Open Journal Montreal

A short while back the founder of MP3.net went looking for php programmers on Meetup and found my partner (in life, in work, in crime:) Elran, who’s the ostensible head of the Montreal linux meetup. (Which in itself is an interesting story, given that El doesn’t really like to actually go out and meet people. But he does like linux, and php, and to him it seemed a shame to let the second biggest linux meetup in the world disband bc no one wanted to pay the fees.. that’s the gist… we don’t go to regular meetings, but we do throw creative encounters with open source technologies, and we do it in grateful association with that group. anyway… now you’re caught up.)

So Mp3.net wanted El, and when they emailed him, he replied with a CC to me, bc that’s how we play. By which I mean, we work together on pretty much all projects, and we’ve formulated that relationship as a consulting partnership under the banner of Touchbasic.com. I guess they were kind of stoked to find a tech savy (ish) writer girl who might be interested in helping out. Since then we’ve had some really interesting back and forth with their founders, talking about how and whether we can get involved in the volunteer effort that is building their social network/music marketplace site behind the scenes of Mp3.net.

It’s been a tricky thing, trying to get a feel for a group of people who are doing something so similar, in some ways, to what we’re doing with Indyish. There were things right away that had my eyebrows raised- for example- in some of their copy they claimed they’d be the world biggest open source project, but when I asked about it (as you’ll see below) I was told that by “the strictest of definitions” the project is not actually open source which made me squirmy, I did my thesis on open source software after all; I’m kind of into it. But I do understand that when you’re building a website with the free labour of worldwide and independently motivated contributors there are bound to be a variety of feelings about whether the code written can be given away. And it’s bound to take a while to come to agreement on questions this big.

I’ll talk more about that over the next little while. First, some context- here’s the first set of questions I sent them, and their answers:

1. how does one become a producer vs an artist?

Mp3.Net is made up of three types of Individuals, Members, Artists and Producers. Actually one can be both or all 3. In our model a producer is an individual and is no different from the member except that they have chosen to contribute in some way to make MP3.Net better. An artist is a separate entity within the system that can publish and sell music through the network. One must be a member to be an artist but an artist can also be a Producer. A producer however is a member with extended privileges, abilities and responsibilities within the social network. The more responsibility the producer has the higher the ranking and privileges. 3 Types of producers Producer defined above, Exec Producer and Founding Producer. To put a future statistical face on what we believe we will have as numbers go. Would be 1 million Producers, 10,000 Exec Producers, 1000 Founding Producers.

2. If music is sold, what is the rights policy? does mp3.net affect artists rights in any way?

All music sold will be under end user agreements with no extended rights for resale but we have chosen not to implement any DRM (digital rights management) at this time. MySpace and many other current players in this arena have decided not to implement any DRM at this time so we are going to govern ourselves accordingly.

Can they sell the same tracks elsewhere? Absolutely! We take the view that MP3.Net is one route to market and although we can only hope to become the route of choice we believe that an independent artist should use any means at their disposal to market their work. We feel the restrictive agreements used by the industry and some other sites do not serve either the artists or their audience.

Will you actively defend artist’s rights if their intellectual property gets stolen because they’re on your site?

Like a bear protects her Cubs. We have already recruited a couple lawyers to help with this but we intend to defend our artists and more importantly help them to defend themselves.

3. Do you pick artists to promote above others? do you have any interest in ‘quality control’?

Publishing artists, those who have posted music and made it available for sale or listening will always have priority over non publishing artists of course but that is only natural. Quality control however will be done through ratings. Members will rate music as will the Artists, giving us a two tier rating system allowing us to truly know who the network loves or thinks is great music. Keep in mind No Shareholders caring about profit allows to truly see who the people choose to be the best. We have however also discussed having a bottom 100 as well as a top 100. The fact of the matter is one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.

Quality is a hard distinction in art. One of the founding concepts in MP3.Net is that there is a market for everything… no matter how small a market. We are sure that if there is someone out there producing “atonal bluegrass electronica” there is also someone out there willing to listen to it.

4. How can you help indyish.com? or touchbasic.com? I’m into being involved, as el says, in mutually beneficial ways, so I’m interested in hearing the benefit to indyish if I spend time on mp3.net.

Great Question and probably the hardest to put words too, this is one hoping you will be able to communicate to the world better then I am or have to date. The attached doc touches base on this. The important thing to grasp in this answer is that Mp3.Net is made up of Individuals and not corporations. These Individuals called Producers get to showcase who they are and what they do professionally at their Producer Profile, which is housed at Production.Mp3.Net - 1/3 of what makes mp3.net what it is and the Freelance site where Members Hire Mp3.Net Producers.

One of the things we set out to do is to create a virtual market place for all the talent needed by artists to produce and market their music. Programmers, designers, writers, administration, models, videographers, sound engineers and many more are all necessary parts of the community.

