music is heading this way anyway - provides a great forum for musicians. Will need some awesome marketing to get people there and vote but Cambrian seem to have a marketing flair!!

This sounds a lot like my Crowdsourced Music Label idea that's already here in the Idea Warz, except this idea seems a lot more poppy and annoying.

Cybercerberus, sorry my idea annoys you .. i have just read your idea now! .. apart from the fact that we both took the Cambrian House Wisdom of Crowds IdeaWarz concept and applied it to music, i think the similarity stops there!

Your concept talks of creating album compilations of Warz winning songs under a new inhouse record label and making the compilation albums available for sale.

My idea talks more of promoting the winning Warz artists using the power of the TV media and networks and promoting the artists to the established recording companies for recording contracts.

If you mean "poppy" in terms of more popular media exposure then i agree .. my idea is to create the best exposure for the artists in the widest sense utilising all of the popular media channels in addition to the Internet.

I make mention of various music gendres so i am not suggesting we limit the music to "pop" music, i refered to the POP Idols TV show as a working example of a type of TV show that worked well in the U.K. for TV promotion, new artist exposure and generated very good sms voting revenues.

My idea also has more extensive revenue generating opportunities, those being sms voting revenues, recording contract revenue shares, in addition to song download revenues and advertising.

Extending the Wisdom of Crowds paticipation to TV would greatly benefit the artists as well as improve the revenues, exposure and success of the website.

http://emusic.com already does the indy label thing. The "warz" idea isn't bad, and I think there is merit to this idea though. I think your idea about "music industry bidding for contracts" is a little naive though - in all likelihood they'll just contact the band directly.

Just bear in mind you'll be competing with iTunes, even though the ideas are different, the end result is the same - downloadable music. How do you help prevent the band's digital rights being exploited? What happens when the band signs up with a record label? etc.

As I said, the idea is good - just a few questions to get you thinking :-)

http://www.bix.com is a lot like this and it is about to launch. That's not to say CH can't do it better!

Thanks AndyDoan .. bix.com is kinda nice but it doesn't focus on the music industry and promoting musicians or bands. It has more of a flavour of .. create a contest (cutest baby, cutest pet,karaoke idol etc.) and see if u can can win it and claim some fame .. its a nice fun idea but MusicWarz is more about serious promotion of musicians, artists and bands.

Yes, MusicWarz could help people discover their hidden talent but i think it is more for artists that have already chosen their career and are trying to break through and make it in a very tough marketplace.

But thanks bix.com does show that the format is appealing:)

Aidan, thanks for your constructive comments. The way i see it is that the MusicWarz business will take provisional ownership of the artists rights much like Cambrian House does with the IP on the ideas submitted. The period of shared ownership is a detail we can still iron out but the terms of this management contract, if we call it that, would be fair and equitable and would also protect naive artists from being exploited too.

This management contract will preclude the record companies from approaching the artists or bands direct. MusicWarz will act as their agents and in conjunction with the artists will negotiate a fair deal for all. If artists don't make it then the contracts would be canceled and all the rights would revert to the artists again.

MusicWarz could also act as a automatic copyright registry of songs with date and time stamped original submissions archived for this purpose.

As far as digital rights protection is concerned, i think this is a double edged sword .. as once a musician in a band myself i know how hungry one is for recognition, so i think in the initial phase of trying to break into the market, the more exposure an artist gets the better .. so piracy is not perhaps so much a disadvantage in this instance but could be quite the opposite .. beneficial viral marketing.

However, once a band or artist is signed up to a label then that aspect would change and the material would fall under the industry protections that the music industry applies.

Those are my thoughts in this regard and i welcome your feedback.

I like this idea. I think the biggest challenge would be clutter. There would likley need some initial quality control measure- although a system similar to CH might work.