This sounds like it has a lot of potential.
Imagine you’re at a concert of one of your favorite bands, and they pull out a deep cut from an early album that feels like a gift just for you. Then they bring a special guest up on the stage or play a mind-blowing cover of something out of left-field. Your first instinct may be to pull out your phone. But instead of holding your camera aloft to get some crappy audio or video that you’ll never revisit, Stereocast would rather you just hit the button that says “buy track” and put the phone back in your pocket.
Yes, *the* track. The very same one you just heard at the very same show you were just watching. Professionally mixed right off the board even. Within about 15 minutes of it happening, possibly even sooner.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to shows and would have loved to have this. Sure you can find a lot of it on YouTube and such nowadays, but as they said, it often sounds pretty terrible and it never seems quite the same.
Each song will cost $2.99 which sounds like a lot in a world of 99 cent downloads, but it’s peanuts when you take into account the turnaround time, how unique a piece of merch it is and how much a lot of the shirts/CDs/hats/commemorative plates/whatever the fuck else you generally see for sale at your favourite band’s table usually costs. Plus they say a full dollar from each sale goes directly to the artist, so that’s pretty nice. The plan is to sell the songs for a limited time, which is smart since the moments coming off of something cool are the easiest ones during which to part folks from their money.
My only issue is that the tracks you buy will only play in the Stereocast app. Seriously, piss off with that. It’s 2015 and by now we should all know how consumer unfriendly, ineffective and generally shitty digital rights management is. I wish this company all the success in the world because I quite like the idea, but sometimes bad things happen and there’s always the possibility that the company could go out of business, taking all the songs everyone bought with it. Or perhaps you used to use an iPhone but need or want to switch to another platform for some reason and it’s not supported. Again, you can forget about all your songs and money. We’re buying this media, not renting it. As such, we should be given the ability to use it when and where we choose.
God, I haven’t had to give that speech in a while. Not that it matters much since like all DRM some genius or other will have it cracked by the time I finish this post if it hasn’t been cracked already, but it’s the principle of the thing.
Still, I’m going to be trying this out, because it sounds way too cool to not at least give a chance.