5. You say that 400 people are participating for the exposure- how are they getting exposure?

400 Producers, 60 Executive Producers, and a Dozen Founding Producers, all will be exposed as entities that have come together to truly build a Peoples Company. But it doesn’t mean producers only get clients and exposure they also get to benefit from the most fair and transparent Affiliate package that we call VC – Vouched Commissions that generate you 10% of any money ever spent on Mp3.Net by any member you refer.

How can a new person help?

You can help by just doing what you do best, and improving things that could be better. Regarding Elrun we can use his talent coding and working with our teams move this project along. As well I see him helping in recruitment of good and down to earth talent. In your case it could be in many areas. Your writing and communications background could be invaluable.

6. How many developers are currently working on it, and what’s the hierarchy like? and how open is it to change/critique- if there’s stuff I don’t think is good, will I get flame mail from 400 angry producers?

The developers are currently divided into 4 groups with a number of additional programmers around. Oversight is done in a loose hierarchy according to responsibility. Jeff sets out most of the project parameters and general structures. Panos sets out technical parameters and leads development. Paulo oversees all ecommerce related functions. Shabee oversees the team in India which covers many different functions

Flamed? NEVER! There is the highest of respect between all Producers and even higher as the rankings go up. So with you and Elrun coming on board as Exec Producers you wouldn’t have to worry about any of that negativity that exists in other communities. This is a best idea wins environment

7. What system(s) do you use to communicate between ‘teams’?

Actually we are a little old school here. Mainly we use a message board, email and chats. We looked at project boards but we found that they were too rigid for our purposes.

8 .How is it open source? is the code on sourceforge or something like that where other potential contributors can access and use it for their own projects?

By the strictest definitions it’s not open source. We are using mostly open source software where we can, except in the area of ecommerce, but a lot of it is custom development. We have no plans to make the code available in part or otherwise available to the public at large. Amongst MP3.Net Producers it would depend on the project and the level of contribution by the producer in question. Such applications would be reviewed on a case by case basis by the council.

9. Can anyone work directly on improving the site? How do developers get committer status?

Working directly on a project of this scope is an intricate thing. For now our core people oversee the integration of code. This is done for a multitude of reasons ranging from quality control to security.

10. What are the technical benefits that will attract artists?

The benefits to the artist is that we are building an entity that will allow them a better internet presence and hopefully access to a better market for both CDs and digital music. Plans are also to provide them with the tools needed to interact with their fans and allow them to manage their online presence easily, book venues, and market themselves and their events effectively. The key is the social network structure that underpins the project. It allows for an individual to express many aspects of who they are and what they do, and grow as the site grows. The framework allows for a single point of reference to the activities of an individual which allows them market all that they do.

11. How much funding do you have for development, and where is it coming from?

And here it is, the most magical part of mp3.net since 2004 the web site has been self maintained with no investment needed with our launch date around the corner we are expecting tons of advertising revenues that will make funding unnecessary. Mp3.Net has been built 100% by contribution making us the best story online. If anyone was to Invest it would make them a share holder of some type crashing our concept that we are truly No ones company but our Members.

Following this, I had more questions, and we traded more emails.. here’s some more key highlights:

I admire the size of the idea. I dislike your claim that you’ll be the world’s largest open source project when what you are doing is not in fact open source. If you are going by some alternative interpretation of os then I think that needs to be defined up front really explicitly, otherwise you look either like you’re lying or like you don’t know what you’re talking about.
(that’s me being a bit prickly about some of the bold open source claims in the copy they sent me)

MP3.net : I fully agree with you, its just that you need to take in concideration the organic evolution Mp3.net has taken 3 years. We only now are starting to grow at a pace that is attracting great talent and things are moving faster then we can catch up. This is one of the last debated issues regarding our experiment. I am a big fan of making everything other then our Ecommerce/wallet/accounting software Open Source. Others disagree time will tell. Hoping you come on board and help me out on making Proper Open Source. I am only the guy who is supposedly good with people with the rolodex of some of the most influential people in entertainment industry, that I cant wait to show Mp3.Net too. I Was never great with words and programming skills are non existent. Some tell me its also the reason I couldn’t hold a note if life depended on it (I use the wrong side of my brain)J So before you use a strong word like “Dislike” around remember so far it seems all the stuff you like is the stuff written in mp3.net stone. J.

me: Another key thing is transparency, which you clearly recognize, but it means your internal communications need to be public as well. Where on the site will you publish your stats, revenue, emails logs, chat logs, etc? How are decisions made, especially regarding how the group’s money is spent? Do you have plans for a voting mechansim? What are the right and wrong ways to spend fund money?

mp3.net: Stats will be specific section built at - Stats.Mp3.net showing any and every stat to know to the online world Revenue will be – RDM.Mp3.Net – 100% transparent and will look like that rdm Spreadsheet.

