average, but that's another reason he's pushing our music so
hard. Glen tells me sales are still quite modest, but picking up.
Last month, I mentioned an agreement with a German record company to
sell physical CDs of a few of our artists. NovaTune
http://www.novatune.de/ is now printing and selling CDs of Cargo Cult,
Emma's Mini, Tom Paul, William Brooks, and Bjorn Fogelberg. NovaTune
is similar in philosophy and business to Magnatune, letting musicians
keep their rights and paying them a very fair 4 Euros per CD sold
(which is also our deal with them), and only signing up music they
really like. The main difference is that NovaTune makes physical CDs
(and artwork) using a just-in-time printing system, selling the
physical CDs both online and through distributors and stores in
Germany. I watching NovaTune closely to see if their model might work
in the USA and the rest of Europe. A few more Magnatune artists are
currently in the pipeline to be sold via NovaTune, and should show up
next next month.
The average purchase price for Magnatune albums in April was $8.59,
still very healthy and above the recommended price of $8.00.
We sent about 60 custom CDs to movie and film producers this month, in
response to their request for music submissions (we get notified of
these requests for music from a lead service we pay, and put 3 songs
on each custom CDR that we think would work for the scene). So far,
nothing has come from any of these CDs sent (no acknowledgement of
receipt of any of them), which is disappointing, but we'll keep
plugging away at it. We paid for 6 months of this lead service (it's
not cheap), and we'll give it the full 6 months of honest attempt to
make it work.
The USA Magazine Business 2.0 did a large story on the Creative
Commons, heavily featuring Magnatune and our artist Cargo Cult
http://magnatune.com/info/press/
We've slowed down the rate of release of new artists on Magnatune, to
six to eight artists released every 2 weeks. We've done this because
sales have been flat the past 3 months and we don't want to split the
same monthly sales amount across more and more musicians, unless those
new musicians are truly amazingly wonderful. This also helps us keep
our reputation of having tremendously good music. Finally, this seems
to be a pace at which people who receive our newsletter can handle the
new artists. When we were adding artists faster, we noticed that new
albums didn't get much of a chance on the 'new' section of the home
page, and didn't get listed in the "customers who bought this also
bought" because they weren't featured long enough. We will probably
keep fiddling with this.