Fairtilizer is The Do It Yourself Music Club

I originally learned about Fairtilizer from Steven Hodson and Sarah Perez back in September. I’ve been playing with the service on and off, using it to find new music as well as trying to see if I wanted to make it the home for my own music. I think Sarah put it best in her post on RWW:

Fairtilizer isn’t a record company – it’s a new music company. What’s the difference? A record company is about owning the rights to music and establishes an employer/employee relationship with the artists. A music company, on the other hand, is about having artists establish a relationship with a service. At Fairtilizer, they believe the services they provide will establish them as the “music company” of the future.

Private Tracks

One of the features that stuck out to me was the ability to create a private stream. We all know about albums and tracks being leaked before the release date. There are usually a bunch of people involved in the production of an album, so it’s easy to break that circle of trust. For instance, the new Asher Roth album drops on 4/20 but I heard from a friend that it’s already available for download (no, I will not tell you where). Fairtilizer will let you set a track to private so that the URL is password protected . This makes it easy for a select few to hear the track, but it would be pretty hard (but by no means impossible) to steal it.

So, you can ditch the promo CD’s and just share the track digitally with whoever you need to in order to get your name out there. I mean, it’s 2009, do people still run around with stacks of CD’s? Those don’t even fit into an iPod.

For Artists

I have been using a mix of Last.fm, iMeem, Song.ly, YouTube, Myxer, Playlist.com, and even Posterous to get my music to the masses. This has been a lot of work and doesn’t provide a consistent brand image for your music. You’ll always want your music everywhere, but it needs to have a primary home. With their embeddable player, Fairtilizer could be that place.

The player has all the features you’d expect to find, including shuffle, track info, and the ability to Vote for a track. You can embed the player on any website and it will stay updated as you update and modify your tracks.

Each track that you upload has it’s own image, description, and privacy settings. You can also create an embeddable player for a single track or include all of your tracks. You also have the option to include a direct link to purchase each track. Fairtilizer still hasn’t implemented track sales directly from the site, but it’s in the works.

For Listeners

If you like to listen to and discover new music, Fairtilizer is the place for you as well. Search and browse for music and add tracks to your playlist. Vote for your favorite artists and Subscribe to them to stay updated. Leave comments on an artist’s page or on a specific track. As you browse the site, the embedded player stays in the sidebar so your music doesn’t get interrupted. You can also embed the player on your own website to share good music with your visitors.

For the Future

There are a lot of artists that are no longer looking to get signed by a major label. I look at the music industry like the Titanic: At any moment, it’s going to sink. Many artists have no interest in being on that overloaded boat when it does. The future is in engaging your fans and giving them value above and beyond a shiny plastic disc with your name on it. Fairtilizer is definitely worth a look if you need a way to distribute your music, or are just looking for something fresh and new that doesn’t fit the popular radio formula.

How do you find new music? How do you distribute your music? What do you think about Fairtilizer?