Welcome to Gaia! ::

If anyone is interested and wants to be kept up to date just send me a PM saying whether you are a band/artist or a music downloader, thanks!

Okay, I am working for a computer company and we are in the progress of making a music downloading website. This site will not be live until July 4th 2007. Now what I'd like to do is tell yall alittle about it and get your opinions and ideas.
So to tell you about the website:

This website is for independent artists only so you won't find Justin Timberlake or Metallica. Now I don't know about you but I wasn't a person who ever really looked at independent bands/artists much. So something that makes this site different is we are going to make a few things to make it easier to find what you are looking for.
First is going to be the "sounds like" search option. When artists/bands submit their music we are going to ask them who THEY think they sound like(cold play, christina aguilera) and them we are going to submit it to a piece of software that looks at the music and tells based on that what it is similar too.

Another search option we are trying to create is what kind of song it is( break up, cheating, kill myself) so you will be able to search under "rock" for example and then "break up songs".

Now for the pricing, artists/bands pay $15 a year to have their music on the site. The artists/bands get to set their OWN price for downloading their music. Also the artists/bands will get 90% and us 10%, so if you charge 50 cents for downloading your song then you get 45 cents and we get 5 cents. The artists/bands will get checks monthly, but only if the amount is over ten dollars.
We don't take any of your rights to your music, we just want to distribute for you! We're not in this to get rich like a lot of the other sites, we are all musicians who know how hard it is to get your name out there

We also have a blog already set up, and we are thinking of having profiles, definitely for the artists/bands and then later maybe for our users if they are interested.

So in conclusion I'd like your input. Does this sound like something you would be interested in, do you have any ideas to make it better? If you are interested or know someone who is contact me by PM please. All we have up right now is a temp website until the real one is finished, and we are also keeping track of where we were able to reach out to people. They didnt seem interested in gaia much, so anyone I find from here will be used as a way for me to kinda stick my tongue out at them xd

Looking forward to July 4th. ^-^

awesome!

I also want to know what kind of quality you're planning to support. Sites like Soundclick will support up to 320bits and up to 40 meg songs for their VIP account. They also offer 10 mb songs at 128bits for FREE. I hope you're willing to beat that. As well, they have no limit to the number of songs you can upload.
One other thing to note is that for a price, they'll let you pick a song and have it displayed all over their site so that when someone logs in they see it. You pay for publicity but you get a huge number of hits. It's a pretty nice feature if you ask me.

I'm not trying to shoot you down, just giving you an artists perspective of what you're up against and I'm wondering how you can beat it.

Q:I want to hear my local bands!
A:get them to sign up! or since we are not live yet, PM me their emails or a way to contact them, or if you'd rather not hand out their email then send me a PM first and I will send you my email.

Q: what are the costs?
A: for bands/artists, $15 a year. for users/downloaders, free/just the cost of your downloads

*Alli says:
its for independent/ unsigned bands right?
Jay says:
right
Alli says:
so what if while on xiie they get a deal?
Alli says:
do u kick them off?
Jay says:
no major label artists allowed
Jay says:
no
Jay says:
as long as their independent wehn they sign on
Jay says:
they will stay on

*Alli says:
how long will the demo/preview be for songs?
Jay says:
30 sec
Alli says:
yay!
Jay says:
there will also be featured artists where you get to hear 1 complete song

*Song quality and format= 15 mbs @ 192 bits with unlimited uploads, and they will be mp3's.

*Alli says:
for the band and artist, will they just have a band page or will it be customizable like an actual profile page?
Jay says:
it will be semi-customizable
Jay says:
you can choose some different colors, but no html like myspace
Alli says:
so no graphics? or maybe certain spots where they can upload some?
Jay says:
they'll be able to upload some pics, but not really random graphics
Alli says:
ok cool
Jay says:
if they have their logo in .jpg form, they can do that
Jay says:
but not like a happy bunny pic, or something like that
Alli says:
so something relating to the band basically, right?
Jay says:
right

*Alli says:
also will they be able to have ALL their music on their page
Jay says:
people searching their page will see everything they have available
Jay says:
it will be categorized by album, but all visible

*Alli says:
will downloaders get profiles?
Jay says:
if they pay for the download protection plan, they will have a profile similar to the artists
Jay says:
otherwise, no, not a real profile
Jay says:
it will remember them, but it wont be customizable
Alli says:
whats the download protection plan?
Jay says:
ok
Jay says:
the people who download and buy songs, will only get them that one time
Jay says:
unless, they get a download plan
Jay says:
what that does, is have us save their purchases, so they can re-download for free if they ever need to
Alli says:
how much is it?
Jay says:
otherwise, without the plan, they would have to re-buy the mp3
Jay says:
$12 a year
Jay says:
cheap
Alli says:
so if for some reason they deleted the mp3 off their computer or something, without the plan they would have to re-buy it, but with the plan they could re-download it at no charge..... right?
Jay says:
right





I will add more as they come up!

hope ya don't mind the IM conversation format sweatdrop its easier for all of us to pass around xd

I also think we will have a newsletter soon that will later become a magazine! We are also working on getting something together for our users that will have been here from the start!

Woo Hoo! finally got a frontpage up where artists can download the user aggreement and send in their music whee