truefire
to add a little spice to the options of musicians to get their music out, i thought i’d take a little time to explore truefire.
truefire lets creative people self-publish and provides a marketplace for “literature, visual arts, original music, music instruction and reference.”
truefire comes to this self-publishing business from a [relatively] long history of music education (10 years or so). so, the truefire twist is its core of music instruction – and this has some interesting potential. the emphasis on education and participation extends to “tfu” – the true fire university.
at the moment, there are 87 (alternative) + 156 (blues) + 83 (classical) + 50 (country) + 44 (electronic) +25 (hiphop/r&b) + 130 (jazz/fusion) + 244 (rock) + 89 (world/folk) + 37 (industrial) + 50 (pop), or about 1000 tracks available on truefire.
while i couldn’t find an age for the truefire self-publishing option, i do have some concern about growth. with only 1000 tracks, and many of them free, it’s got a way to go to find sustainable revenue from track sales. on the upside, that’s not the core model, so they’re not depending on track sales to stay in business.
the site also has a pseudo-money system to help encourage participants to keep things at truefire moving. i always have some reservations about not-quite-money systems.
a few others have made comments: metafilter, john stahl, lingosphere, i breathe music, even the american library association has a few (not so kind) words – “one of many questionable publishing sites”.