Karmafan in the Irish Times

We were mentioned in Jim Carroll’s column in the Ticket today:

Sounds like he really gets the idea:

Instant Karma for new bands

David Barton and Kulpreet Singh believe that every struggling new band out there needs a Karmafan or two.

That’s the name of the new service from the Dublin-based duo aimed at bands interested in seeing if Radiohead’s tip-jar approach to getting fans to pay for music might also work for them.

Karmafan’s free-to-use service allows people to make voluntary payments to bands if they like their music.

Fans can set up accounts with the service, top it up with a credit card or Paypal payment, and then spread the love among acts they like, provided the band in question are sporting a Karmafan button on their website, MySpace or blog.

Barton and Singh won’t take a cent from these micro-payments, believing that the idea of tips also applies to them.

“If an artist believes that Karmafan has helped them, then they can give something back.”

More information from www.karmafan.com

Strike by Writers Guild and Amazon Kindle

There are two news items that if put together raise an interesting question about how artists should a) distribute their works and b) make money from their works. We suggest artists give away their works on the Internet and use the Internet to receive voluntary payments from their fans.

First the two news stories

1. The strike by the Writer’s Guild of America continues and AMPTP has agreed to resume talks with the the writer’s guild’s representatives on the 26th of November. How the dispute will be resolved is anybody’s guess.
2. Amazon released an ebook reader called Kindle. It apparently handles a whole lot of formats and I didn’t see a mention of DRM anywhere.

So if you are a writer and want to make a living from your work you have a choice. You can either write a book, get it published and hope it will reach enough book stores to provide enough sales so that you can make some kind of living. Or you can write a book, a short story, a poem and publish it via the Internet.

A lot of books these days are being sold as PDFs for a discounted price. Interestingly, the distribution of books is not being as tightly controlled by DRM – even the music industry will give up on such models soon. In fact, if we look at most of musicians on MySpace a lot of them are selling their music through CDBaby, PayPlay and other such sites.

A smart writer or a musician will instead give away his writing, music, programming code or anything they create freely on the Internet. This will result in more people reading or hearing your works than you can hope to reach with book stores or iTunes.

But How Will Authors and Musicians Make Money?

Before answering this question we’d like to point out the problem that musicians and writers have these days. Most musicians and writers struggle to get their works read. Utilising the distribution modes that the Internet offers can only be a smart move. Much smarter than trying to sell your poems on the streets.

So how does an artist make money? The answer is simple – patronage. Open as many channels as you can for your fans to show their appreciation, to give something back. That is exactly what we provide with Karmafan. So why aren’t you using it yet?

Karmafan in Irish Daily Mail

Karmafan was mentioned in today’s Irish Daily Mail.

“MUSICAL KARMA
Radiohead let their fans choose what to pay for their latest album. But can any artist do the same? Dublin-based website Karmafan has now made it easy for fans to give something back. Musicians can accept voluntary payments even by text message, and what’s more — it’s free to use. Find out more at www.karmafan.com”

Product update

Just a quick post about a few changes and upgrades we’ve made over the last few days.

ONE-TIME SUPPORT
Fans can now give an artist a single voluntary payment without topping up or joining Karmafan. Their support is anonymous but it’s the quickest way to send support.

VERIFICATION OF PROFILES ON SHOWCASEYOURMUSIC.COM
A lot of artists who use showcaseyourmusic.com have asked us about getting support through Karmafan. We’ve updated our verification process to include showcaseyourmusic.com and we’re adding more sites all the time. If you would like us to include a particular music showcase site you use to promote or distribute your work, e-mail us at support@karmafan.com

NON-FLASH WIDGET
For anyone who prefers not to use Flash, we now have a DHTML/AJAX widget available. This will not work on MySpace, as they don’t allow DHTML widgets, but of course the Flash widget will continue to work as normal on MySpace profiles and any other site. Both types of widget are shown on the right.

New artists

We’ve had a busy couple of weeks, with a number of artists signing up each day, from established musicians with a long history of performing around the world, to independent musicians just starting out.

Carlos de Nicaragua “has been a songsmith, poet, musician, political activist for justice and equal rights most of his 50 years”. He was one of the first to feel a “Positive Vibration” about Karmafan and to really understand what we’re trying to do.

Eoin Dillon, one of the founder members of Kíla, loved the idea of as many people as possible being able to hear his music.

Jalebi were also very positive about Karmafan and wrote to say “thank you and congratulate Karmafan.com for offering a much needed service to artists, musicians and all other creative individuals who have talents and services that people around the world appreciate and would like to support”

Francesco Amico was one of the first musicians to get involved, and has been very encouraging. He’s based in Dublin and is a member of the “The Young Composers Collective” (YCC), a non-profit organisation of composers whose mission is to promote new music in Ireland.

Greg Gobel is another member who joined Karmafan at an early stage. Greg plays his “homebrewed acousto-funk” in Madrid and organises open mic sessions for local musicians.

Dave Flynn really gets the idea: “If you don’t want to buy the CD but like the music then why not consider donating something to Dave via karmafan. Karmafan let’s you donate any amount to Dave, even 10 cents, every little helps you know!”

Others are at the beginning of their careers, such as Catriona. She’s 14 but has a great voice and, as “the granddaughter of legendary Latin recording artist, Alberto Vazquez”, she also has a strong family connection to making great music.

Would love to write something about each artist but there’s plenty of work to do. We’ll definitely make time to mention in more detail the artists who have signed up, but for now will just post a quick list in no particular order of some of the more recent members.

Michael Riversong
Carlo Capocasa
soo p and the outsider
Mike Borgia
soliloquise
URR Records

Mail on Sunday mentions Karmafan

Karmafan was mentioned in the Irish Mail on Sunday in their review of In Rainbows – the idea of karma really took hold and was repeated throughout the piece, from the headline:

“Thom leaves good karma up to you…”

through to “Radiohead are trusting in karma”.

The reference to Karmafan was a good summary of the idea in a few lines:

“Irish site Karmafan.com may help. Artists can submit work to the site and fans can pay a stipend or one-off fee in admiration and patronage of the work”

It’s not exactly how Karmafan works, but it’s close enough and they did understand that it’s all about patronage.

Radiohead album released

Amazing media buzz around the release. Looks like people are starting to think that maybe artists can trust their fans.

Posting

Spent some time posting comments to various boards to see how people react. Musicians seem to feel that it’s a cool idea but are slow to sign up until others are using it. At the other end of the spectrum, game modders – who are definitely creative and spend a lot of time crafting their work but don’t consider themselves artists – don’t feel that anyone would give them anything. Really don’t believe that. You may only give a small amount, but so many creations are worth supporting.

Radiohead

Bands like Radiohead show how artists can develop a direct connection with their fans. They know that people will give something back if the music is good. The Internet allows you to make your work available to all, but it goes both ways. It also allows your fans to reciprocate – to show you that they care, that they are listening. You’ve got to trust your fans.

Karmafan provides a way for artists to do just that – trust that their fans will respond to what they enjoy. No fees, no telling you how to distribute – just a quick and easy way to let fans give something back.

Karmafan released

So now we’re starting to let artists, musicians, bloggers, writers and other creatives know that there’s a new way to get support for their work.

It’ll be interesting to get some feedback from people. We think that fans will support something they really enjoy – even small amounts can add up very quickly if you have enough fans.

And it’s not just artists in the traditional sense of the word. Bloggers, software developers, game modders, journalists, font-makers – anyone who creates something for others to enjoy.

Well, hopefully we’ll have more time to blog now that the site is up and running.

Dave