GOING DIGITAL One Rock/Muscle City to offer local-music downloads for sale BY SAM PFEIFLE

Okay, everybody’s got MP3s on their site now. Who doesn’t? Most bands see them as a loss leader. You give some samples of your music away for free, then hope people return to buy a disc or two. It works pretty well for many independent artists. Some people wonder, though, when songs can be traded and downloaded for free, why buy the disc?

Further, isn’t duplicating discs a hassle for a band? You have to deal with making the artwork (there are always font issues with the duplicator), random promises on delivery, and, oh yeah, the price of actually duplicating. Since everybody’s got an iPod (or some other digital-music device) nowadays, why deal with those CDs at all anymore?

That’s the question being asked by TJ McNaboe and Chris Carleton, heads of One Rock Omnimedia and Muscle City Productions respectively and local band managers and show promoters.

"I think that digital download is the future," says McNaboe, "and soon record stores will be a thing of that past, and it’s going to happen faster than people think."

However, McNaboe thnks iTunes, Napster, and other digital-music services are not serving the local artist. Typically, you have to go through a middle-man, some kind of digital distributor, to get your music onto their services, then you have to allow them to take a cut of every sale you make. Plus, say McNaboe and Carleton, who’ve put Animal Suit Driveby’s music on iTunes and Napster, it takes a while to get paid.

"Have we ever gotten paid through any digital source?" McNaboe asks Carleton.

"We haven’t seen penny one," says Carleton. Sure, it’s possible they haven’t sold a single song, but why have to wait to find out?

McNaboe has designed a way of selling music digitally that would allow any band who signed up with his service to sell encrypted songs (which means you can put all kinds of limits on the files, like not allow them to be burnt, or have them only play on a certain number of computers) and have the money deposited directly into a Paypal account when a fan bought their digital album.

"I don’t want to handle their money," McNaboe says. Rather, he would just take a monthly fee — prices are still being set — for the service of encrypting the files and providing the code for bands to post on their own Web sites, and he’d provide the server space for the songs, too. All he needs is a copy of the band’s disc (or digital files from an ftp server, etc.) and a Paypal account, and he can make it so people can buy copies of the disc from all around the world instantaneously — and not be able to file-share them. People who want the album art will be able to download pdf files if the bands make them available.

Plus, he can do things like off free trial version of discs that expire in four days, or after four listens, which would hopefully whet palates and drive sales.

Currently, you can see how it works at www.store.onerock.com, where albums by Animal Suit Driveby, Tony McNaboe, Headstart!, and the Leftovers are available. See for yourself whether this looks like the future of music buying.