Fair Trade Coffee, Meet Fair Trade Music – Where They Cut Out the Evil Middlemen Too
Another day, another artist community launches. Fair Trade Music is a new site that strives to step aside from the music industry and cut out the middlemen in it. Donations can be made to artists. They keep 100% of the money. This way, artists who don't want to sign with the big bad record labels can thrive through direct support from their loyal audience.
Artists will also be able to notify fans of their concert listings and other such happenings. Basically, the site does exactly what you would expect it too. Fans discover music and artists are given the tools to reach them. It's difficult to say if any features separate this website from the numerous others that are just like it, but named differently. The idea of "Fair Trade Music" is something that people have been talking about for years. While it's good that another site has tried to capture this ideology, I'm uncertain if they've succeeded. It's pretty standard.
Fair Trade Music does nothing that we haven't seen before.
What other artist communities are exactly like this?
I had this idea about 5 months ago. Fair trade music!
They’re not exactly communities, but lots of bands are using KickStarter and PledgeMusic to allow fans to directly contribute to making an album. I wonder if Fair Trade Music will do anything different since it seems this kind of thing is trendy.
I have to wonder what steps this “community” has taken to align itself with the rest of the fair trade community. As an individual and musician directly involved in the fair trade music movement in the US and Canada ( http://www.fairtrademusicpdx.org ) I can say that we have taken great pains to ensure that musicians earn at least the local minimum wage. It’s something we are not willing to waver from. The concept of a guaranteed wage is the power behind the fair trade concept. It’s also something that seems to be lacking from this site
Actually, Fairtrade-music is not a matter of “minimum wages”, even if there is “fairtrade” in it. Behind the fair trade concept, there is the problem of the various middlemen; in the music industry in particular. This is what we are trying to fight. So we are building a kind of ‘toolbox’ to help smaller artists, who would like to develop themselve aside this industry. “Fans discover music and artists are given the tools to reach them” without any middlemen.
@Coreyeb, i think KickStarter and PledgeMusic do not allow to share music with friends as we do, with the secure streaming player.
@Yoan How would you compare this Fair Trade Music to Fair Trade Coffee, Cocoa or any of the other Fair Trade movements.
@Graham I think, the principle of your movement is to ensure that musicians earn the local minimum wage. I agree with you, this is one of the key principles of FairTrade. But we are also trying to help marginalized artists (from the music industry), connecting them to worldwide music lovers and allowing access with fewer middlemen. With the Fair Trade Coffee or cocoa they are doing the same thing. They are trying to help small producers, connecting them to customers and allowing access with fewer middlemen.