IBC on Last.fm?

[Major Zed]

What would you think of establishing an IBC artist page on Last.fm? As you can see here (and also here, the umlaut being a bit of a problem) it has already been scrobbled almost 2700 times.

Last.fm is unique in that track play stats can appear without the artists' knowledge or cooperation. But it's fairly easy to upload an album and make it available for "radio" play, web-site one-off play, or download. I'd be willing to put the Last Days album into shape (sonic and metadata consistency) and upload it. Suggest making it freely available for download, with no royalties.

First, though, we need to make sure no one appearing on the album is a member of a "collection society" (oops, Jake? Casey?) otherwise it gets a little more complicated (see section 5 of the terms and conditions).

Thoughts? I'm posting it here instead of LJ because the people here are, ipso facto, more active. But it would probably be a good idea to post in LJ next.

[talysman]

What they mean is: are you using ASCAP, BMI, or the like, and do you want us to send royalties to them for you? Both Needs More Wanger and Last Days of the Crazy People's Supermarket were released without intention of collecting money from ordinary people. Even assuming Jake or Casey have since signed with a collection society, I'm pretty sure they didn't say "oh, by the way, you should collect royalties for airplay of 'The Robot Song'."

We had very simple licensing agreements in those days. The "You Can Has Music" license.

[Major Zed]

OK, (1) IBC itself is not a member of Soundexchange and (2) since the artists who developed the individual tracks licensed them with the equivalent of CC share&share alike it would appear that even if they are members of Soundexchange, they are not entitled to royalties and (3) since individual artists are not going to be identified as the artist (IBC will be identified as the artist) then Last.fm's algorithms for identifying and allocating royalties to those artists will not pick them up. So we're in the clear as long as none of the artists objects to this. If they do, I guess we just pull the track.

How about the broader question, is this a good idea?

[Doctroid]

I think it's fine, though in just a few hours of use I'm getting the impression last.fm is a good concept implemented really badly.

[talysman]

From the way you describe Last.fm, it sounds like a good idea. I have no personal experience with it, myself, because I mainly thought of Last.fm as being one of those "what I'm listening to" sites, which hadn't interested me. I hadn't thought of the word of mouth marketing feature.

[Wiblur the Once]

Have you guys looked into Garageband.com or Jamendo.com? they both do pretty much what you have mentioned.

Garageband was co-formed by one of the guys from Talking Heads and is a little more commercial music oriented, but has been offering some CC licensed stuff lately.

Jamendo is a french site (although they have a lot of stuff in english), they are exclusively CC and allow people to help support the artists with donations (although I don't know how many people actually make use of that feature).

Both are well set up for getting exposure for the bands that have music on their sites.

[Major Zed]

There are lots of places you can make your tracks available for download. Last.fm is unique (? as far as I know) in that it keeps track of what members are playing regardless of whether the artist wants to put recordings on the site or not. So, e.g., there are 1.5 million listeners who have played Beatles tracks 129 million times, but no tracks available for radio play, preview, on-demand, or download. But following "similar artists" will get you to some artists who do make their music more available. Last.fm has (well, sort of "has") both the "body" and the "tail" of the content distribution whereas all the other sites I'm familiar with have one but not the other. Some are barely more than just hobbyists listening to each other. This at least puts you in the same space with the big guys.

[Major Zed]

[cross-posted to Interrocartel LJ]
Kibonia Records on Last.fm is almost pleased to almost announce The Last Days of the Crazy People's Supermarket.

"Almost" because we aren't quite there yet.

First off, 13 out of the 18 tracks are not ready for prime time! "Ballad of the Eire Canal (NES)", "Editors at War", and "Rewind (ROKK!)" are at a bit rate too low for last.fm's requirements (and the last two are mono, to boot) and "Green Meat Sandwich" and "Peroxide Piranha (unclean version)" have significant DC bias problems. So I'm going to have to remaster them. If the owners of the originals have any higher-quality renderings, please consider making them available! Another 7 tracks are at a significantly lower loudness level than the best.

That leaves the 5 that I uploaded... or did I? Seems last.fm is a bit confused about that. It recognizes the identity of the 5 new tracks, but claims that I never actually uploaded them, two apparently successful attempts notwithstanding.

But not to worry; I have Ticket#2008102210000102. Maybe by the time I've remastered everything (why not do those last 5 while I'm at it?) this will all get sorted out.

[Major Zed]

Update - looks like it's all there now! Back to work on the Tribute Album....

[Major Zed]

The only thing that really bugs me about last.fm is how anal they are about lyrics. If you can hear the lyrics in the song being sung, why is it such a big deal to post the lyrics in text form? See this forum post.