Q. What is Mindawn?
A. Mindawn marks the most exciting revolution in digital distribution of music since its inception. Online music services were popularized by Apple Computer to promote the iPod and iTunes, but Mindawn has a number of very important differences.

Q. What are those differences?
A. First and foremost, iTunes, Napster and every other service provide only "lossy" compression audio files. What that means is when a file is compressed in to MP3 or AAC format, you lose quality -- digital information is dropped in the compression process. Mindawn offers the option of both "lossy" compression in the Ogg Vorbis format, or more importantly we offer lossless files in FLAC format.

Ogg Vorbis is a royalty- and license-free, high-quality compression scheme that is supported in many different players; meanwhile, FLAC compresses audio like ZIP compresses files -- it doesn't lose any quality but it does result in about a 50% reduction in file size compared to a full-sized WAV or AIFF file. What's more, FLAC files can easily be converted to WAV or AIFF formats -- thus you get a full CD-quality audio file that you can use on any media device, including standard CD players.

In addition we have a simple solution to the problem of how to price longer musical pieces, and our system is open to any artist or label -- with no wait or approval process.

Q. So what's the catch to get in to Mindawn?
A. It costs you as an artist just $50 per year to have your account, with as many albums and tracks as you want. You don't even have to print CDs -- just put some of those new songs you're working on up for sale online. You don't even have to even work around the concept of an "album" if you don't want to. Just create your account and load your content -- you can be 'live' within 30 minutes of opening your account. UPDATE: For a limited time the $50 fee is for a lifetime account, don't miss this limited opportunity to sign up with Mindawn for a one time fee of $50 for LIFE!

Q. What about copy protection and digital rights management (DRM)?
A. A lot of noise has been made about Digital Rights Management (DRM) -- mostly the record labels want it and the customers don't. With something like iTunes or Napster, you are really just renting the song instead of owning it, because they limit what you can do with it. A very good article about your actual rights to what you paid for through other services can be found here.

However, on Mindawn, there is no difference in buying a perfect copy from us or having an original CD. You can still send around perfect copies if you want to. We believe that in general people don't want to give away something that they paid for. We further believe that just because someone does happen to get a pirate copy doesn't necessarily mean that is a lost sale. We feel that having happy customers by giving them free rein with what they paid for is going to be better for all of us in the long run.

Q. So how do the prices break down for the customers?
A. We put a lot of thought into a price structure that accommodates the two file formats and that deals with long format songs. With our pricing system, everyone gets a fair deal:

$0.99 per 10 minutes of lossy compression (Ogg Vorbis format)
(each 10 minutes in length is another $0.99)

$1.24 per 10 minutes of lossless compression (FLAC format)

$6.99 per album for lossy compression (Ogg Vorbis format)

$8.99 per album for lossless compression (FLAC format)

Q. How much do I make from those sales?
A. We have two royalty models:

75% for electronic content exclusive to Mindawn. However, you can change at any time to the second model:

55% for non-exclusive electronic content

That means you get either 55% or 75% of the total price -- far better for artists than most record labels or iTMS.

Q. What about things like lyrics and artwork?
A. There is an option for you to make those available. Anything that is sold will follow the same royalty structure. If you want to make them available for free, then you can direct them to a location to get them from your artist page in our system.

Q. Do you work with record labels?
A. Absolutely -- we don't leave anyone out, primarily we are trying to get exposure for independent artists and out-of-print music. We'll work with record labels of any size. If you are a label interested in working with Mindawn, please contact us at +1 (949) 713-3276 or sales@mindawn.net to work out the details.

Q. So how do I make these Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files?
A. We have a nifty free program called MARS (Mindawn Audio Ripping Software). MARS can take a CD, WAV or AIFF file as input, allows you to provide appropriate header information if needed, and generates your Ogg or FLAC files for upload to our system. In fact, our upload system will even get the track information you type into MARS and use it for naming your song files on our online system.

Q. How do you handle demo songs?
A. Our Mindawn player will use your Ogg Vorbis files as the demo file. The user can play it in full up to 3 times, and thenthe local copy of the file will self-destruct. The file is not playable outside of our player software, and our player "knows" how many times it has been played.

Q. Seriously, how secure is it?
A. In addition to the above-mentioned security, we also dynamically watermark the file. This means that the audio will have about 3 seconds in it, at a random point, where a voice says "Thank you for trying Mindawn" -- so even if someone was determined enough and managed to get around our other precautions, they would still have a file with this watermark in it. Look at it this way -- if someone is going to spend hours trying to get around paying $1 for your song, then this isn't someone that was ever going to buy your music in the first place.

Q. This all sounds very cool!. I want to tell my friends about it. Do you have a referral program?
A. Absolutely. When you create your account with us, you will be given a referral code. Give this to your friends to use when they sign up, and you will get a 20% referral bonus added to your royalty checks for each one.

Q. What operating systems do you support?
A. Unlike any other option available, our Mindawn player and MARS software run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Our technology means just about anyone with a computer can buy and use your music through our system.

Q. I've noticed it can be hard to find music on other services. How are you addressing that?
A. We provide for both categorization of music and advanced keywords. Thus if someone is looking for music similar to, for example, "Led Zeppelin", and that is one of your keywords, then they will find you.

Q. I'm interested in spending a little extra for added exposure. What kind of options do I have?
A. There are a few possibilities: of course we'll have the running Top 10 in the Mindawn browser and on our website, but there will also be options for you to buy banner ad space in the Mindawn browser/player. These will be carefully done so that they are useful but not intrusive to the customer.

Q. So how do I present myself in your system?
A. You will get an administration page where you can put in all your content. You may also provide a background graphic, if you wish. If you don't have a website or band logo yet, please visit our affiliate Grantham Design and get a quote for a logo and/or a website.

Q. So how do I get paid?
A. We require that you set up an account at PayPal. It only takes a few minutes. This way we are able to automate the electronic payment of your royalties on a monthly basis. It's quick and simple to use -- and you won't have to run to the bank to make a deposit.

Q. What is your privacy policy?
A. Your confidential information is only used so you can make purchases more easily. We do not sell, give away or otherwise disseminate your information anywhere else. The only time you'll hear back from us is to get a purchase receipt or if you signed up for our general or category specific newsletters.

Q. Can I give a copy of MARS or the Mindawn application to someone else or do they have to download it from you?
A. Both MARS and the Mindawn Player are free for both personal and commercial use and distribution as long as the original package and binary contents are not modified.

Q. We filmed a live performance, is there any way to sell video?
A. We're glad you asked, yes you can sell video on Mindawn but it works a little differently than audio. You, the artist, sets the price. We don't enforce a format, but you need to let people know what it is in your description (no mature content allowed), and there are no previews.

Q. Any chance for people to earn rewards for linking to our material?
A. Yes there is, and we call it "Mindawlers". There is a section in every persons account that has information about referral programs, there are different size banners that they can put up for a click through and they will earn Mindawler rewards that can be spent on Mindawn.

Q. You've convinced me! How do I sign up?
A. Just click here and you can get started. You will need to have your PayPal account information to sign up, but not to pay for your account. Please take a couple minutes and do that and you will be ready to go.