BitTorrent + Donations = Viva la revolution?

March 31, 2006 3:31 PM

I have a relatively bold, and quite possibly extremely idiotic, idea for a website.

What if there was a place online where you could go and *easily* donate money to musicians? Think about it, you illegally BitTorrent the latest "Death Cab for Cutie" album. You think it kicks ass and decide that you would like to reward the band by giving them $5. The website, which would be non-profit, would simply facilitate your donation (via PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, etc.). The long term goal would be to promote an entirely new way to sell music: the artist records songs, puts them up on the Internet for free, and then waits for donations. The better the music, the more donations (theoretically). The record label would be bypassed completely. The band would get 100% of the donations. Viva la revolution.

Does this idea hold water? Feel free to sound off if this has already been thought of, or if it just plain sucks (quite possible indeed). If anyone thinks this is seriously worth considering, I'd love advice on where to go from here.

posted by JPowers to media & arts (29 comments total)

Well, you'll have overhead costs to pay, so you'd either need donated servers and bandwidth, or you'd have to take a percentage. And it would likely take quite some time to catch on.

But it seems like a good idea to me... I've often wanted to send a few bucks to particular artists, and I'd love to be able to bypass the RIAA.

One of the harder parts might be the singer's contracts... the contracts they sign are so draconian that it's possible this kind of web site wouldn't be possible. You'd probably need to review a number of them.

Of course, signing up the artists could be difficult or impossible. There are scads of people surrounding them with the sole purpose of keeping them away from us Internet dweebs. :-)

Overall, I do like the idea.
posted by Malor at 3:37 PM on March 31, 2006

I think it's a great idea... in fact, it sounds realllly familiar. I recall hearing or reading about a website that does just that, but I can't remember the name.

At least, the website I'm thinking of facilitates the donations... not sure about the music hosting itself.
posted by Robot Johnny at 3:39 PM on March 31, 2006

The record label would be bypassed completely.

Except for the part where they actually record and produce the music. Not to mention promote it. That all takes a big investment of money, which is why they don't want to be cut out.

If the music posted on such a site is all home-recorded or otherwise captured without an ongoing obligation to a label, then yeah, this could work. But most major music is ruled out right away.
posted by scarabic at 3:39 PM on March 31, 2006

Actually I think the whole business of making torrents available for download is quite well-covered at this point by others. Stick to facilitating donations directly to the musicians and this site would be welcome, and not at big risk.
posted by scarabic at 3:42 PM on March 31, 2006

What scarabic said, basically. Most of the music people would want to download (i.e. bands/artists you've heard of) have their records recorded and promoted with money from the record company, so there's a definite obligation then to pay that back through record sales (and I have a sneaking suspicion voluntary contributions wouldn't cut it).

You shouldn't host the music at all, that's a logistical and legal nightmare. Facilitate payments only and that may work. (on preview...what scarabic said AGAIN. Maybe I should just leave the commenting to him...)
posted by rooftop secrets at 3:45 PM on March 31, 2006

This does sound familiar, though I can't remember the site's name.
posted by Soliloquy at 3:47 PM on March 31, 2006

This was done five or six years ago by a couple of UWaterloo students in Canada. The company, FairTunes, is no longer in existence, but you can read a Time magazine article about it here.
posted by sanitycheck at 3:48 PM on March 31, 2006

Fairtunes attempted to do exactly that. It was bought by Musiclink, which no longer appears to provide the "tip jar" service.
posted by russilwvong at 3:49 PM on March 31, 2006

I wonder to what degree the RIAA would consider such a service an admission of guilt.
posted by pokermonk at 4:06 PM on March 31, 2006

Yeah, people have been talking about stuff like this for a long time, including paylars which is now just a link farm but came about during the whole metallica/napster thing.
posted by delmoi at 4:18 PM on March 31, 2006

Now, if you wanted to donate money to unsigned bands so that they could record and then figure out a way to distribute them. . .. that can truly bypass the label system.
posted by visual mechanic at 4:34 PM on March 31, 2006

The website, which would be non-profit, would simply facilitate your donation (via PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, etc.).

Read the question. He's not hosting any music or torrents, just providing a way to kick some appreciation back to the band.

