Indieish : Guerilla video production for the web

John Buckman started Magnatune.com around 3 years ago, to give artists a better deal and create a record company fit for the slogan “We are not evil”.

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It’s a novel concept, giving artists a fair shake and a fair portion of the sales facilitated through the record label. Magnatune isn’t even jealous, they don’t prevent musicians from distributing their own music through other sources nor do they require a cut when the musician excercises that right.

John took some time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions for Indieish.com, and we really appreciate that. So, let’s get to know a little more about John, Magnatune.com and the idea that is changing the recording industry.

Where do you live?

I live in London and in Berkeley, California. I alternate 2 months living at each. Luckily, I was born in London by American parents, so I have dual citizenship.

What is your favorite food, why?

French “daube” which is a slowly cooked beef stew, because it’s so tender and meaty and the sauce is syrupy thick. You can get it in Southern France, and at Bistro Jeanty in San Francisco.

If you could be anything, what would it be?

I’m a big fan of Ray Kurzeil’s books, and would love to be immortal, as he claims we all will be by 2030. I’m having too much fun with life to stop!

If you had one superpower, what would it be? How would you use it?

Well, in my nasty moods, I’d love to change reality so that certain evil people just weren’t part of this reality. Lunching in Los Angeles, my wife and I witnessed a mother beating her 6 year old to a pulp for nothing at all. I’d be happier if this sort of thing just poof! vanished

What was the first moment you knew you wanted to start a record label?

I met Beth Quist, who is a musician now on Magnatune, at my lute teacher’s house, and she was saying that she was giving up putting out CDs because it’s just not worth the struggle. I then saw her perform that night and was blown away by her music. I thought: if someone this talented is going to give up, we’re all going to be poorer for it. But there didn’t seem to be any new business models that gave musicians a chance at earning a living (lots of good web sites for geining exposure, but getting paid enough to pay the rent is still a long way off)

Tell me what it was like to start magnatune. What did you do on your first day?

It’s perhaps sad, but I wrote up my ideas and went to visit a lawyer to find out if what I wanted to do was even legal. No-one had ever tried “listen to the whole album before buying” and there might be a good reason for that. Well… there was a good reason, and it meant a fair amount of legal exploration to figure out how to make it work.

And of course, before launching, I wanted to get 20 artists, otherwise there would be nothing to do at the magnatune web site. So
for 2 months before launching I listened to thousands of artists on www.cdbaby.com, since those are musicians that own their own music, and slowly recruited musicians for the magnatune launch. I knew the first onces would have to be really good, otherwise other good musicians wouldn’t want to be mixed in with junk later on.

Is magnatune your only job? If so, what was your final day job?

Magnatune is my only job, and it’s a little over 100 hours a week of work, so I’m very committed! Before Magnatune, I stated Lyris, an internet software company that made list server software, as well as anti-spam software. I grew that organically (no VC) over 11 years and finally sold it in spring 2005. I started Magnatune in spring 2003 because I’d had enough of managing 50 people, and had turned that over to people I’d hired. I have to wake up each day excited to do the work on my plate, otherwise life is a chore, and I can’t live like that. Luckily, as a programmer, you have the means to create products out of your mind, and thanks to the Internet you can get almost-free distribution, so it’s a great time to be alive.

How did you discover the Creative Commons?

I wanted to create a new concept of “open music” which was greatly influenced by the OSI’s “open source definition” (www.opensource.org) and was looking through all the licenses they’d certified, because the GPL didn’t work well for music. And there was Creative Commons, which was more than just a legal timesaver, it was the start of a movement, and Magnatune launched literally just 4 months after the creative commons was launched.

What is your perception of how the creative commons license fits the emerging artist(writer, musician, video producer, etc), and what effect (if any) has it had on your view of the artist and the artistic industry?

CC is really a “legal license engine” — they make it possible for musicians to identify what rights they want to keep, and which they want to grant, and a license is generated. So, there really isn’t a single “CC License”, there are several, and each has different goals. With Magnatune, I wanted to have non-commercial use be free, to give back to the commons and to encourage widespread distribution of our music, but I wanted commercial users to have to pay, specifically by using the Magnatune music-licensing engine. For my goals, the CC worked really well.

