Magnatune

Magnatune is an independent label from Berkeley (California, USA). It was founded in spring 2003 by John Buckman. It differs from the rest of the music industry, especially by emphasizing the self-imposed target to treat both musicians and customers fairly; the company slogan is " We are not evil" ( German "We are not evil "). After it initially was only possible to download music from the labels as files, since 2004 the possibility is also offered to buy CDs.

Magnatune concludes with the musicians neither exclusive contracts, nor can transfer the exclusive right of exploitation, as is the case with most labels. Instead, it licenses the pieces and gives the musicians thus the opportunity to offer their music for other labels. The musicians receive 50 percent of revenue.

Potential customers can enjoy the music on the Magnatune website or via the music player Amarok, version 1.4.4, from version 0.4 Clementine, Rhythmbox from version 0.9.8 and trial hear Banshee with the Magnatune extension is free and unlimited. This is to albums in full length (64 kbps) can be part of a trial over a stream in each medium (128 kb / s) or low-quality. Albums could be purchased separately to March 2010, with the price per album (or 5-18 U.S. dollars) could be self-determined by the customer on a scale of 4-14 euros. Meanwhile albums are only sold on flat-rate basis, so that the customer can download for a monthly fixed fee, as many albums. Decides the customer to download the files, he has the choice between lossless formats such as WAV and FLAC, as well as lossy formats such as MP3, Ogg Vorbis and AAC.

Magnatune tried a number of the more unusual methods to attract new buyers. Customers are explicitly asked by Magnatune to the purchased albums pass it on to three friends. For non-commercial projects, such as podcasts, the use of all of the music labels is basically free; it is under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial -ShareAlike license. Even commercial projects that have a small budget and little profit outlook, the music can use free of charge by arrangement with Magnatune. Unlike other platforms ( such as Jamendo ) Magnatune offers the authors only mentioned the license; the other CC licenses (such as Attribution ShareAlike Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivs or ) are not available. Therefore, Magnatune is only interesting for those musicians and composers, which exclude the general commercial use of their work, modifications or work under the same license but want to allow.