Slicing Your Way to Music Stardom

I was fortunate enough to stumbled across an up-and-coming music website this morning called slicethepie. It's a UK based site that allows unsigned bands to upload music and, if the public likes them enough, get financing for an album. The key is the band gets to keep all of the copyright AND publishing rights. That's the short and easy explanation of the site.

Many features the site boasts include getting paid to review music (yes, you get paid to listen to a track and write a review of said track, up to 12 pence which, as of right now, is equal to 24 cents) and have full power over who is eligible for financing through voting and rating systems. One can also help finance a band (if they reach that stage) with money earned on the site or any other monies the person may have, which gives that person rights to a portion of the band's royalties.

Even more interesting than this is the stock market-esk system set in place which gives people the ability to trade their percentage of the band's fund-raising capital. You are assigned a percentage type number based on how much you financed and then that percentage can fluctuate in value according to things such as the bands hype, projected sales and various other influences.

After using the site for about an hour today, I can say it runs fairly well and the idea has kept me intrigued enough to go back at least a few more times in the future. However, there will always be problems with you give the power of determining who gets through to the next round with voting, as systems always have a way of being manipulated. It seems as though the system isn't tamper-proof, but is anything but a fully open, un-secure flood of corruption. People on the site seem to be taking their role (band, listener, label) at least somewhat seriously and that makes the wheel spin smoothly.

I'm anxious to see how slicethepie turns out, if it will succeed (as it has much potential to do so), or if it will fizzle out on an inability to make any money. I don't know their full financial plans, but the site makes money from taking a small percentage from the top of every transaction (except track rating payouts, from what I can tell), just like a regular brokerage firm. It sounds like a good idea and I hope it does well, new ideas like these are always welcome in a market that hasn't seen the best economic years in recent history.