This morning, I received an email alert from Popcuts:
someone bought a song you already own on Popcuts. And now, your account balance is $1.05: High enough so you can buy some more music.
Nice, I have been checking out my Popcuts’ profile once in a while to see if I could afford buying new sounds, but this alert comes in really handy for the kind of consumer I am.
Popcuts (a Y Combinator startup we first covered back in September) is the Website where buyers get monetary rewards if the songs they buy is sold again after their purchase. The idea is to give back to trend setters who usually go through a lot to promote the music they love.
Of course, this is the first company who launches this type of revenue-sharing model, so it’s all a big test so far. So for the curious ones, here are my stats on Popcuts since I signed up about 6 months ago:<
- I own 26 songs
- I made an initial payment of $20
- 295 people bought music following my purchase
- I have earned a total of $6.79
- I have an available balance of $1.05
- I follow 12 people
- I have 2 followers (who get alerts when I buy a song)
This is really not bad, considering that if I had made those purchases on iTunes, I would not have any money left. With Popcuts, once you start buying songs, you come back again and again to the site to see how your ‘sales’ are doing. Obviously, unless you are THE trendsetter, Popcuts is not a place to make huge profits, it is not the eBay of music. But the model is very interesting, and if I remember correctly, the company’s ambition is to develop a rev-share technology that could be applied beyond the music sphere. If, for the price of 20 songs, I get 26 songs, then I am not afraid to say that, so far, the Popcuts system works.