Wired News has an interesting article about Pump Audio, a company I hadn’t heard of before. They’re a clearinghouse for licensing music to TV shows, commercials, and so on. Musicians send them CDs (they’ll take any genre) and they send out hard drives full of music to producers. The producer browses the selection, chooses a track, uses it, and a few months later the musician gets paid. (Pump Audio’s take is 50%).

This looks like a very smart business model that doesn’t hinge on the existing (and probably doomed) structure of traditional record companies. It’s similar to the deals I have with ad networks for web site advertising, where they handle the legal aspects so I can focus on creating content and hope it makes a buck or two.

It’s probably a long shot to make money this way, but I’m sure the odds are much better than getting a major-label contract, and their contract seems flexible enough that you don’t really have much to lose.

I’m definitely going to give this a try—maybe I can realize my lifelong dream of recording a techno song that gets used in a car commercial.

[via Seth Godin]