(I emailed a couple friends today about this, but since email is dead*…)

RCRD LBL (stands for Record Label) is a new blog / record label that promotes artists and allows readers to download individual non-DRM tracks from artists from the somewhat-affiliated Downtown Records label. I first read about it in today’s WSJ (free content).

The most interesting part is how they are creating a new business model for monetizing music: signing deals with artists to offer tracks (not albums) for downloading, selling advertising on the site, and sharing a portion of the revenue with the artists. This sets them in stark contrast to most music blogs, where advertising is a difficult proposition since it is often questionable whether the tracks available for downloading are really legit.

The formula: blog + relationship with record label + bands contributing individual songs = distribution channel X paid advertising on the site = actual revenue from music X % revenue shared with bands = revenue for bands from music.

I’m staying out of the Radiohead / In Rainbows pricing / traffic debate at the moment **, but the dominant lessons I’ve taken so far are:

1) People expect music to be free, and the technology exists to distribute music for free, therefore music can be free, and trying to fight that is pointless
2) In today’s society, people are Creators as well as Consumers, and therefore we understand that we should compensate Creators for their efforts: just provide us a clear way to pay for the value we receive in “consuming” music
3) Instead of focusing on selling the product, sell the experience.

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* Email is hardly dead. The design and the customer experience with most email providers is behind the times, but email integrated into a consolidated communication platform has enormous potential. I’ll save this thought for another day.
** Almost. I know there’s a debate over how many people bought the album and how much they paid. Is that what is important? The people who didn’t pay weren’t going to pay for it anyway. The standard calculations of cannibalized sales are meaningless. It’s a brilliant move for any band. Isn’t all PR is good PR?

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Notes:
1) Other posts on this general topic:
Everyone is a Photographer
Photographers are like Musicians

2) Also, I don’t really pay that much attention to emerging music business models. Check out Mike on Garagespin for news and thoughts on independent music recording and promotion and developments in music. And tell him to finish his album.