Broadjam Delivers Indie Tracks To Radio, But It’s No Bargain.
Broadjam, one of several sites who enable indie musicians sell downloads direct to fans has added "Radio Delivers" to it’s suite of services. Using the same company and technology that delivers songs from major labels to commercial radio stations around the country, Broadjam promises to deliver indie tunes plus bio and tour info to these same stations electronically.
But with a cost of $5-$10 per track per station is it really that cost effective? And what are the odds that a music director will ever play the track on the air?
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Altho I may try to be among the first to try this service, I can’t help to think that MusicCrypt may be shooting themselves in the foot by offering such a service to anyone. I do not work at a radio station, so I can not confirm how this service is used or if any radio stations actually use this service in place of opening up 75 pieces of mail every week. But I would imagine that whichever radio stations use MusicCrypt, they probably expect a certain level of quality and prestige that major labels can bring more so than what unsigned artists can bring. I don’t doubt that a good indie can surpass anyone on a major as far as song quality, but when technology like this previously relies on a filter, the filter disappears once you open up the service for anyone with $10.00 to participate.
Think of it this way. Let’s say EMUSIC emailed you a free mp3 every day. Lets say for the first year every song was among the cream of the indie rock crop. You would check your email religiously for your daily fix of new, high quality rocknroll. Now, what happens when the special selection of songs is infiltrated with any band with a recording program on their computer and a CD BABY account. Although the web’s opportunities for indie musicians is beautiful, the more that are allowed through the gate, the more the end user has to sort. And if the rate of quality decreases, eventually the end user will become fatigued.
What it comes to is…reguardless of talent or songwriting abilty, anyone can distribute an mp3 on the Internet, but not everyone can put together a high quality package. What this does is slow down the so called imminent transition from physical to digital music because the professionally packaged physical products are what will still end up seperating the men from the boys. If it looks like someone put a million bucks behind it than we that altleast somewhere a filter exists before coming our way.