The Moan
On Sale Now!!!!

The RIAA is suing file sharers and downloader’s left right and centre, branding consumers as illegal file sharers before they can prove them guilty. Is this the way of the future for the record industry? I don't think so. SongSlide have come up with a new approach to distributing music where they put the value of the song into their customers hands.Read on to find out more...

The RIAA is cracking down more and more on file sharers and torrent sites which shows that they are clearly scared about their future in this world. It's a particularly hard situation for them to be in. Technology has really made the music product obsolete. I believe as I have stated before that the RIAA is going about solving this the wrong way. They are treating the music fans like criminals even before they have done anything illegal. I personally like to believe that we are all good people, and we all love music and we all wish to support the artists that make the music we love. Is there a way to tap into this love? And if we did would it be viable to support our artists? Well a new group called SongSlide have beaten me to it, and only time will tell if their model works....

SongSlide is a new Independent music download store with a twist that might make or break them, the consumer controls the price.

Devin Brewer and John Hurd are two musicians from Seattle, their approach is to let the consumer control the price. They stumbled upon the concept when they decided, as a lark, to let their fans choose the price of their CD at the end of a performance. "Every time we let our fans choose the prices they paid for our shows and CDs, we always made more money. People who wanted to pay more, paid more. And people who didn't want to pay more were still able to contribute at lower prices," Brewer, SongSlide's CEO, reveals.

Using this idea as inspiration they created the slide. When you buy digital songs or albums on SongSlide, you can slide the price up or down. The higher the price, the higher the percentage that goes to the artist.

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At SongSlide The minimum price of a song is $0.59, however since launching in January 2007, the average price paid for a song is $1.66. "We're calling this new pricing method Consumer-Generated Pricing, and we feel it's a way to empower fans to become patrons of their favourite artists, even on a small scale. We've also filed a patent on this invention/business method and believe the pricing method can be applied to many other types of digital media and other products," Brewer states.

Will this be successful? D4Dirty Records hopes so. Model like this are the future and finding the ones that work are they only way this industry can succeed in the future.

You can check out their beta site to see Consumer-Generated Pricing in action at SongSlide.

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