SoundReef, currently in closed beta, has come up with an interesting angle in a very lucrative ‘indie’ music licensing market which YouLicense.com is competing in and PumpAudio ? acquired by Getty Images in 2007 for $42 million ? has already won a tidy share of. Offering online music licensing solutions for independent artists and small companies, SoundReef hopes to encourage new business by making it possible for clients seeking music for commercial use to license music by compensating the artist (or copyright administrator) with promotional effort. What a clever idea! As most commercial use of music is small-scheme with zero-budget, music buyers now have an alternative currency to barter with and it just so happens to be the most valuable commodity of all for bootstrapping artists: Exposure. Let’s see how this venture kicks off.
SoundCloud is an online music collaboration and large music file management platform. The company positioned itself as a digital music exchange offering but it’s so much more than that. The SoundCloud audio player displays the waveform of the track, allowing listeners to view and intercept specific segments of the music and comment on it. As an artist collaboration solution, artists can share, mix, and remix their music under the Creative Commons licensing designations, enabling the creative process to continue long after the master is ‘complete’. I particularly like the fact that SoundCloud is a music-oriented digital distribution solution, making it super easy to send and receive music files within a community of producers, engineers, DJs, labels etc. who deal with hefty music files on a daily basis.
An independent artist by the name of Rustcycle contacted me a couple of days ago about his interesting marketing idea and cross-over musical offering. Rustcycle (a.k.a. Adrian Johnson) developed a gorgeous looking 255-level iPhone and iPod Touch game which mimics the natural flow of particles when the player manipulates the electromagnetic field with his finger. Far out. The $0.99 game, aptly named NANO, is set to Adrian’s self-composed and produced ambient music, creating a “meditative, serene journey that stands in contrast with the tense experience of many other iPhone games.” Adrian has differentiated himself by bridging two talents to create an experience that few artists can compete with or even conceive of. By drawing users (paying users, incidentally) into a world of nodes and particles, Adrian is exposing his musical facets to a highly targeted new audience.
I love the thinking behind this and I praise Adrian for identifying and employing his strengths as a creative programmer in order to bring his musical attributes to the fore.
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