My gut feeling then was that the future of artist-fan relationships was in a personal subscription model. As part of my research, I joined Take This Oath, the Killswitch Engage fan club. There was no way to preview the content of the fan club site, but for $30/year I got a “free” tshirt and access to exclusive content. I was pretty disappointed to find 2 videos (not even all their videos available on their own main band site) and one blog post.

Recently, we have seen several new instances of labels letting Apple innovate for them, both in the space of artist subscriptions.

First was the self-release of the Presidents of the United States of America discography as an iphone app for $3.75CDN.

On the good side is the idea that The Presidents can send blog updates, exclusive content, concert dates, etc to their fans.

On the terrible side is the fact that you can only access the music on your iphone and only via that application! Nope, can’t get those tunes in iTunes. Add to that you can only stream the music, and we have a loser on your hands (especially if you are Canadian and don’t get all-you-can-eat data for your iPhone).

Even more recently is the launch of iTunes Pass. Basically, this a super-fancy podcast behind a transaction. Again, I think the idea of subscribing to a band is an excellent one, but this feels a bit too little, too late. Currently, there is only band, Depeche Mode (egads) offering this service, with surely more to follow if this does anything other than tank.

If I was still in a band, this is what I would do:

• Hire a very outgoing, super-fan friend to be your manager.
• Setup a decent, non-Flash site
• Sell fan club memberships for $10 per year
• Put everything ever recorded, shot on video or photo on the site
• In the case of KSE present a genealogy of all the bands the members have ever played in, post all media you have of these bands and links to their fan club sites
• Encourage fans at every show to upload their pictures and video to the fan site
• Have monthly contests for best fan media (club members only)
• Have a video contest where the winner becomes your documentarian for the next tour (club members only)
• Have that guy post a video once per day
• Use fan club data and tools like Demand to find out where you should tour
• Release a whole album of songs LAST.  Record one song every month or so, crowd-source feedback, post tracks to mix, post in-studio video.
• Pick the best 8 tracks, get them mixed by a pro and release in all formats.
• Package it with a cut DVD of all the stuff from the last year
• Make the regular content available via podcast
• Put the regular content on YouTube
• Don’t make a recording deal with a major
• If the major is LiveNation, disregard the last bullet and make a deal