The project can be divided into three parts :
- A collective ad-free webzine gathering and involving all kinds of actors of the shiny world of underground/indie cultures. The mag is written by our favourite bands, labels & activists (promoters, venues, cool booking agents, webzines etc). New contributions are added on a daily basis.
- A donation platform where people can donate to any independent band or label in the universe. To cover our costs, we’ve decided that A&D users will simply choose if and how much they want to give us.
Because of tests and code finalization, the Donation Platform will be online soon. Please bear this in mind when hearing the word “soon” from a software programmer : the latter develops a natural adaptation to the fact that coding software usually takes ages, which results in an altered perception of the flow of time.In this context, “soon” should be translated as “a very long time from now”. We hope it will be online next week, though. - A widespread diffusion of A&D links on all kinds of websites to remind people they can support music this way.
How much does a band earn when you’re sharing
their music with a friend, or when you’re using P2P
or direct download services to get it?Well, ok, zero.
But how much does a band earn when you buy
a $10 CD in a store ?$1.20
How much does a band earn when you buy
a $0.99 song on Itunes ?$0.15
How much does a band earn when you listen
to a song one hundred times on Spotify ?$0.50
How much would a band earn if you sent them
a free donation ?The exact amount you chose to give.
Of course, these are average figures regarding unsigned, indie and major label artists ; some manage to get better deals, others get worse. But most of the time, no matter how you listen to music, the artist gets very little financial support.
In recent years, technology has made music shift from scarce goods to infinite goods : once the original is made, it takes zero marginal cost to make a digital copy and distribute it. All the music in the world is available for (almost) nothing, and less and less people are buying physical records. Global Non-Commercial Culture Sharing is now a reality – which, don’t get us wrong, is simply great – but the problem of decently funding artistic creation remains.
But Why?
- a lot of people want to maintain old centralized models of distribution in the digital world, creating artificial scarcity on infinite goods, and pretending global culture sharing never happened
- big entertainment corporations keep laying down the law
- many middlemen are still involved. Some of them are valuable (independent labels), some have to be questioned
So, why not directly support those who create music and those who really help to produce it?
This is what we’re experimenting with this Donation Platform. A&D project is not about charity, but Gift Economy. It is not about guilt, but common decency. Of course, good ways to support bands/labels already exist (buying stuff directly from them, for example) and crucial ideas still have to be tested, but we think A&D can be a useful step to promote two fundamental and inseparable points :
- Non-Commercial Culture Sharing is essential and legitimate
- We can and we must find new ways to support independent authors and producers, so the aforementioned fact won’t cast them in the sewers where they will starve alone
We think the combination of coercive (i.e. governments) and mercantile (i.e. corporations) tactics should certainly not be the only ones driving the legislation, distribution, and financing of culture. On the contrary, we believe the present situation urges us to invent new alternative strategies.
A&D is not a place dedicated to music download, but a place to support artists/labels. The only music available is in the Webzine, willingly shared by the artists themselves.
