Revolution Void

The album Increase the Dosage was my first release on Jamendo. I found Jamendo when searching for Creative Commons music. Previously, I had released music through OurMedia (and I still do), but I liked the selection of music and features on Jamendo and so I published the album there. Since then, I'm continually impressed with the features Jamendo rolls out.

Take their spiral, for instance. Not only is the spiral a fresh and unique way to find out about new music, but it's done entirely without the use of Flash. I have nothing against Flash per se but it is still nice to see widgets created in pure DHTML.

Perhaps the best thing about Jamendo is the huge community of users, both musicians and fans. It seems that their user base is very active as well, with a penchant for reviews, comments, and a voracious appetite for music. In other words, this is the perfect audience for Creative Commons musicians looking to get heard by the world at large. According to their site, as of Saturday, May 12, 2007, Jamendo has 3313 published albums, 113891 active members, and 37197 album reviews.

Jamendo provides quite a few excellent services for musicians and fans alike. In January 2007, they began sharing 50% of their advertising revenue with the artists. It is divided proportionately according to how many pageviews the artist received. So, if you received 2% of the pageviews on jamendo.com then you are entitled to 1% of their advertising revenue. It's an astounding gesture, and is certain to attract more musicians to the site. The site is already growing like wildfire-- when I published Increase the Dosage in June 2006, there were 2225 albums on Jamendo, and the number of published albums has already increased by over 1000 since then. At this rate, an average of 90 albums per month are being added, all of which can be downloaded in their entirety for free. This is truly a revolutionary time, an online renaissance of open-source music.

Besides the great functionality and incentives for bands, Jamendo simply has a great online community with which to discuss your favorite bands, share playlsts and promote your favorite artists. You can review artists and comment on reviews. If you promote an artist (by emailing their link, writing a review, adding them to a playlist or otherwise recommending them) then you become part of that artist's "BuzzTeam." Your username and icon will appear on that artist's page along with a number, representing how many times you have promoted them. This gives an incentive to fans to promote their favorite artists, and is an innovative way to encourage audience participation and interaction with the bands.

Labels: creative commons, jamendo