GIVING IT AWAY
Moby’s Gratis project shows the majors how it’s done.
If we’re being honest, it’s not every day we find ourselves wistfully browsing the pages of www.moby.com. But the king of ad soundtracks has uploaded an open-ended letter to EMI - who own Mute, the label he releases on - that caught our attention via one or two external music sites this morning. The message is hardly wrapped in cotton wool; addressing EMI directly, he openly questions their approach to digital distribution. Why do they limit sales of his music to iTunes when the majority of his listeners buy their music from Beatport where tracks sell for two or three times as much? The letter itself is interesting, but it doesn’t really tell us anything new - we know what the majors are like and still the world looks on with bewildered eyes. More interesting, to us at least, is the MobyGratis project, a free resource of unreleased Moby material made available for independent filmmakers struggling to covers the costs of licensing audio for their works.
MobyGratis contributes something meaningful to the creative community - and it does it for free. Moby gets it, we get it, the world gets it, but the majors don’t. EMI should read the letter and check out MobyGratis for an example of using music and the internet to build bridges rather than burn them. The majors could learn a thing or two from Moby.
The man himself introduces MobyGratis below.
Categories Music Tags Music Technology
By on 2/10/08
My Comment