Magnatune

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Magnatune
Magnatune.svg
Parent company Magnatune
Founded 2004
Founder John Buckman
Distributor(s) Self distributed
Genre Various
Country of origin United States
Location Berkeley, California
Official Website http://magnatune.com/

Magnatune is an American independent record label based in Berkeley, California, founded in spring 2003. It aims at treating both its musicians and its customers fairly—its tagline is "We are not evil".[1] It originally only sold music for download through its website, but added a print-CDs-on-demand service in late 2004, and in October 2007 began selling complete albums and individual tracks through the Amazon.com Music Store. In May, 2008 Magnatune launched all-you-can-eat membership plans, and is believed to be the only online music site to offer a DRM-free unlimited membership. From March 2010 Magnatune dropped the CD printing service, and moved exclusively to the all-you-can-eat membership plans.[2] Magnatune was the first record label to license music online[3] and as of May 2008 had sold over 3000 licenses in its five years of existence.[4]

Contents

Overview [edit]

Magnatune makes non-exclusive agreements with artists, and gives them fifty percent of any proceeds from online sales or licensing.[5] These kinds of policies were very unusual for a record label in 2003–2004. Users can stream or download music in MP3 format (no DRM) without charge before choosing whether to buy or not. (Some MP3s available for free download have Magnatune advertisements in them.[6]) Buyers used to be able to purchase individual albums and choose their own price, from US $5 to $18 per album, but in March 2010 Magnatune moved to a subscriptions-only business model, whereby buyers have to purchase a monthly subscription (with a three month minimum) under which they can download as much music as they like from Magnatune.[2] Customers may download music they have purchased in WAV, FLAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis and AAC encoding formats. Music files sold by Magnatune do not use any form of digital rights management to prevent customers from making copies of music files they have purchased; and actually encourage buyers to share up to three copies with friends.[7]

All of the tracks downloaded free of charge are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. Even though using liberal licensing is not a new idea in itself, Magnatune is one of the first and most visible companies to try to build a business in music around this idea. However, many other platforms do not restrict authors to one specific license but allow them to pick one of the CC (or other) licenses, including those that do not prohibit commercial use.

Founder [edit]

John Buckman

John Buckman is founder of Magnatune. In 1994, Buckman and his ex-wife Jan Hanford founded Lyris Technologies. Buckman was CEO and primary programmer of Lyris' product line: Lyris ListServer, MailShield, and MailEngine. He sold the company in June 2005. In August 2006, he launched the for-profit corporation BookMooch, an online community for the exchange of used books, which—in combination with his work with Magnatune—has established Buckman as a prominent figure in the Free Culture movement. In February 2007, he was elected to the board of advisors of the Open Rights Group. In September 2007, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation[8] and in February 2010 he was appointed Chairman of the Board.[9]

Buckman has been profiled by Forbes, Inc. Magazine, and The Economist. Buckman is the co-author of an article in SysAdmin Magazine entitled "Which OS is Fastest for High-Performance Network Applications?"[10] and the author of an article in Linux Journal entitled "Magnatune, an Open Music Experiment."[11]

Integration with media players [edit]

Magnatune has an XML API that has made integration within media players possible. Amarok (from version 1.4.4, released in October 2006) allows users to preview and buy music from all signed artists from within the application. Rhythmbox 0.9.7 added this functionality in December 2006. A Slim Devices plugin for SlimServer is available.[12] A plugin for Songbird is also available.[13] Clementine added support for Magnatune in version 0.4.[14]

See also [edit]

Notes [edit]

  1. ^ "Hear no evil". The Economist. 15 September 2005. Retrieved 20 January 2013. 
  2. ^ a b http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2010/03/new-business-model-for-magnatune.html
  3. ^ Magnatune's License. Retrieved on September 8, 2007.
  4. ^ Licensing info page. Number of music licenses at Magnatune. Retrieved on May 8, 2008
  5. ^ Linux Journal, issue 118. (2004-02-01). "Magnatune, an Open Music Experiment". 
  6. ^ http://blog.magnatune.com/2011/02/short-adverts.html
  7. ^ Magnatune. "Give 3 Free Copies to Your Friends". 
  8. ^ EFF. Two Leading Technologists Join EFF Board of Directors. 
  9. ^ EFF. 10 Year Term of EFF Chairman Winds Down with EFF's 20th Anniversary Tonight. 
  10. ^ Buckman, John and Rothman, Jeffrey B. (2001). "Which OS is Fastest for High-Performance Network Applications?" (– Scholar search). Sys Admin Magazine. [dead link]
  11. ^ Buckman, John (2004). "Magnatune, an Open Music Experiment". Linux Journal. 
  12. ^ Magnatune for SqueezeCenter
  13. ^ Magnatune - Songbird Add-ons
  14. ^ clementine-player changelist

External links [edit]

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