I think there’s a great fit between CC and emerging musicians, simply because the CC organization has always focussed on customized agreements for different goals, so there’s usually a license which fits.

The basic idea, of course, is that granting great freedoms to others may result in your own goals being met. In my case, the goals were financial (use CC to make more money) but for others the goal of CC might be exposure (build a fan base) or simply giving-stuff-away because it makes you feel good. To each their own.

How would you do to promote magnatune, if time money and resources were no object?

Money is always an issue, but if you’re asking the question a venture capitalist might ask: “if we gave you $10 million, how would you spend it?” it’d probably be to get more staff and help, so that all the things that are in progress now happen faster.

What are you working on now?

I just finished writing a full text search engine, so that searching at magnatune returns you amazon-style organized results by the type of hit (songs separated from albums separated from band names, for instance)

Next on the todo list are a series of magnatune weekly podcasts. I’m writing a ticket tracking system so that I can be sure that we give each inbound email our full attention, and so I can add more people to handle the inbound email load (there are two people now doing it). More interestingly, is a membership concept, where you can listen to magnatune streams without any advertisement, a feed for stores and restaurants, and a “My Magnatune Love” page, where listeners can organize what they’re listening to into playlists, keep a wish-list and see what other people are also recommending, sort of like del.icio.us but for magnatune playlists.

Who is your literary hero? Why?

I’m a book fanatic, and read 2 to 3 books a week. I recently discovered Carol Shields, a canadian writer whose sentences are gorgeous. Rushdie, I also love because of his playfulness, though his recent books could use some editing. Umberto Eco is always
great. And lots of scifi, but that’s not exactly “literature” : “The Space Merchants” by Pohl & Kornbluth, written in the 50s, is spot on.

What are your five favorite musical artists and, why?

I listen to a lot of different musical genres during the day, depending on my mood, so I’d have to list favorites by genre if I were to do that. On the heavy metal front, Slayer and Nevermore, in Indian Classical Hariprasad Chaurasia and Shivkumar Sharma, in New Age “Vas”, in Rock there are so many: Gary Numan, Stereolab, Wire.. Happy Rhodes is *amazing* (think Kate Bush at her best) and I’m trying to get her on Magnatune. Well, I could go on forever… I’ve ripped our 5000 CD library, and keep a terabyte array both in London and Berkeley so I’m never far from my music.

What were your five favorite musical artists when you were 15?

Uhm, this is going to seem schizophrenic: Brian Eno, Hilliard Ensemble, Metallica, Al Dimeola.

What is the one album you couldn’t live without?

I go nuts of “Switched On” by Stereolab, it always makes me feel good.

If you were to go to a record store right now and buy one album that was a guilty secret for consumption, what album would it be?

I recently bought a few AC/DC albums, as I’d never owned any of them, and felt guilty about it. Oh and last week it was a greatest hits by “Missing Persons” an 80s electro-pop band. ha!

What would be the single most defining ethic of your upbringing that is instrumental to your current life?

I always wanted to be a “do-er”, someone who gets his hands dirty and actually produces something, rather than pushing paper around or managing others. My father was a very gifted sculptor and flamenco guitarist when he was young, but gave that up to be a financier, and was miserable for decades as a result. In retirement, he eventually got to come back to it.

Also, my family nearly went bankrupt when the banks foreclosed on our house when I was 14, and that told me that borrowing money was a bad idea, and that you need to keep your skills current and valuable if you want to avoid risk. That’s how I became a programmer.

Years ago, when you started magnatune, did you think it would have the impact that it has had?

I was so excited when I started selling an album *every* *day* — wow, now that was success! The internet’s a very large place, and I never thought Magnatune would get much notice, but had to give it a try anyway. Thankfully, the RIAA started suing grandmothers for file trading, which caused massive press interest in non-evil music businesses, which gave me my first round of publicity in the fall of 2003. So, something good did come out of those RIAA lawsuits!

What has been the single most shocking revelation in your time running magnatune?

