Everyday I pour over many web pages and blogs. Now and then something smacks me as a great idea and today it came from Mark Cuban, “The Album is Dead…“. Cuban rode the first Internet wave and is now doing quite nicely thank you very much. As the current owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, he’s certainly no shrinking violet. Indeed with his recent appearance on Dancing with the Stars, there are many more people who know his face, that didn’t previously. However it’s his blog, which I’ve been reading for about 6 months, that I find most interesting.

Today Cuban put forward the idea of serialised music, whereby an artist defines say n songs as a season of tracks. The artist would release a new song every 2 or 3 weeks, until the season commitment is complete. Each track would cost say 99c and you could potentially sign up to the artist’s or tracks RSS feed to receive information on new tracks from the season, or tracks that are either similar to the track you bought, or recommendations, a la Amazon, where you are told what other people purchased, who also bought that track. Add an easy way to purchase the music and I think you have a killer idea.

Admittedly this really hinges on the tracks being able to stand up on their own. You can’t just release a crap track, just because you have a commitment. Far better to have quite a few in the can, or an albums worth under you belt.

Jonathan Coulton did something similar with “Thing of the Week”, RSS feed here, where he released one track every week for a year, although he chose not to charge for each of the tracks… at the time. You can now buy these as individual tracks or split into 4 albums. Some of these tracks were probably better off left in the virtual garbage bin, but on the whole, Jonathon came up with some great stuff. I particularly like his cover of the Beatles, “I Will”

It’s an exciting time for the music industry. With DRM becoming a thing of the past, it’s ideas like this that will drive the industry forward. Now Cuban has no interest in dipping his toe in the music world, which is a shame. With a little support and the right partner, I’m sure this could be a killer idea. How about it Mark?

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