http://www.gimmesound.com/

“Our Concept
It’s real simple. Artists upload their music. Fans download it for free. We pay artists for every download out of ad revenue, with a percentage going to a cause of your choice.”

the only complaint i have, which isn’t really much of a complaint since i’m getting free tunes, is that each song has to be downloaded individually.
but everything is absolutely free and the only emails i get from them are newsletters once month, if not less, promoting new bands.

Of course the bands are usually doing it because they’re friends with the label owner or they just have a strong belief in wanting the label (and by extension, their band) to succeed, rather than any formal employer/employee relationship.

The music industry is not rocket science. You just have to ask.

Plus it’s not as though existing labels that have a few bands on 360 deals will want to do the same for their whole roster. I’m just thinking that if a band got a steady paycheck from these deals it might be worth it to them.

The 360 deal definitely is pretty retarded unless all you care about is being famous. The more money a label can make off you, than the more they’ll put into promoting you. This doesn’t necessarily equate to any financial gain for the artist, but it does give them a lot more exposure. If that’s all you care about than go ahead and take that 360 deal and hope that they throw in some vaseline. Which they probably won’t, but at least you can write it off on your taxes.

It’s because 99% of bands can only go so far independently and NEED a record label to help them get to where they want to be with their music “career”.

-I’m sure it is, with that attitude!

” The amount of energy it takes to successfully market a band is no simple operation.”

-no shit, if it were easy then every shit band you knew would be as big as lamb of god!

“The concept of playing weekend warrior regional gigs amounts to nothing.”

-completely untrue. if you are going out and playing new places, you will get new fans. this rule is of course void if your band is not good.

“The idea of being independent is enticing. Keeping 100% of the profit is ofcourse ideal, but 100% of negative 10,000+ dollars will destroy anyone.

It’s very possible for wealthy people to be independent and bypass the “evil” record labels. Every media outlet, agent, and producer can be bought, but most people (especially metal musicians) will never have that type of disposable income. This is where record labels are worth their weight in gold.”

-everyone in your band bought guitars, amps, drums etc right? I mean everyone has spent some money just to be able to plug in and rock. if you have four members in a band, splitting up costs like that gets a lot easier.

On its face it seems this could be a viable model for a label. Hire bands as employees and when they aren’t busy with touring or recording they could work in the office helping promote the other bands on the label or in the warehouse shipping merch. Hell, what about an employee owned and operated label with that type of model? Of course it would never work what with all the ego’s getting in the way but it’s a nice little pipe dream.

… yeah it is true if you are the kind of guy who cannot spot the difference between a 2kbps and a 320kbps !

Anyway …

Anyway, yes to what D Boon said.

= Justin

This is the stupidest crap I have ever read in my entire life !

As Sascha said, it’s tantamount to abuse for an artist. It’s great for labels, yeah, that’s why they’re doing it.

It’s just kind of hard to believe that labels are so short-sighted and stuck in their ways that their reaction to the way the music industry is changing is to come up with something that screws people even more.

Hopefully the only good thing about this deal is that it will hasten the already inevitable demise of these fuckheads. Good Riddance.