The music of avant garde composer Kenneth Kirschner is open source, free to experiment with.
Other musicians are looking for sales models that may render hidebound and unimaginative music labels obsolete.
Allan Kozinn of the NY Times describes what Rabbit Rabbit Radio is doing.
“With some help from George Hurd, a composer and music administrator, [Matthias Bossi and Carla Kihlstedt] produced a blueprint for Rabbit Rabbit Radio and started the Web page in February 2012. The plan was to release a new song for subscribers on the first of every month.
“Along with the song, Ms. Kihlstedt and Mr. Bossi, who are married to each other, began posting video clips, slide shows and photo albums; information about the making of the track; essays on various subjects; and lists that might include links to clips by other musicians whose work they admire or notes about restaurants they have discovered on tour. Past releases can be explored in their online archives.
“Subscribers pay $2 to $5 a month. (There is no difference in access; it’s a matter of paying what you can.) …
“So far, 18 months into the project, Rabbit Rabbit Radio has nearly 900 subscribers.”
Pay-what-you-can usually relies on some people paying more than they would ordinarily pay for the product. Theaters offer it occasionally, but they could never survive just on that. Panera Bread struggled with the model when it first tested it in St. Louis.
John has told me about a video-game payment model that requires people to pay small amounts for tools that can help them win the otherwise free game. Sometimes, he says, there’s a pop-up in the intense middle of the game that says you have to wait eight minutes to continue but if you want to keep going right now, you can pay a small amount.
I think if you are motivated enough, you will pay a small amount for almost anything. I hope the approach works for Rabbit Rabbit.
Photo: Gretchen Ertl for the NY Times
Matthias Bossi and Carla Kihlstedt, with their daughter, 4.
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