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Airborne Music: Connecting artists and fans for just $1 a month (Update)

A revolution has taken place in the world of music and it has been born out of Cape Town. According to Airborne Music, that will be launching soon with a line-up of 72 local and international artists, there are two truly important people in the music industry: the artist and the fan and what they set out to accomplish, was to find a way to directly connect them in an easy, inexpensive and efficient way.
During a time when music revenue has plummeted more than 60% in the past decade and the viral spread of file sharing is blocked by restrictive licensing resulting in the loss of millions of potential fans, Airborne provides the antidote and a new solution to the business of the music industry by providing fans with the music they love, and the artists with the payment they deserve. For just $1 a month, any fan, they call a carrier, anywhere in the world has unlimited access to the msuic they want with 70% of that going directly to the artist. Just minutes after an artist’s content is released, the fan can consumer and share that content.
The fan, or rather the carrier, can share music content, stored in the cloud, with anyone in the world on any device or social network. The idea is that with every link shared for an artist’s content, the more quickly its spreads creating a viral tidal wave of support for that artist and the spreading of similar music content between friends. Here, there are no restrictions or borders when it comes to sharing content and generating support for an artist.

Airborne Music works directly with the artists and their representatives, so there is no middle man and Airborne shares the love, legally. For the artists, Airborne offers more than just a regular, subscription-style revenue stream. Airborne enables real-time tracking of a fan’s behaviour – who is downloading the tracks, who is sharing them, who is encouraging and recruiting new fans and who deserves a reward for their loyalty.
“Music is the virus and the virus is Airborne.”
Learn more about Airborne and create an account here. 
Update: Airborne Music officially launched its network this morning, the 20th December 2011.

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6 Comments

  1. Awesome! Great design (although the video on the site feels a bit over-the-top).
    I’ve got a question (if the airborne guys are reading this): As I understand it, you pay $1 per artist per month to listent to all their music they release? If so, then the fans can share that music wherever they want (on social networks). If my friend signs up, and then ‘share’ all the songs on Facebook, why would I pay $1 for the artist if I can just listen it through my friend?
    Why, as a fan, do I spend the $1/month? Is it because I mainly want to support the artist and say “hey! make more music! I like it!”? Or is the $1 mainly for ease-of-use as opposed to just listening to it when all my friends are sharing it?

  2. sjoe! BWB sure breaks news fast! Thank you!
    The Airborne Network actually goes live at 4:20AM tomorrow (20/12), we’d hoped to keep this under wraps for the next 16 odd hours but hey, here we are!
    @twitter-17881672:disqus to answer your question – “why would I pay $1 for the artist if I can just listen it through my friend?”
    The answer is simple, because you love the Artist.
    The idea would be that you support the Artists you love and your friends support the ones they love and you both enjoy the music. Being a Carrier has some cool benefits though, music from Artists you Carry is immediately sent to you first. It’s also stored in the cloud for life, for free so you can download, stream it and love it for as long as you both shall live. You pick what quality you want, high, med, low or loss-less. (Non-Carriers only get the low-Q version and no lifelong storage.)
    In addition, as a Carrier, you are on the Artist’s map. How you share the music and the number of new Carriers recruited through your sharing builds your score which is the best way to become the ‘number one fan’. The best thing about that is that now the Artist knows you, and can slip you some backstage passes or a tshirt or whatever they feel worthy of your support, just to say thank you. It’s about the long game of building relationships.
    Does that all make sense?

    1. I understand better now! Thanks Justin.
      Some healthy criticism: I do recommend making it a bit more clearer to the user. At first I thought I would be paying $1/month for all artist music (sort of like Spotify). Focus on the basic value proposition: I pay $1/month to my favourite band to receive their music. The fan/carrier sharing benefits are auxiliary.
      Best of luck! Great to some more music startups in the fairest Cape!

  4. Your strategy for acquiring new music is to deal with the artists directly, correct? I can however see two fundamental flaws with this strategy:
     1) To even remotely consider becoming an international brand you will eventually HAVE to start dealing with record labels especially for international content and to grow in to new markets. With Record Label’s archaic structures I highly doubt they’ll allow this type of deal unless you have serious financial backing. How do you plan to overcome this?
    2) Most artists struggle just to organise their shows let alone know how to manage their careers ESPECIALLY when it comes to the online distribution of their music. How do you plan to scale this so that all artists can get involved easily?
    And lastly, why would I use Airborne if I was based in any european country if I’ve got services like Spotify etc whereby I can still get all the music, however at a fixed rate (vs here I have to pay for every artist I like – this can get expensive)?
    Thanks

  5. Hi
    I though I would sign up as i’m looking to discover some new music and what the hell it’s only one dollar.
    1) The page was really difficut to find on google, not helped by the fact that there is a band of the same name. 
    2) The signup process was a bit intrusive and i’m not 100% comfortable with you holding all my credit card details
    3) On log in im confronted with a blank page apart from one icon at the bottom of the page, clicking this icon logged me out.
    4) I’m kinda stumped as to how to play music here. I’m expecting a last.fm kind of thing. The other icon has my profile, then a radar, strains and artists….buts theres nothing there to listen to!
    5) Clicked on the artist and another widow pops up! This one has artists, I click on an artis…another window pops up!
    6) On the artis page I have no idea how to get any music to play!
    7) Gives up and i go make myself a sandwich…
    Best of luck
    Tim
      

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