[Ann] CoinDL - Buy with Bitcoin: Now only 1% fee on Coupon & Gift Codes

[kiba]

weex: do you check your email regularly? Or do I have to pester you everytime?

I politely waited a day before pestering you.

[Stephen Gornick]

CoinDL got soooo much publicity on Monday with the "iTunes for Bitcoin" Hypebot article, yet there still are less than two dozen music uploads.

This is going to be a chicken and egg problem, that will only slowly gain traction.  

A variety of content is needed, even if you need to pre-pay artists for their listings!

On usability, when adding a wallpaper I needed to create a resized copy of the original to use as thumbnail.  Can't CoinDL do the resize by itself?  Seems like anyone uploading a wallpaper would only have the full size available.

Incidentally, had a sale on my first item that I listed.   Very cool!

[kiba]

This is going to be a chicken and egg problem, that will only slowly gain traction. 

That's the whole issue of the bitcoin economy. We gottach keep existing business alive, keep new business going in, minimize business shutting down.

Slow growth until we hit the sweet spot when everthing goes BLAM!

In the meantime, bitcoiners ought to be patience and keep the light on.

[RaggedMonk]

In viewing the new releases, it is not obvious what type of media each item is.  Is the entry a music download or a photo, a video or a ringtone?

Also, if I could add a filter by to see only new releases for a specific type of media (e.g., music items only) that would be useful.

+1.  For every item, you should display the filetype (.mp4 or .avi) and filesize.

[SgtSpike]

I've emailed a buddy musician of mine to see if he's interested in putting any music up.  He does some pretty hardcore stuff at times...

[jgarzik]

You're just not gonna do it one musician at a time.

CoinDL needs to approach music clearinghouses, MP3.com and other entities that can offer a huge libraries of music.  Because CoinDL is a startup, presumably you would have to give up a big cut of the per-download price, to avoid paying large up-front charges for such bulk library purchases.

[SgtSpike]

You're just not gonna do it one musician at a time.

CoinDL needs to approach music clearinghouses, MP3.com and other entities that can offer a huge libraries of music.  Because CoinDL is a startup, presumably you would have to give up a big cut of the per-download price, to avoid paying large up-front charges for such bulk library purchases.

I agree, but at the very least, having some indie-musicians on the site can show bigger entities that it is a viable and workable model.

[weex]

In viewing the new releases, it is not obvious what type of media each item is.  Is the entry a music download or a photo, a video or a ringtone?

Also, if I could add a filter by to see only new releases for a specific type of media (e.g., music items only) that would be useful.

+1.  For every item, you should display the filetype (.mp4 or .avi) and filesize.

The category is now displayed on the New releases page and for related items for each item. I would encourage suppliers to mention their filesize and filetype in their item descriptions until an automated way to do it is coded.

[weex]

You're just not gonna do it one musician at a time.

CoinDL needs to approach music clearinghouses, MP3.com and other entities that can offer a huge libraries of music.  Because CoinDL is a startup, presumably you would have to give up a big cut of the per-download price, to avoid paying large up-front charges for such bulk library purchases.

I agree, but at the very least, having some indie-musicians on the site can show bigger entities that it is a viable and workable model.

I'm pleased with our progress so far with over 80 items available, over 30 suppliers registered and 2000 visits in the first week. This is with a site and service that have come virtually out of nowhere.

As you can tell from the suggestions, we're far from polished and have quite a bit of work to do before any significantly large business would consider partnering with us. For them it will be not just a matter of, "Oh hey Bitcoin, gimme some of that!" They will want to know that we can be trusted, the size of the market that will be opening up to them and to what extent folks are ready to buy.

Before that time, we'll be improving the site steadily and supporting suppliers as best we can with a range of tools to help them sell their digital wares.

If you want to help the site buying something is a good start. Even better is to mention coinDL to a friend that you've got on IM or the phone and buy something for them while they watch (they can IM or email you the address and amount and the process should work just as fast).

-weex

[kiba]

If you want to help the site buying something is a good start. Even better is to mention coinDL to a friend that you've got on IM or the phone and buy something for them while they watch (they can IM or email you the address and amount and the process should work just as fast).

-weex

In all seriousness, is email a horrible way for you to interact with you? I am still waiting for your response. Don't have any digital goods I can sell on the site, but I can code.

[weex]

kiba, you have been emailed.

[terrytibbs]

kiba: You wouldn't make a good politician.

[apetersson]

i wonder - is it ok to sell public domain audio for a fee? from a legal perspective it should be ok, but what does the TOS of coindl say about this?

i have noticed that there was at least one upload of librivox.

to get a nice starting inventory for coindl, someone could gather, catalogue, keyword, proper ID3 tag public domain work, and offer them for minimal fees (say 0.1 BTC)

also, one more suggestion that might involve some serious programming: when downloading multiple files the site should offer a consolidated QR code where you can pay for all items at once, and multiple files should come as a download simultanously

[istar]

Go to music program forums and tell their users they can earn bitcoins by selling their music.

You will reach lots of musicians some of those are kickass.

Programs such as:

FLStudio
Renoise
Energy XT
Reason
Logic
Qbase

etc

[weex]

i wonder - is it ok to sell public domain audio for a fee? from a legal perspective it should be ok, but what does the TOS of coindl say about this?

i have noticed that there was at least one upload of librivox.

to get a nice starting inventory for coindl, someone could gather, catalogue, keyword, proper ID3 tag public domain work, and offer them for minimal fees (say 0.1 BTC)

This would be fine, as long as you are legally licensed to sell the works you can put it on coinDL. To avoid spamming the catalog, it might be best to try it with a smaller number of items as a test and see how the sales go before diving into a massive project.

also, one more suggestion that might involve some serious programming: when downloading multiple files the site should offer a consolidated QR code where you can pay for all items at once, and multiple files should come as a download simultanously

Thanks for this idea, Yankee mentioned it before and I think it's a good one which we'll look to implement soon.

[weex]

Go to music program forums and tell their users they can earn bitcoins by selling their music.

You will reach lots of musicians some of those are kickass.

Programs such as:

FLStudio
Renoise
Energy XT
Reason
Logic
Qbase

etc

This is a great idea istar. Do you happen to be established in any of those forums or know any Bitcoiners who are?

[Sherkel]

May link this to a site where I sell audio. I'll be sure to check it out!

[weex]

You can now tweet your favorite items from item pages.

For example: https://www.coindl.com/page/item/72

[Portnoy]

What if, for example, a band had their own website and they wanted to sell their songs for bitcoin from their site.

Could you act as a bitcoin payment processor for them?  Could they just paste some code, that you would provide,
into their own website pages to allow them to do something like that? 

I also know others, like photographers, that have their own sites and might be interested in something like this, as
long as it wasn't too much hassle to setup themselves. They already have their own website and would prefer to
keep visitors there rather than pointing them to some other (less attractive, less organized) website where they
would have to search and dig for the content they wanted to sell.
 

Thanks

p.s. I think the prices people are asking for stuff at this site are too high by a factor of 10.

I think with the reduced disposable income people have these days they are reluctant to pay much for music (etc.)
especially from non-established artists. 

Think about it people. Is it better to try and sell a song to a few people for $1 or to hundreds of people for 5 cents?

Bitcoin microtransactions makes such equations work! 

[amincd]

What if, for example, a band had their own website and they wanted to sell their songs for bitcoin from their site.

Could you act as a bitcoin payment processor for them?  Could they just paste some code, that you would provide,
into their own website pages to allow them to do something like that?

This would be great. Also having a cost per sale affiliate program for third parties (like btctip.com) to sell coindl mp3s right on their site would be useful.