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[First Time Visitors] [Internet Essentials] [News Letter] [Voluntary Contributions] |
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I came across a site called fairtunes.com where you can give a voluntary contribution to your favourite artists. If you buy a CD by your favourite artist for say $12, the artist will probably see less than 1$ of that. If you make a voluntary contribution at fairtunes, the artist receives almost all of it. People are actually making voluntary contributions to their favourite artists, e.g., U2, Courtney Love and Moby. They are making voluntary contributions to these artists, because they value their work and know that it is the record companies that walk away with most of the money. They have, no doubt, downloaded a few of their songs as mp3’s from the likes of Napster, and feel that they would like to pay the artists something for them. It matters not, that the artists are already millionaires, people are still giving purely from a sense of fair play. There is a growing sense that people are being ripped off by the price of CD’s etc. People are becoming increasingly fed up with greedy record companies dictating how much they should pay. So I am thinking that I won’t concern myself with how much I should charge for my music. I will leave that decision up to you. You are under no obligation to make a voluntary contribution. There is no pressure to do so. I am happy for people to download the MP3’s from my site for free. If you give, you give because you appreciate the music that I am producing and respect my copyright. |
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The values above are just for an example. You decide the amount and what for. For example you may have downloaded all of my songs but only keep “Woman” on your hard drive. In this case you might decide that you will enter “$1” for “Woman”. Fairtunes do not make any charge for this service. The only deduction is from the credit card company, for example Visa charge 3.5% + $0.23 per transaction. Fairtunes accept credit cards from all currencies but the actual payment must be in US $. They also accept the increasingly popular Pay-Pal & E-Gold. The following table shows how much of your contribution goes to the artist, with the equivalent in UK £, based on £1 = $1.40. |
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As you can see from the “Artist Receives %” column, this is the most effective way to support the work of your favourite artist. |
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There have been quite a few discussions on the fairtunes site as to what is considered a fair price for a mp3. To my mind it really is up to the individual. But if you prefer to have a guideline, then the following is generally considered fair:
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