Voluntary Payment for Music

Essay: Leah Belsky, Byron Kahr and Yochai Benkle: Everything in its right place: Social cooperation and the production and distribution of creative works.

URL = http://commonsresearch.wikidot.com/local--files/fc2008-paper1/Belsky_Kahr_Benkler_Revised.pdf

Description

"The paper was a result of a study of four sites that use a voluntary payment model. The four sites are Songslide (an independent music store which allows customers to pick how much to pay for a given song - the more people pay, the more is distributed to artists); Magnatune (the payment model is similar to Songslide but expressed differently); Sheeba (another music site that allows for variable payment options including a "creative currency" model) and Jonathan Coulton who sells his songs for $1 for many songs and allows for variations on this. Jonathan Coulton is particularly successful with his model. In the traditional music distribution market, music labels tend to pay about 6% to 10% of album sales to artists, of which only about 16% of artists break even."