80 Proof Music actually has a few enemies, in two forms: other digital music stores, such as iTunes Music Store and AmazonMP3, and organized forms of music sharing, like BitTorrent and Usenet.  Both forms have significant mindshare and their own sets of strengths and weaknesses, and what 80 Proof Music must do is provide a superior or comparable alternative to them.

Competing with the existing stores is easy.  They dictate format and quality, where we intend to give our customers choices.  Their previews are small clips where we will provide full-length previews.  We’re optimizing for the customer experience, which is not something we feel the other parties do.

Competing with file sharing is more difficult, because free is what it is.  Here we can’t provide a superior product because you can find full-quality copies for free and there’s no beating that.  What we can do is give people the same quality product and give them the option to support the artists too.

We can also provide something missing from torrents and Usenet posts; reliability.  No torrents stalled because there isn’t anyone seeding.  No missing chunks because some of the binary posts didn’t make it through.  I’d like it if we had more advantages over piracy than that, but simply giving people who enjoy the superior aspects of pirated music a legitimate way to collect seems like a good start to me.

80 Proof Music is going to give artists a way to sell to people like Bryan and I, who want to buy music, but don’t want to buy it at reduced quality or on physical media.  Right now the only ones meeting that demand are the torrent seeders and Usenet posters.  I have to hope that the larger vendors remain ignorant (or arrogant?) and continue to give up the potential business, because it can only mean good things for us.

Happily Wallpapered Dual Displays

So here you go!

1280 x 1024 (standard 4:3 ratio)

1680 x 1050 (widescreen 16:9)

For users of our store (AKA “customers”), I feel there’s no question that having full-length previews makes for a better experience.  I never feel confident that I’ll like a song I’ve heard only a short clip from, as AmazonMP3 allows.  But our good friends over at Sector 9 Studios provide complete previews and I’ve found myself buying music there that I wasn’t otherwise expecting to enjoy simply because I was given the chance to try it out first.

Our concern is that some artists and labels will fear copying too much and not allow us to offer full previews of their music.  But it doesn’t make sense to us that people who would otherwise be paying customers might instead do the work involved in recording the previews on their own computers.  It should go without saying that for their effort, they won’t be getting full quality music or cover art.

There’s also some concern that ASCAP will storm in RIAA-style and hassle us on some imagined trespass in the form of rebroadcasting or one of their other restricted activities.  Bryan says, rightly, that we should be fine because we’ll have permission from the copyright-holders, but the actions of those two organizations have been often been astonishingly void of reason.

Ultimately our goal is to sell more music and we feel that full-length previews, in addition to being a classy way to treat users of our store (because we’re not calling everyone thieves) are extremely important when trying to sell music of exceptionally varied styles and textures to discriminating music fans.

How do you feel about previews?  Do they affect your decision to buy new music?  Musicians, do you feel comfortable with your own music being previewed completely before purchase?

At launch, the store will only sell digital music.  We feel strongly about digital music formats being a better option for consumers than CDs.  And we also feel strongly that DRM is anti-consumer to its very core, and you will never find us supporting it.

That said, we aren’t ruling out the eventual sale of physical media, including Compact Discs and especially Vinyl.  We’re just not making it a priority.

Now, digital formats can be a funny topic, because a lot of people think digital music is MP3 and vice versa, so when I say “digital formats” with such confident plurality people are already confused.  Well it’s true, there are several to choose from, and if you ask me, MP3 is not the best of them.  In addition to being a lossy compression scheme, there are licensing problems involved with the technology.  It’s not included in the most popular Linux distribution, Ubuntu, due to these restrictions.

Of course MP3 does have almost universal support going for it, so you can bet it’s the first format we’re going to launch with.  At launch, it may be the only one but, sooner or later, it will be joined by several other options, including a favorite alternative of mine, Ogg Vorbis. Ogg, as it’s colloquially called, is not only free (as in speech, not beer) but it lets us get away with smaller files for the same or better quality.  Pretty cool.

We have some other formats in mind, with their own advantages and drawbacks, but let’s save that discussion for another time.

Do you have a format we should think about offering?  Want to share some thoughts on the topic?  Comment below (don’t forget to Register so you don’t have to enter your info every time) or send us an email!

80 Proof Music is a commercial endeavor from the people behind ninebullets.net. The idea is to become the go-to place for the purchase of Americana/Country/Alt.Country/Blues music and all the grey areas that fall between these genres. Basically, the same kind of music you see covered on ninebullets.net and blogs of its ilk on a daily basis.  Along the way we think we’re gonna be able to offer some buyer-friendly features that  will hopefully set us apart from an admittedly crowded wading pool.

For now we wanted to open the floor to folks to see what needs they have in an online music store that aren’t currently being met. Also, if you’re an artist or label that might be interested in having your music carried by 80 Proof, feel free to email us.

In the days and weeks to come as we work toward launching the store, you’ll see more info appear here about what to expect when the store opens.  We’re very excited about it and we hope you’ll see why as more details are revealed!

80 Proof Music
Music, Booze, and the Pursuit of Tacos