OPEN SESAME

A new Australian Online Music Platform is launching in early October, which aims to give artists greater earning and control of their music – OpenHD.

In today’s digital age it’s become a common practise to use your phone as your walkman. This is how most people consume their music, through badly made earbuds, listening to highly compressed mp3s, which fill every inch of free space in their phone’s storage.

For musicians it’s become something of a bugbear, they spend endless hours recording their songs, perfecting each phonic nuance, but the only way fans can listen to the songs is after they’ve been compressed to within an inch of their original sound.  This is set to be challenged by a new Aussie platform, that sees itself as an answer to the lack of revenue and creative control musicians have on how their songs are marketed.

OpenHD intends to deliver High Definition Audio to the mass consumer market, opening up untapped revenue streams for artists, songwriters and rights holders for their pre-recorded material and live performances. The platform aims to close the gap between artists and their audience by combining incredible sound quality with a social media platform.

“OpenHD is based on the simple concept that artists, performers, venues and listeners all believe that music should be delivered to the fans exactly as it was performed” remarks Simon Tait, Audio Technology Director.

The platform has brought together some of the world’s best minds across every field within the music, multimedia, branding, web development and e-commerce industries, as a ‘Board of Directors’.

“I guess you’d call us vigilantes in a sense, we have taken in all the pros and cons from artists, rights holders and listeners in regards to the current norms of digital music distribution, and built a platform on which everyone wins” states Andy McIntyre, OpenHD’s Managing Director.

The platform is currently seeking expressions of interests from both signed and unsigned artists across Australia, giving up-and-coming artists an opportunity to reach a wider audience without the limitation of being signed to a label.

Music oriented social networking has usually been met with an unenthusiastic response from consumers. Even tech giant Apple failed when joining Ping (its foray into social media) to the titanic iTunes, easily the most successful online music purchasing platform. However, the potential for a successful music oriented social network is there, if the music is priced competitively and musicians adopt the platform.

The ability to be able to directly connect with your fans online, in a place where they can listen to (and purchase) the music just as you intended it to be heard, has got to be an attractive element for both musicians and consumers and reason alone to adopt the platform. Particularly, if the revenue share is fair and the prices for HD music isn’t too high for consumers. If that happens, it really will be a win/win.

For more info, check the OpenHD website: www.openhd.net