An idea for GarageBand and iTMS

Most of the Apple die-hard have GarageBand by now, and Steve wasn’t lying–it’s easy. While watching the so-called “longest demo on Earth”, the crowd at the store was really impressed with the export to iTunes function. Personally, I was waiting for this feature for about 39 minutes. What I want to see is “Sell in iTunes Music Store” right on the same menu. Right now you’re probably thinking this would be chaotic. Probably. Here’s how to make it work:

1) The songs that have been chosen to be sold on the iTMS don’t go mainstream at first, instead they go into a public song pool. Songs here are free, but you can only stream them (probably X times). After listening, you are asked to validate the genre, and rate the song based on production quality.

2) Only songs that get a decent mean rating from a reasonably large sample get moved into a private song pool. Here they go into the iTMS editors playlist. Before moving the song into the real store, an editor must agree with the public and check to make sure the publisher is not a yahoo trying to skirt copyright law. Nothing they don’t do with songs from private labels now.

3) Once the songs get approved, they go into the real store like any other music. Users that originally approved the songs see the newly released music in a section of the store. They are allowed to download the material for free.

4) Sales go into an account that gets paid whenever the monthly total is over amount X ($100 for instance, like Google AdSense). As a plus, you can use this money to purchase anything from the iTMS or Apple Store, maybe even at a discount.

Apple could become the world’s largest “record label” quickly. With electronic distro rights only, most of the costs associated with running a label are diminished. The bands do all the mastering. R&D is done pro-bono by people who want to get new music for free. This makes music almost a democracy.

Another tweak that could improve this is past history… Artists that have had previous music approved get higher karma and are able to get more music on faster. If you got rejected on your previous attempt to get a song published, your song goes directly to some special editors before it makes it into the public pool.