The HomeSkillet Records Blog

Pirates Paying People

Argghhhhh, piratey this and that.  You know those pirates, they steal, horde, and kill causing industries to die. Or maybe they just cause industries to adapt.  Or evolve, etc…  The beauty of piracy with music is that it’s caused an explosion of choice - if the cost of getting music is free, then you can sample everything.  The big record companies represented by the RIAA are pissed, so much so that they would sue their fans, which is really a good long term strategy.

Anyhow, I bring this up because I attended a BarCamp Portland session on breaking apart the music distribution and payments scheme.  The idea being that people will pay for music if it’s convenient for them. It’s a compelling idea and has a lot of potential, but also a lot of moving parts. Scary.

But how does this work with piracy? Well, we continue to take any music we want off the web, but each song has a checksum making it unique to an artist.  Upon playing the music in your player of choice, you have a little button next to a song that says, “pay for me.”  That transaction would go to a notary that would identify the checksum and pay the artist micropayments for each time someone wants to pay for it.

It’s a potential vision for the future for the music industry, a vision that takes more control away from existing dinosaurs in the industry.  While I can’t help think burn baby burn when it comes to these big companies, I know they won’t go easy. I met the guy who had the idea, maybe he’ll keep in touch.