Band Tries To Take 'Open Source' Lessons To The Music World

A bunch of folks have been sending in the recent post by Jono Bacon over at O'Reilly Radar about how his band, Severed Fifth, is trying to "reinvent the music business" by taking lessons from the open source world. It's an interesting article, but I was a bit disappointed in it, frankly. The plan he describes has been done already by a bunch of musicians, and yet Bacon presents it as if it's brand new and only they've thought of it. There's nothing wrong with the strategy the band has set out. It's pretty straightforward: give away music for free, treat fans right and empower them to do more to the band, and then set up a "pay what you want" solution. That's all good -- and it's especially important that they recognize the connecting with fans part (we keep hearing people complain that their similar offerings don't work that well, but they almost always seem to ignore the actual connecting with fans bit). However, it seems like a lot of other musicians have come up with much more creative business models, by going beyond the basic "give it away and pray" model, to find real scarcities that their music makes more valuable. This isn't to say this is not an interesting experiment, and one worth following -- it just seems odd to present it as if this is something new.

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