QuidMusic
Did you know that your favourite musician is thinking of a career change because they can't make enough money through royalties on sale of their recordings?
Coming to the rescue is QuidMusic! We are introducing the novel concept of paying for the release of music, rather than individual copies. Because you are interested in your favourite musician creating more music, you say “Here's £1 that I'll leave on the table for you. You can take it when you next release something”.
QuidMusic lets you – the fans – pledge £1 each in exchange for a copy of the musician's next release.
The musician can take it or leave it. But, if enough fans like you do this, then the £1s will add up to a decent amount which your chosen musician may gladly accept in exchange for their next release – whether £10 from ten fans or £10,000 from ten thousand fans.
The musician is only going to be convinced to do this deal if they know the money is real and available immediately. To make this happen QuidMusic enables fans to pay some money up front (refunded in full should you ever decide to leave). This is so that the musician can be paid in full the moment they release something. They won't want to hang around waiting for umpteen hundred fans to get round to paying them in their own good time!
Immediate payment is one of QuidMusic's key features that makes it so attractive to musicians.
To avoid the large surcharges that make small payments uneconomic, we ask you to open your account with QuidMusic with a minimum balance of £10. This means you can collect ten releases before you'll need to top up your account again. You can pledge £1 to as many musicians as you want. As long as you have at least £1 left in your account, your pledges are good no matter how many you have.
Of course, if you don't use up all of the funds you've added to your account (spent on releases by musicians you've pledged to), and you decide to close your account, we will refund your unspent money in full (with no surcharges or handling fees – we pay those on your behalf).
So what do you get if a musician decides to take the £1 on offer from each of their fans? Every fan who's paid their pledge is able to access a copy of the digital master (usually far better than CD quality). As this is likely to be a large file, for the convenience of people not on broadband, compact 320kbps MP3 versions will also be made available.
When the musician tells QuidMusic that they wish to make a new release, each user who currently has an active pledge is then obliged to pay that pledge. They also receive an e-mail telling them this has happened.
Fans who've paid the pledge are provided with details of how to download the release.
The musician may take advantage of economic file distribution mechanisms such as BitTorrent, and popular compression tools such as WinZIP.
Remember, you're not buying a packaged good. You're providing funding of £1 to encourage the musician to release a new musical work. The bonus is: you'll also get a copy of the digital master.
If you know that musician's music already, you've some confidence that you'll like their next release. Or perhaps you listened to a preview on their website and liked what you heard. Either way, the important thing is that you're providing a real financial incentive for that musician to produce more great music for you.
It stands to reason that the musician is going to be keen to increase the number of fans pledging for the next release, so they're going to try to avoid releasing music that will leave their fans unimpressed, and least likely still risk releasing substandard work that may give them poor reviews.
In any case, all their fans' pledges add up to a measure of confidence in the quality of that musician's work. The more fans a musician has on QuidMusic the more confidence you can have in joining them in making a pledge.