The depths of the evil in the music industry. Every time I think I’ve seen all the slime there is, some new horrible thing emerges.
Yesterday, while speaking at a copyleft conference in Spain, I found out that every CDR burned is charged a 0.20 euro fee, to pay off the copyright holders. The deep irony is that the proceedings at all the courts in Spain is audio recorded onto audio CDs, and every one of those incurs a copy-fee. This means that there is no such thing as free copying in Spain - the industry has imposed a blanket cost on all copying, whether it be fair or not. Naturally, the creative commons folks in spain are upset about this, and are fighting it in a novel way: they’ve made a “sue the government in 4 easy steps” that citizens can use to go to court for the 0.20 euro fee, and so far have won 2 cases, lost 2, and 1 is being kicked up for a higher court, which is really what the activists want. That’s just yesterday’s example — this industry has been so corrupt for so long that everywhere you look you find new examples.

Oh yes… another one. I was in Italy a last week, and a classical musician told me he has to pay fees to play a concert, as if he were a cover band playing contemporary music, because the collection society doesn’t recognize his right to play public domain music (which is anything written before 1928). This also applies to bands playing their own songs: they have to pay the collection society to do a concert, and the collection society is then supposed to take their fee and eventually pay the musician back. Wow, that’s all I can say.

Did you imagine life running a record label differently than it is in reality? how?

I really underestimated the amount of legal knowledge I’d need. I thought it was a more traditional business, but it’s not, it’s all
about little pieces of paper with obscure legal writing on them. Reducing the involvement of lawyers is probably what’s most exciting about the Creative Common’s mission.

It’s often said that every overnight success is ten years in the making. Can you relate this to your own experiences and, if so, how?

Absolutely — with Lyris we starved — litterally, eating spaghetti every night, for 6 years, before things started to look up. It’s
great that Magnatune is the top hit in Google for “music licensing” but we’re so early to the game, the there’s not that much business coming in from online music licensing. This is definitely a 10 year gamble : I’m hoping that another 2 or 3 years and we’ll start to make a greater impact with Magnatune on the world stage.

You are a well known name in free culture and technology circles, what is the best part of that notoriety?

Getting access to really smart, gifted people is the greatest benefit. These are people who can change your worldview in 10 minutes’ conversation, and the only way to get access to them is to do work they admire.

Another nice aspect is helping, in a small way, with other’s great work. Webjay was a wonderful project that Yahoo recently bought, and Last.fm is something I really admire that’s starting to really hit its stride.

What’s next for John?

I’m trying to get out of the day-to-day operations of Magnatune, so that I can focus on the really interested growth-oriented projects. Also, I had a bunch of interesting possible-other-companies to start, such as a worldwide rights society for open content, but don’t have the time right now for new projects.

What is your favorite word?

the german word “echt” which means something like “genuine, original, the real deal”. Then again, schmecht means “yummy” which is a great word too. I lived in Berlin for a few months before the wall went down, and do love some German words. In English, there’s the word “trimtab” which Buckminster Fuller pointed out is the little pieces on the rudder, which tells the rudder how to move, which tells the ship how to move. That’s what Bucky was always after: the trimtab, the little levers that can push the world in new ways. The GPL, which is “just” a legal agreement, definitely fits that definition.

What is your least favorite word?

“right” both in the sense of “it’s my right” and “it’s the right thing to do”

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Ideas that can change the world, yet have immediate short-term benefits so that the long term benefits may be realizable.

What turns you off?

Taking without giving, aka the Tragedy of the Commons.

What is your favorite curse word?

Gosh darn it. Only America could have invented something so clean as a curse word.

What sound or noise do you love?

I go nuts for cartoon voices — the voices in the move “Mars Attacks” for instance, I fall over laughing every time I hear it.

What sound or noise do you hate?

That damned high pitch feedback noise that was momentary very popular with experimental electronica artists like Aphex Twin. Ow!

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

One of the pleasures of running Magnatune is that I get to try lots of other professions, so lately I’ve been dabbling at being a
classical music recording engineer/producer, as well as a photographer of my musicians.

What profession would you not like to do?

I hate managing people who don’t want to do their jobs. Managing people who want to do their jobs isn’t managing at all, that’s just coordinating, and that’s a joy. After running a 50 person company, I just can’t do management any more.

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

I loved the movie “Defending your Life”, so I’d have to say it would be “john, you didn’t let fear control your life”

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