While we were sitting in the AAS Editorial Chat room yesterday, mulling over the last minute tweaks to Rafe's review of Comes With Music review (see here), Rafe started talking about setting up the referral fees. Turns out that this was to make sure the 5310 CWM package was in the AAS Phone Store (you do realise we have one and that you help the site when you buy through it?), but for a moment I thought that there were referral fees passed onto sites that recommended music tracks. Which got me thinking...

..."sites that recommended music tracks"

There aren't, but the 'mis-speak' has stuck in my head and I'm wondering why not? Put aside the Comes With Music annual subscription model for the moment, and think about all the music stores (including Nokia's) that are available. All of them looking for sales, all selling roughly similar packages and content to other stores, and all pretty much exclusively devoted to content that can be digitally delivered.

That sounds rather like all the software stores you find online for your Symbian devices.

And here's my point. These stores offer referral fees to people who pass through folk to buy stuff. The All About Symbian stores (for both hardware and software) do this, and it's a relatively simple process to set up an affiliate account with Amazon. Typically these deals range from 5% and upwards of the sale passed back to the sites that generate the leads.

But there's no digital difference between sending a .sisx file and a .wma file, so where are the referral fees for the music stores?

Okay it's at this point the realists are ready to type out why the music industry doesn't work this way, but in this case I'm just throwing out ideas, not VC-backed investment plans. Nokia, with the tacit support of the music industry, has launched one of the most disruptive services in digital music since iTunes forced a 'flat fee' of 99 cents per track. Why not look at something else that makes the MySpace generation want to link back to the band and make sure people get the music they love. Why not have affiliate schemes for music?

One of the great strengths of Comes with Music is that it is a fantastic promotional window for the big labels. With new artists, singles and albums coming out every week, telling people what is available is a big challenge. Traditionally this was the benefit of TV and Radio music shows, but with lower audience numbers, the internet 'street teams' have come to the fore. Every little helps nowadays, and giving an incentive to people to link directly to tracks in a store seems obvious - why not harness all these fans not just to tell people about music, but to literally walk their friends into the store to buy it?

Of course the big problem in all this would be the subscription based service of Comes with Music - I can't see there being enough margin to give out even a penny per track - but there are other ways that could help here. Perhaps people could earn 'experience' points or build up points that could be exchanged for merchandise from either their favourite bands or from Nokia's online stores. I've no real answer to that - if I did I would be looking at raising funds for a new company.

I'd be interested to know if this has been looked at by any company, if it's in use anywhere, and what everyone thinks. Why should the disruption of Comes with Music be restricted to the annual subscription?

-- Ewan Spence, 17 Oct 2008