I was intrigued last month when I received a message from website AudioMicro.com asking if I was interested in a link exchange. They seem to be an interesting mix of a variety of different musical “services” rolled into one, and I thought they might serve as a good model for composers who, like myself, are interested in creating musical value online.

On the most basic level, AudioMicro sells stock music: music to be used in commercials or for other secondary purposes, which has been released from copyright by the composer for this purpose, if you pay a fee. Fine, whatever, there are a lot of these companies online. I’ve actually used them before, for a section of the opera I am developing currently with Colleen Murphy and Tapestry.

But AudioMicro goes a little further than most. First of all, anyone can upload stock music to sell on their site, as compared to most stock music companies, which employ a few composers to write all the music. Reciprocally, they are trying to reach out to audiences other than the typical stock music ones—for example, people making YouTube videos. And in addition to their stock music service, AudioMicro has a series of resources for creative artists online. They have a blog dedicated to issues surrounding online music and copyright, with topics ranging from individual artists to technology issues, copyright law, and regulations. They also have a series of links to other online resources and interesting artists, covering a wide range of interests and genres. So you can actually learn something interesting about music that interests you through their website, all while you’re finding background music for the video of your cat you want to post online (or at least this seems to be their concept).

So while I generally have not found many online music business models worth endorsing, I definitely give these people credit for trying to create real value. There’s certainly a need for stock music, although it is only a small niche within music in general. But more interestingly, AudioMicro shows that there are ways to create value around musical content online, and this is something that I have been suggesting, for a while now, that composers do. My blog shares many of the same goals as AudioMicro’s, and it’s nice to see other people thinking along the same track.