Magnatune
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| Magnatune | |
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| 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 by John Buckman, then-CEO of e-mail software company Lyris. It aims at treating both its musicians and its customers fairly—its tagline is "We are not evil". 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.[1] Magnatune was the first record label to license music online[2] and as of May 2008 had sold over 3000 licenses in its five years of existence.[3]
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[edit] About
Magnatune describe themselves as "a pioneer in the fair trade music movement".[4] Magnatune was one of the first commercial enterprises to use Creative Commons licensing.[5]
Magnatune makes non-exclusive agreements with artists, and gives them fifty percent of any proceeds from online sales or licensing.[6] 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.[7]) 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.[8] 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.[9]
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.
[edit] Integration with media players
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.[10] A plugin for Songbird is also available.[11] Clementine added support for Magnatune in version 0.4.[12]
[edit] Artists
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2010/03/new-business-model-for-magnatune.html
- ^ Magnatune's License. Retrieved on September 8, 2007.
- ^ Licensing info page. Number of music licenses at Magnatune. Retrieved on May 8, 2008
- ^ Magnatune's 'relax' (about us) page. Retrieved on June 17, 2009
- ^ Creative Commons page about Magnatune. Retrieved on June 17, 2009
- ^ Linux Journal, issue 118. (2004-02-01). "Magnatune, an Open Music Experiment". http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7220.
- ^ http://blog.magnatune.com/2011/02/short-adverts.html
- ^ http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2010/03/new-business-model-for-magnatune.html
- ^ Magnatune. "Give 3 Free Copies to Your Friends". http://magnatune.com/info/give.
- ^ Magnatune for SqueezeCenter
- ^ Magnatune - Songbird Add-ons
- ^ clementine-player changelist
[edit] External links
- Magnatune official site
- Magnatuneasy, Easy Way Magnatune with rss[clarification needed]
- List of Magnatune albums on Last.fm, sorted by popularity
- Record labels established in 2003
- Ambient music record labels
- Classical music record labels
- Creative Commons-licensed works
- Electronic music record labels
- American independent record labels
- Magnatune
- Music websites
- Netlabels
- Online music stores
- Rock record labels
- World music record labels
- Free music
- Companies based in Berkeley, California