A great idea in theory. However, any major artist who cares enough about the problems with the modern music distribution system to accept such donations is probably already switching to a similar distribution model - Radiohead comes to mind. All the other bands will probably side with their producers and declare this to be illegal, whether it is or not.

Unless you're suggesting obtaining their home addresses and sending them "royalty checks"? :)
posted by muddgirl at 4:57 PM on March 31, 2006

Actually I think the whole business of making torrents available for download is quite well-covered at this point by others. Stick to facilitating donations directly to the musicians and this site would be welcome, and not at big risk.

scarabic, that's the idea.
posted by knave at 5:03 PM on March 31, 2006

The idea is decent but I think scarabic might be right. Why not find a way to hook donations into all the trading activity that's going on right now?

It would be interesting if someone would build a verified directory of where to donate money to artists. Have an open API so torrent trackers and other music trading sites could implement it as a feel-good gesture.

That way if someone's on some torrent tracker and is grabbing my album they could have a little link that says "Hey, like the album? Click here to donate to the artist."

I think that'd be neat and have the potential to catch on and also potentially put a nice spin on all the trading that's going on if it were to actually work in artists' benefit.

Not sure if it's actually doable though. If a big paypal directory's not possible, you could turn yourself into a collection agency, hold and distribute the money or something. (Then turn evil and crook all the musicians out of their cash of course.)
posted by frenetic at 5:47 PM on March 31, 2006

Thoughts of the top of my head:

The idea sounds like a good one to me. I don't think it is by any means a new or novel idea, but it is an idea that could work if it was done right. Forgetting, for a moment, about changing the music industry/world, the idea it could work quite reasonably as a lazy addendum to existing channels.

The hard part seems to be getting it to catch on. The mechanics of communicating the donation info are not tremendously difficult (a link to the proposed website in .mp3 metadata or with an additional dontation.info file or whatever), the major issue is getting people to

1. recognize what it is
2. care
3. trust the site enough to use it

For me its all down to publicity and trust. If you could get enough people to support it vocally on the web, maybe get a couple major artists to mutter a few words in support, and perhaps stir-up a touch of tech-media controversy, I think it could catch on. Once it actually enters mainstream consciousness, the need to provide a link with the site is reduced, as many people would just know that that is the site you go to in order to donate to artists.

Of course you would have to go through all the trouble of setting up the non-profit, building the site, taking care
of legalities and suchlike, but that's the easy part.

Some suggestions for kicking it off:

1. Start with unsigned/small bands who may already be giving material away on mp3. They will likely welcome the opportunity to get paid, and will publicize the service for you.

2. Don't concentrate entirely on music. If the idea catches on in any sense, it would apply equally well to any free media distributed online (books, art, video etc.)

3. Start a website and start talking about the idea, submit it to projects. If it is to start, it has to start somewhere.

4. What you are really talking about is fostering a culture of media being provided for free, and consumers of said media spontaneously donating for it. Play up this angle in promotions, as this is the crux of the model, and is pretty hip thesedays, or so I'm told.
posted by MetaMonkey at 7:27 PM on March 31, 2006

Oops, forgot to mention the other thought I had: You could/should make the site into a portal/aggregator for artists as well as accepting donations. There are countless ways this could be implemented, and I think fairtunes (mentioned above) tried something like this. As I said in the earlier post, the idea is a good one, and may well be waiting for the right time and the right execution. Fairtunes was 4-6 years ago now, which is a long time in internet years (=10.4-15.6 net years, multiply by 2.6 according to Tim Berners-Lee).
posted by MetaMonkey at 7:38 PM on March 31, 2006

The idea is decent but I think scarabic might be right. Why not find a way to hook donations into all the trading activity that's going on right now?

Whoa, I don't think it's a good idea to hook them. On closer reading, I see the original idea is just a donation site, which, as I said, sounds like a fine idea to me. I think got confused between the page title "BitTorrent + Donations" and "I have a bold idea for a website."

