Todd Rundgren, the Philadelphia native who hit it big in the 70s with singles like "Hello, It's Me" and "I Saw the Light," has a master plan for a new kind of music Web site.
According to Kelli Richards, a partner in Rundgren's company, Waking Dreams, Inc., Rundgren will soon announce the development of a new way to showcase the talents of musicians willing to have their music available for download on the Internet.
The process is called Patronet. The title refers to Patronage, or the practice of supporting artists. The concept behind PatroNet, not yet on the Web, is to showcase musicians who will make their music available as an Internet download, as it is created. "Todd is currently fine-tuning the concept," Richards says. "Music will be delivered as it's created, directly over the Internet. Let's see what the technology can do. For 40 years, music has only been delivered one way."
Richards claims that "PatroNet will reverse the traditional model. The artist (both breaking and established) will be underwritten by his fans, bypassing the record label and retailer,"she said. In this case, "...the artist gets to retain the majority of his revenue stream."
Users of the Web service will pay a flat (subscription) fee which will entitle them to patron benefits like real time music, exclusive access to online chats with their artist, and a music CD at the end of the year.
Richards says giving away music over the Internet isn't hard to do. The trick is to get people to pay for the downloads.
Rundgren, who has produced many albums for Patti Smith, Meat Loaf (including the huge seller Bat Out of Hell), The Band, and XTC, has long been interested in digital musical forms. He has a very odd Web site featuring his digital artwork, and he was one of the first rock musicians to experiment with CD-ROMs. His infrequent road shows with his band, Utopia, have been filled with technological effects.
Rundgren is hardly the only music-business type experimenting with new ways of creating and delivering music over the Internet. But he's a respected artist and producer, and he might just get enough people to go along with him to build up some kind of critical mass.
Copyright © 1997 ZDNet.