JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Jango's Pay-for-Play Model

Jango makes me curious? It cost $30 for 1000 plays or $.03 per song. That looks good on paper.

If 1,000 artists spend $30 they get a total of 1,000,000 plays.
My first question is what constitutes a play?

1. The number of times your song is played regardless of the number of people that listen to it or,

2. Every person that listens to your song is counted as one play.

If the answer is #2 then you pay $.03 for a potential new customer. Not bad if you convert one play to a sale! But, if 1,000 people listen to your song on Day 1, then there is no more repetitions left. On Day 2 it costs another $30 to get more repetitions. Depending how many people hear your song each day, you could spend a lot of money by the end of the year if you want serioius repetitions. Good for Jango?

If the average song is 3.5 minutes long and each of the 1,000 artists above get a total of 1,000,000 plays that translates into 3,500,000 minutes of play time, or 58,333 hours, or 2,430 days. Jango either has to have a lot of listeners or a lot of stations or a combination of both just to handle one song from 1,000 artists. If Jango has 1M listeners then one station works fine, but if they only have 100 or 1,000 listeners then they need a lots stations or lots of time to get through all the plays.

Does anyone know if they offer any listener incentives or do they just force the listener to respond to the song when it plays.

Jango pays royalties and streaming bandwidth costs, who wants to do the cost basis calculation on that?

If any royalty or bandwidth gurus could assist, I'm curious about Jango's overhead to pay for bandwidth and royalties using the above parameters where an artist pays $.03 or less per play/

Based on my experience, if someone gets 1,000 plays in one day, a miracle has occurred.

I don't pay to get played PERIOD!

There ya go, and artist, Bob is not only an artist, but he also has a radio show. As I said, no artist or songwriter experiencing any degree of success is going to buy into this pay per play system. It just ain't gonna happen.

Billy,

How is it any different than paying a plugger or and independent promoter?

Are you trying to tell me that no artists do that? It's the same thing! Except trusting in a 3rd party to do what they promise when you could do it yourself.

http://www.jpfolks.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/703890/page/1#Post703890

Yes, a great miracle, for which you've PAID $30. Huh ? , aren't they meant to pay you ?

If you want to GET PAID for audio streams, then join Independant Artists . The sign up fee ( after joining ) is a once off $7.50 , and you'll make that back in 1 or 2 months. More, if your music is "popular".

Pay to play ? No way !

cheers, niteshift

They are definitely different, a Plugger, or promoter, usually has established creditable clients. They have a reputation that can be easily confirmed and checked out. They have proven to be effective fascilitators. The pay per plays are first of all relatively new, and secondly, they are spending a lot of money advertising participation figures that are without merit.

Your second point of trusting in a third party to do what they promise, when you could easily with a little knowledge accomplish the same thing by doing it yourself is a legitimate concern. The old saying " The best way to make sure something gets done right , is to do it yourself." certainly applies here. There are many other benefits to doing it yourself beyond making sure it gets done, the relationships you build personally, the knowledge you gain through those relationships, and the networking opportunities that present themselves along the way make doing it by yourself not only more beneficial, but also more rewarding.

However I think the bottom line is that the personal pride songwriters take in their craft won't allow them participate in this type of structure. Many of the sites that promote new music encourage one to tell all their friends, and fans they have posted music on a particular site, and have them come join the site and vote for their song for some kind of reward, or to keep your music in their radio rotation. I generally do not participate in that kind of behavior and here's why. I want an honest opinion of the unbiased listeners on that site, and if I invite all of the people who I already know like me , or my music, to vote then I skew those figures in my favor and that defeats the credibility of the ranking. It definitely creates the image that I am popular on every site, but it doesn't really give me an honest evaluation of the public appeal of my music. I would rather have the honesty, than to stroke my own ego by creating an image that makes me look popular.

You keep talking about leaving it to dumb luck, but believe me dumb luck has nothing to do with success. When we we write a song and put it out there, we do everything we can do to see that it gets airplay, and a fair chance to be evaluated by the masses ( short of paying DJ's to play it...lol ). If that song makes it onto the top 40 charts of a radio station, it doesn't make it because of dumb luck, it makes it because we got it out there, and the listeners enjoyed hearing it.

Last but not least, singer/songwriters have already given up most of our sources of revenue in order to obtain real Am/Fm radio play, and get our music out there in this " Music should be free" mentality that currently exists. Now you expect us to pay for the privilege of having our music played on the air waves?

I guess one could point out by giving up those revenues, in a way, we are already paying, and I wouldn't argue that fact, but at least we are getting air play at real AM/FM radio stations with real audiences, and I can live with that.

Billy Darnell

Billy said: "I want an honest opinion of the unbiased listeners on that site, and if I invite all of the people who I already know like me , or my music, to vote then I skew those figures in my favor and that defeats the credibility of the ranking. It definitely creates the image that I am popular on every site, but it doesn't really give me an honest evaluation of the public appeal of my music. I would rather have the honesty, than to stroke my own ego by creating an image that makes me look popular."