Sure, I'd love to know how to kick Tom Waits $5 right now. Goddamn right.
posted by scarabic at 8:54 PM on March 31, 2006

I think you'd be in for a serous legal battle with this (not that that should discourage you, just prepare yourself going in). There was a case awhile back of a guy (Mike Jitlov) who made a film (The Wizard of Speed and Time) and got screwed by his producer. A bunch of his fans banded together to donate him some money ("royalties" on their pirated copies - they didn't want any money going to the evil producer) and he asked them not to as it would make him an accessory to theft (or copyright infringement, if you prefer).

The way you've framed this (a tip jar for musicians whose stuff you've pirated), I think you'd get shut down right away. But if it's just a tip jar with no reference to illegal downloads, well, you'd still have a fight on your hands but a more defensible one. Talk to a lawyer.

On the other hand, I'd argue that you're not necessarily doing the band any favors by illegally downloading then tipping. Yes, they may get more money (from you), but their album sales go down. Less leverage to negotiate the next contract, smaller advance, more onerous contractual limitations and less (mainstream media) publicity.
posted by zanni at 9:07 PM on March 31, 2006

A slight extension of my above suggestions: You could also set yourself up as an alternative to PayPal [crowd gasps]. On all those sites that have a donate with PayPal button, they could have a donate with JPower button instead.

The advantage of this is that you are specifically setting yourself up to deal with artists (and bloggers and suchlike), a niche in the online micro-transaction market. If you are able to in any way build a name and reputation as 'the cool new way to donate to the artists you love', it could have the double advantage of encouraging people to give a few bucks to their favourite webcomic, while encouraging artists from all walks of life, all over the web to use and promote your service. Again, this can tie in with portal/aggregator functionality.

Moreover, by targeting a specific market you can cater more specifically to their needs. I'm not sure how exactly, but there are bound to ways to improve the PayPal service for a specific market. You could still accept and use PayPal, as well as any other payment method you like, giving the users a greater choice of ways to pay. Moreover, the user would have one unified way to make micropayments to musicians, artists, bloggers etc, requiring only one login. The service could even extend into such wacky areas as voluntary subcriptions, for example giving a dollar a week to your favourite blogger (how I imagined Kottke's experiment would work, rather than a lump sum).

Disclaimer: I someday hope to make money by making films, and I'm not too hopeful of my prospects in Hollywood.
posted by MetaMonkey at 9:58 PM on March 31, 2006

In my experience with putting my art out on torrents you have to go out of your way to motivate people to do anything other than bootleg it and check it out. They are highly fickle and will delete at the drop of a hat. It's like at the CD store when people are checking things out. To get people to donate I'm thinking you'd have to pester them the way they nag on PBS. Even if you had a site with torrents/donation (Itd be easiest to just focus on the donation part), most people will just download it, check it out, and that's that. So maybe it would be good to put little text files/audio and video snippets nagging people to do something. To be successful at this I'd think you would have to get some artists (someone who makes a living selling their work on cdbaby might be a good place to start looking) and turn them into textbook examples of underground marketing 101. Get some good press, once people see that you can be successful at it they'll all join in but it takes someone willing to go out of the norm to start it out. The more that I think about it it seems like what you really should be trying to do is create a community where people feel can interact with the band more. The more involved everyone is the more they are going to want to donate money/time/bandwidth. But why stop at musicians? Filmmakers are even more SOL and fragmented from this sort of effort. Any kind of art really, writing, drawing, photography.
posted by psychobum at 2:48 AM on April 1, 2006

More on micropatronage here.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 3:29 AM on April 1, 2006

I agree with a few comments:

1. Just start it.
2. Expand it to cover other arts.

But build it just for music for now, perhaps making it nice and extensible for later.

I also agree with the legal issues about association with illegal music distributors. If you allow anyone and everyone to link to you then you could become an accomplice to theft. (Not that this is my view of the industry, but I reckon a music copyright lawyer would think like this). Maybe you can ask a lawyer with expertise in this area (or the EFF?) for their opinions. You probably ought to downplay any P2P relationship, if you mention it at all.

Personally I'd not worry about how many people will use your site, drumming up trade, or getting people to trust it. That's not the point, is it? Some people will use it, and some is plenty.

