Musicians should allow their recorded works to be shared, copied and distributed for free.
Musicians must support various means of generating income. Foregoing the insignificant income from album sales will result in a larger audience and thereby increasing profits from touring and merchandise sales. Considering musicians make only about $1.00 off of each album sold, successful artists already generate the bulk of their revenue from alternative means.
musicNeutral asks artists to focus on earning money from touring, merchandise, royalties and other creative methods.
1) Donate. We’ve set up a donation system on this site to begin collecting donations for musicians. Donations can be seen as a way to provide alternative income for artists and encourage them to share their music for free.
2) Educate yourself . We provide news, links, and related information encouraging alternative means of income for musicians (other than album sales).
3) If you are a musician:
Musicians who have sold the copyright to their music can collect donations as an alternative to traditional sources of revenue.
Musicians who own the copyright to their music can collect donations and are encouraged to let everyone know their music is free to share by displaying the musicNeutral logo on their site. The idea is that music can be downloaded from the musician’s site while your fans can pay what they want through donations at musicNeutral. After you display the code on your site you can register here.
The music industry's current practice gives less than $1.00 from each album sold. By giving monetary contributions directly to the artist, musicNeutral users provide additional income for artists while simultaneously encouraging artists to abandon their reliance on album sales as a means of profit. Additionally, user donations help offset the negative effects of common industry practice and illegal downloading.
musicNeutral will send all contributions to the musician once the musician has earned at least $25.00 or after the passing of 1 year from the first user’s contribution. All mature payments to musicians will be simultaneously delivered on the 1st of each month.
Yes! Please submit the registration form on our site:
http://www.musicneutral.com/musicianregister.php
We have a list of musicians we are working to verify and get registered on the site. We will contact you when we are available to validate.
No. We will not take any portion of your donation.
Chris and others who help edit and solve technical problems. If you’d like to help us out or if you have comments or ideas about how to improve the site, send us an
email.
We'd love to hear from you! If you have any suggestions, something to contribute or found a bug
email Us or
leave a comment.
Sure, to donate to a band not listed in the musicNeutral directory
go here.
The short answers: yes and yes.
Copyright issues such as these are clearly explained by Creative Commons at the website http://www.creativecommons.com.
We encourage all musicians to educate themselves about “Some Rights Reserved” licensing and to sign up for a Creative Commons license.
First, we must say that musicNeutral completely supports Creative Commons and hopes all musicians will also sign up for a Creative Commons license.*
What we share with Creative Commons is the idea that copyright laws are too rigid. We both agree that published works deserve the freedom to be shared, for non-commercial use, without all the legal strings that come with a traditional copyright.
Whereas Creative Commons provides licenses available for a broad range of published work, musicNeutral focuses specifically on recorded music. Our hope is that by concentrating our effort we can more forcefully impact the current state of the music industry.
Another difference: Creative Commons doesn’t store information about which musicians are using Creative Commons. What we have created at musicNeutral is a community of musicians and fans who embrace the philosophy of legally sharing music. Thus, by first registering musicians on our site, we know whether musicians are willing to share their music or collect donations. And beyond that we also provide the ability to interact with musicians through commenting and donations.
*For more information about Creative Commons: http://www.creativecommons.org
