The more I think of it, the more I think that many music services – at least in Indonesia – are going about it the wrong way. Since 2008, Indonesia has had a number of online music download stores. Various business models were tried – an ISP tried ISP billing, telcos tried charging via SMS, and some others even had a choice of payment systems; either through SMS or electronic voucher.

Investments in (quite expensive) hosting and delivery systems were made, in an attempt to replicate what seemed to work overseas – the music download. Essentially, users will pay for a song that they want, and only the song that they want, and download it to their choice device. Most services were required to implement digital rights management (DRM) as a way to circumvent unauthorized copying, and the files themselves were usually confined to the device that downloaded the file.

Needless to say, it didn’t work. It has never delivered the results that the music industry wants, that’s for sure.

Continue reading [Music Monday] Why Music Download Stores Won’t Work In Indonesia

Punya band yang udah rekaman sendiri, lalu pengen terjun jualan secara digital? Gue yakin di sini harusnya banyak ya yang punya keinginan serupa. Pilhannya selama ini tampaknya adalah dengan menyerahkan materi lo ke label-label yang udah punya koneksi ke online music store yang udah ada (dan rela dipotong sana-sini keuntungannya, dan ngikutin berbagai aturan yang diterapkan music store tersebut).

Nah yang ngga mau kayak gitu, ada yang udah coba Bandcamp? Lewat Bandcamp ini elo bisa upload lagu-lagu lo, kemudian jualan sendiri tanpa jadi bagian dari online music store manapun. Cocok untuk band-band kecil atau indie yang belum bergabung dengan label besar dan masih memegang sendiri hak edar lagu-lagu mereka. Atau bisa juga buat indie label yang mau coba-coba jual katalog mereka secara online

Continue reading Jualan Musik Digital Sendiri Lewat Bandcamp