Emails and chats will be dumped in an archive to be used for the Diary Board to use to write latest Diary. Karena who was one of the first producers has documented us for the last 3 years. Voting will be done by the multiple Boards and Councils that will be housed by Executive Producers and Founding Podcuers. A little bit of this can be seen at http://myproduction.mp3.net (you must be logged in) you will see in Prodcuer Appliction Council a Voting mechanism in place.

Regarding spending the money in The Fund it simply comes down to the 3 trusts that will each house 1/3 of the Fund monies

Trusts Named after the 3 type of individuals that make up mp3.net

Member Trust

Artist Trust

Producer Trust

Looking forward to responding to how each trust spends the money, and how the members producers and artists are involved in the process…

—-

Risa: Hey James, sounds good
I reread this stuff you sent back-

i still wonder how the councils you mentionned fit into this. Don’t members at each level need to participate in decisions about how to spend their fund money? are there regular or ongoing council discussions? does this happen on the forum? maybe we could just add “to participate in conversations on the mp3.net governance forum about how our site can continue to be better”

MP3: Exec Producers Sit on Boards

And

Founding Producers Sit on Councils

Boards are used for for specific sections that are mainly content oriented. Example Blog.Mp3.Net would be maintained and run by a group of Executive Producers who come together and house a Board called The Blog Board, who’s purpose is to have best possible blog that documents the growth of Mp3.Net. all the Admin functions for those Exec producers will be found at MyProduction.Mp3.Net

An example of a Council would be the Prodcuer application Council, you see this council is has every Founder on this council. So every Founding producer can be one of the 3 votes necessary for a applying producer to become full fledged Producer. Another example of a council will be Music Council, group of of Founding producers who have the music at heart will house it and see that Music.Mp3.Net is best Music site online. Or Prodcution Council in charge of making and seeing Prodcution.Mp3.Net to be one of the best freelance sites online and compete against the www.kasamba.com and www.elance.com and www.odesk.com of the world

Most of this stuff is being done on the board for now, but our coders are looking into a way of integrating something in our code. I just feel our producers need to step up and use any and all tools to better communicate. So board for now I guess

SO regarding the money The Fund is split in 3 trusts

So there would be 3 Councils that will be used to come up with multiple choices for The Members to Vote on I can, but first I would have to get into what each trust will use its funds for.

and for producers- maybe we could add something about the specific areas that producers work on?

there are 10 categories of Producers

Writer

Lawyer

Developer

Admin

Designer

Talent

Marketer

Model

Photographer

Film

But more specifcs will be worked into our freelance site found at http://infoseeksoftwaresystems.com/freelance/ that will become our http://production.mp3.net hopefully clearly documenting what producers have done and are doing, at the same time showcasing their work to the world. Not only in what they can do but actually what they have done for the network so all contribution will get documented, just need help to get it done J

Risa: and is there a way for producers to make money (or something) other than by refering?

MP3.NET: A producer makes money from clients that we refer to them on Production.Mp3.Net as I rambled above.

Risa: also- if you could jot down how people become members at each level that would be good. (i mean specifically, technically- obviously artists pay to join, but others? are producers voted in or something?)

To become a producer its as simple as opening yourself up to applying to a simple application form *attached and also can be found online form when logging in at mp3.net/comingsoon and clicking on MyProduction link

Risa: on that note- about paying i mean- maybe you could charge a sliding scale for users in developing countries. it would speed international adoption and just generally be more fair. a little tricky to organize, obviously, but fully doable.
ok..

Mp3.net: Hard to get done first time around, but you do need to know We have great fully branded wallet and invoice solution, because of 2 of our Founding Producers Paulo@ and Henry@, so yes it is doable but not right away.

—-

Hrmm, eh?

So many questions… so much that’s interesting, inspiring, exciting, heartening, potentially problematic, and soooo much that needs to be done for it to work.

For myself, for now, involvement is relatively limited, not least because I continue to give the vast majority of my labour, love and focus to Indyish.com. I’ve snuck into Mp3.net once or twice using James’ password, which he emailed to me after about two email conversations (the man is in many ways a shockingly open palm) and just fixed typos, or cleaned up a bit of prose. Aside from the positively galvanizing effect of being trusted like that, I have a writing instinct that makes this hard to resist. Aside from text edits, the contribution I am interested in making is one of naming areas of potential difficulty, of helping to talk through what exactly they are attempting; pushing in whatever small ways I can for them to follow through on their commitments to transparency and you know, the whole better world thing.

It’s in that spirit that I’ve gathered together these notes to share with you. I have many more which I’ll be posting soon. I will continue to think publicly about the project in this way, and I hope you’ll join me in casting critical light on it as it progresses- in the hope that a “true people’s company” can be all that it promises to be, and in awareness of the fact that it won’t be if people like us don’t help make it so.

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[ originally posted on Sunday, November 19th, 2006 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Communication, Everything, Music, Open Source. ]