Magnatune
Magnatune is an independent label from Berkeley (California, USA). It was founded in the spring of 2003 by John Buckman. It differs from the rest of the music industry primarily in its emphasis on the self-imposed goal of treating both musicians and customers fairly; the company slogan is “ We are not evil ” (German: “We are not evil”). At first it was only possible to download music from the label as files , but since 2004 it has also been possible to buy CDs .
Magnatune does not conclude exclusive contracts with the musicians , nor can the exclusive exploitation rights be transferred, as is the case with most labels. Instead, it licenses the pieces and thus gives the musicians the opportunity to offer their music on other labels. The musicians receive 50 percent of the income.
Potential customers can try the music on the Magnatune website or via the music players Amarok from version 1.4.4, Clementine from version 0.4, Rhythmbox from version 0.9.8 and Banshee with the Magnatune extension free of charge and without restrictions. These are full-length albums that can be listened to in medium (128 kb / s) or low (64 kbps) quality via a stream . Until March 2010, albums could be purchased separately, whereby the price per album could be determined by the customer on a scale of 4–14 euros (or 5–18 US dollars ). In the meantime, albums are only sold on a flat rate basis, so that the customer can download any number of albums for a fixed monthly fee. If the customer decides to download the files, they can choose between lossless formats such as WAV and FLAC , as well as lossy formats such as MP3 , Ogg Vorbis and AAC .
Magnatune seeks to attract new buyers through a number of more unusual methods. Magnatune explicitly requests customers to give the purchased albums to three friends. For non-commercial projects, such as podcasts , all of the label's music can be used free of charge; it is under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike license. Even commercial projects that have a low budget and little chance of profit can use the music free of charge after consulting Magnatune. In contrast to other platforms (such as Jamendo ), Magnatune only offers the authors the license mentioned; the other CC licenses (such as Attribution ShareAlike or Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivs) are not available. Therefore, Magnatune is only of interest to those musicians and composers who exclude the general commercial use of their works, but want to allow arrangements under the same license.
Publications (selection)
- 2004: Drop Trio - Leap
- 2005: Daniel Berkman - Calabashmoon - The Kora Music of Daniel Berkman
- 2006: Shlomo Mintz - Mozart: The Five Violin Concertos / Sinfonia Concertante / Concertone ( re-release )
- 2011: Eyot - Horizon
Web links
- Official website
- Nobody wants to steal from the musicians. John Buckmann and his online label Magnatune . In: Neue Musikzeitung 03/2004, p. 40 (March 2004)