another new idea

If we are going to "work around" the record industry using the internet what could it look like?

I am thinking of a community ... similar to a radio listening community and a magazine subsciber community but based on the internet ...  instead of one to many relationship (dj to demographic, record company to customers, publisher to readers) the relationship would be more web-like ... there are still different roles ... people upload music ... people listen ... BUT people also respond AND people recommend ...

... similar to triple j unearthed ... similar to pandora ... similar to genius ... but different ...

... the aim is to "get" people to listen to music ... the aim is to "filter" the music ... 

... this idea is to work out a simple web-based system that will persuade people to enroll in it ... 

some considerations:

you can only upload your music if you "filter" a number of other people's songs e.g.

in order to upload 1 song you are required to tag/review 5 other songs (other people's songs already uploaded) ... the filtering process is partly predetermined (tagging using tickboxes and dropdowns) and partly open (review) ... filtering is not rating i.e. no stars or scores

... uploaders can filter more than the required 5 songs ... the 5 songs are determined by the system/application i.e. everyone gets filtered ... musicians can moderate the review aspect of any filtering but not the tagging ... tagging is neutral because it is predetermined

... the focus is the songs rather than the band ... you can easily get to bands via links out from the songs (but that is outside this process/application) ... the focus is on listening (like radio) ... the picture of the song "sounds like/inluences" is created by a listener rather than the musician ... 

... the filtering and feedback can be accessed by everyone ... the filtering can be used to produce playlists (podcasts) and recommendations (like genius and pandora) ...  BUT importantly the filtering is used to create communities so that what you are exposed to is within a range of your taste/sensibilities (not just genre but things like recording quality) ... people who want to upload rockabilly will have it listened to by people who do not dislike rockabilly ... if you want to upload industrial polka tunes then you will not be excluded but may find yourself in a community of 1 ...

... "listeners" join the community by filtering 3 songs ... once 3 songs have been filtered then listeners can just listen and download for free (unless the musician blocks downloading) ... statistics/analytics can be used to determine "people who liked this also liked ..." and maybe even charts "50 people listened to this" ... "uploaders" automatically become listeners ...

... this is not a "broadcast" ... it is a narrow cast to an interested community ... when you upload a song you know some people will listen to it and give some feedback ... provided there are enough people in your community ...

... the music is independent ie no record company

we need to determine ...

a simple intuitive way of using these rules to build an interface ...

a workflow diagram of the process ...

the minimum number of people that could sustain this ... it may grow but the idea is to make it work at a grass roots level ... success does not depend on expansion but on sustainablity

the applications and technology required to make it happen ... open source players etc

legal requirements around ip