However, I can see a real problem with actually getting the money to the artists. Ideally you'd want anyone to be able to donate any amount to any artist. You could start with just the artists you manage to get on-board, whoever they might turn out to be. (I've no idea how you'd go about contacting them). But that would be very limiting for the donators.

Alternatively, you could start by taking donations into "storage", pending collection by a member of the band. You might want to use a site like Fundable.org as an intermediary to collect the promises of cash.

However there are still problems, even if you get bands on-board, and they step forward to collect the pot of cash. How can you be sure that the members of any one band will want to split the cash the same way? Perhaps the songwriter will try to grab it all. Perhaps a disgruntled band-member will try to stake their claim. I can see this escalating into more legal problems. Potentially. Maybe you should try contacting a few bands/performers through their agents to see if they'd be interested.

I think it's a great idea, and if you work out these problems it's certainly worth trying out. I'd be happy to chuck Roy Harper a few quid.
posted by ajp at 7:09 AM on April 1, 2006

I think it's a great concept.

Semantics might be something to think about. If you call it a donation, can a US consumer deduct it on their tax return? Would the band/artist have to form some kind of non-profit entity themselves in order to accept donations?

Not that any of that would be your problem necessarily, but would you have a hard time getting artists to participate if it would just add another layer of complexity to their business life?

If you end up getting to the designing/coding stage, I wanna help!
posted by SuperSquirrel at 8:07 AM on April 1, 2006

Let's say I go to your site and I want to donate to Tom Waits. How do I know my money is going to Tom Waits?

/devils advocate
posted by poppo at 8:51 AM on April 1, 2006

I'm all for compensating artists, but I don't think it needs to be this complicated. I think the better solution is to encourage more artists to provide a way to take donations on their websites.

If Tom Waits' official site had a Paypal link for donations, that'd be all you'd need. There's no reason to have a portal or hold the money in escrow, and there's no need to state that the donation is compensation for "stolen" music. It can simply be a tip, a donation to the cause. I like you -- here's some money!

Let the artist worry about dividing the money between whatever stakeholders are involved. Some artists will get to keep 100%, others might have to split it with their labels, etc.

And if for some reason a label prohibits an artist from accepting donations this way, well...that's just stupid. Unless there's some legal reason for it I'm unaware of.
posted by scottandrew at 10:50 AM on April 1, 2006

If Tom Waits' official site had a Paypal link for donations, that'd be all you'd need.

Except that I'm not a fool, and will not use Paypal under any circumstances.
posted by five fresh fish at 12:31 PM on April 1, 2006

No, sorry. This idea is lame and it will never catch on.

As noted above, recording, producing and promoting the music costs money. Record labels are necessary evils.

There is no way the record labels would let this go on to any significant extent.
Firstly, they of course don't get any of it (which is, in my humble opinion, morally unfair given their huge investments in these artists) and secondly, it encourages the illegal downloading of music.

I'm not intimately familiar with record contracts, but I doubt artists will be able to take the money. And even if they can now, they wouldn't be able to if this caught on, which it won't.

And I think you're grossly overestimating consumer generosity. If they wanted to pay for the music, they wouldn't be stealing it.

And you couldn't get non-profit status.
posted by Count Ziggurat at 1:32 PM on April 1, 2006

My brother told me about something like this with Juliana Hatfield. She puts her music up on her own website to download for free (if i'm not mistaken, she produced her own album, so this isn't going around the record company's back). If you like her music and want to donate, you can paypal some cash - any amount you'd like.

Now, I seriously doubt everyone that downloads her music will donate money to her. But apparently it did work out well because she's still doing it a year later. I could seriously condone something like that.
posted by damnjezebel at 7:45 PM on April 1, 2006

And I think you're grossly overestimating consumer generosity. If they wanted to pay for the music, they wouldn't be stealing it.

You know, there *are* a few people who paid legitimately for their art (music, book, whatever), who *still* would like to tip the artist on top of that. I'm not saying there are many, mind you, but there are a few.

Anyway, I thought of this idea (or something strikingly similar, if you want to split hairs) like... a year or two ago (?) and decided it would be too much hassle / a legal minefield. My dream vision just kept filling up with a huge list of directions to get sued from, and I figured it wouldn't be worth it.
posted by beth at 3:45 AM on April 2, 2006