BurnLounge blazes onto digital music scene

For music lovers, a past fantasy may have been to own and
operate a record store. It would be a place to pass on only the
best music: your favorite music. At least that is the idea behind
BurnLounge, a new digital music service.

A general breakdown of the BurnLounge program is as follows. You
buy the necessary software from BurnLounge for $29.95 a year. Then
you can customize your online store to retail your personal
selection of music at 99 cents per download. When customers buy
music from your store, you earn BurnLounge points exchangeable for
products, services or music downloads. For an additional
subscription fee, if you want to build your music store into a true
source of income, you have the option of redeeming points for cash
““ essentially getting a cut of the sale.

“You’re guaranteed a minimum on a one-song
transaction of 5 cents, (and) approximately 50 cents when you sell
an album,” BurnLounge CEO Stephen Murray explains.
“We’ve built the system so that anybody who wants to do
this at whatever level can get involved and get something out of
it.”

BurnLounge is hoping to tap into the word-of-mouth sales that
occur among music lovers. However, one can assume getting in on a
market dominated by Apple’s iTunes Music Store is going to be
one tough nut to crack. Murray hopes BurnLounge’s advantage
will come from its ability to literally know its customers.

“The site is really about your taste, about your
personality,” Murray said. “We are going to try to
acquire the largest catalog of rare and underserved genres in the
world. We are trying to get as much content … that will make
(people’s) stores unique. BurnLounge can expose a lot of
people to a band that may have never had a chance
otherwise.”

Of course, it wouldn’t hurt the struggling music business
either that BurnLounge is meant to be the reincarnation of the
corner record store. Ever since Napster first dropped the bomb on
digital music, nearly everyone in the industry has been scrounging
for a way to reinvent themselves for the 21st century.

“(It seems like) a fantastic idea for die-hard music fans
like me, but I think it may have some trouble getting off the
ground, depending on the ability of the music lover to realize the
potential in BurnLounge and have the ambition to follow through
with the whole process,” said Bryan Schofield, a second-year
business economics student and singer/songwriter.

Tony Ferguson, vice president of artist and repertoire for
Interscope Records and a UCLA Extension lecturer, explained that
while the benefits from the industry perspective seem clear enough,
he is still skeptical of the average consumer’s end of the
deal.

“(It) could help promote newly signed artists,”
Ferguson said. “(But it) still has the stigma of a
“˜pyramid scheme’ about it.” His first impression
was that it appeared to be a tool to market the industry rather
than a way to promote underground bands.

From the BurnLounge side, Murray assures they have independent
artists close to their heart.

“A lot of the other services that are out there will
charge independent bands to put their music on their service. We do
not. I come from an indie music background, I’ve been an
indie label owner for about 16 years, so I really wanted to make
sure that our system was very friendly for unsigned bands. I really
think that this is a great opportunity for them.”

It remains to be seen if BurnLounge has found an effective way
to finally fuse the gap between Internet music downloads and retail
music sales. The company goes live at the end of September, and
only time will tell whether or not this novel idea is more than
just a crapshoot. Until then, watch out, iTunes: There’s a
new roller at the digital-music table.