I truely understand your heartfelt and sincere desire to be true to your art to let it establish a life of it's own. Trust me when I say that, my degree is in art. But, I think you might be missing the point just a little.

When I say missing the point just a little, I mean in the way that says, "There is absolutely no room for this business model."

I think the absolutness of that philosophy is a mistake for a number of reasons. For some people, not all people, music is a product that deserves to be marketed just like any other product seeking perferred shelf placement. Look at Wyland or Drew Brophy, painters not musicians but both excellent marketers.

How do you get perferred shelf placement now? Except for LastFM or Jango, you can't. That's the point, even if you wanted to market yourself in anyway other than by Free to maybe expidite audience recognition, you can't! But, if you could, and people came and of their own accord decided that they liked your product, would that diminsh the value of their appreciation? No, it doesn't!

There are roughly 13,000 radio stations nationwide and in tens of thousands of Internet Radio stations. So, how do you rise above the din of all the rest of the noise? I call it pure dumb luck, but in many cases artists work extremely hard for many hours over years trying to market their product to rise above the din of noise, i.e. the other 17 million artists on Myspace seeking listener attention?

Out of thousands of outlets, why can't there be a place where artists can pay to advertise their product? All I am trying to say is that I think there should be room for this type of service so that if you, by chance, wanted to you could.

Hey Artist,

There's one small point you're missing here.....

Stations pick up music because it's better than the rest. It's been filtered, and is pleasing to the listeners' ears. Good music sells advertising. Bad music doesn't.

So... now we have some crap musician, who pays somone to broadcast their music.... And who's going to listen ? No-one, because there is no filtering mechanism.

The business model simply doesn't work.

cheers, niteshift

PS - drop by my new blog ( yes folks, blatant cross-linking here ) and have a listen to the station. Those artists are there because they have something to offer, not because they've paid me. http://niteshiftmusic.blogspot.com/

Please tell me advertisers don't advertise on American Idol and the 60 million people don't tune in because all the singers are great!

Everyone is a self-proclaimed critic these days, even your blog, for example. Craps sells! YouTube and American Idol prove it, so does the Internet where most of the crap lives.

And that's why the radio industry has been selling time to the major labels for 80 years, right, it doesn't work.

How big is the independent promotor industry?

Hey Artist,

There's 2 points here..... so to the first one.... no, I'm not a critic, and haven't and won't be giving critiques. As a musician, composer and arranger, I'll let the music presented speak for itself. It's what I find clever, and musically and socially engaging. If others agre, they'll have a listen. If they don't , they won't. So it's democracy in action.

Second, you're confusing 2 different business models. Idol is entertaiment and makes hundreds of millions. Youtube is a flawed business model, on account that the huge bandwidth involved, does not cover advertising revenue. Estimated 2007/2008 loss ? $470 million.

Ya gotta get to know your media.....

cheers, niteshift

PS - new blog at http://niteshiftmusic.blogspot.com/

Just kidding...... but the Google linkbots like links from premium sites, of which JPF is one.

niteshift,

Thank you for proving my point for me! Crap sells, it's called entertainment, it only works on TV and the Internet. Radio is immune. Your logic seems flawed.

Point #2, free internet sites can't survive and pay performance royalties, fact! They are dropping like flies in a sea of disappearing advertising revenues and infringement lawsuits and they are looking for new ways to charge for services.

Hey Artist,

Point 1 - No, the logic is not flawed. Unfiltered content is flawed, because there is too much white noise. Filtered content will survive just fine.

Point 2 - agree, most free interenet sites are falling like flies, but not IAC. ( and last I heard, it does't make any money, but also has survived for 5 yrs without debt ) Why ? It has the support of indie musicians, and pays the proposed RIAA rates for internet streaming, and shares advertising revenue with it's content providers. There is no infringement. It pays the suggested rate to the copyright holders when it doesn't have to. Bad business ? No, very sound. ( Scuse the pun.... )

cheers, niteshift

As long as the shock jocks get time on the air waves I dont believe radio is immune to crap....lol. Just look at Howard Stern, and a lot of the others. That being said, I think it's time for us to agree to disagree... Crap does sell , history proves it, but so does quality entertainment. You both have good points to make, let's try not and make them personal.

Just for the record as I said before I think we have wore this one out so I am moving on, but thank you all for your insights, because whether or not I agreed with them all, they have all served to broaden my horizons, and have opened up my mind to possibilities beyond my own little world. Though I still reserve the right to disagree with some of them...lol.

See you all at the next isssue.

Billy Darnell

Billy,

Good point! Divergent viewpoints make for good arguement and if divergent opinions can be expressed respectfully then the arguement is better.

nite: regarding #1. You, my friend are 100% correct! Filter is the key and I mean KEY!! How you filter content makes all the difference. Inventing the filter mechanism is where the business model lies.