Legitimate Uses for Napster's Illegitimate Child

Crawling out from under the rock I've been living beneath, I discovered CornerBand.com, thanks to deadmoines.com. Ryan tipped me off to soul artist Jonah Smith's model for implementing file sharing as part of his marketing plan. To steal a page from one of my favorite online business writers, Jonah Smith is clued-in. CornerBand helps artists get the world out about their music, with Kazaa as part of the strategy, tying in to Kazaa's Music Desktop and giving away some slightly DRM'd audio files to anyone who downloads them.

Normally, I'd be anti-DRM, but in this case, it actually seems to be a fair trade. The musicians can offer tracks for free, playable for a certain number of times before you actually have to buy the track, or throw it out because it no longer works. Listeners get to decide whether or not they like what they hear, without any financial investment up front. Bands get something akin to a shareware model of distribution.

If you like the song enough that you want to keep listening to it forever, why shouldn't you have to kick something back to the artist?

Posted by Jake

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Legitimate Uses for Napster's Illegitimate Child

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