With the weakened world economy, content in general faces plenty of gloom and doom. Advertising models are severely weakened. But, oddly, in the world of music, there are some positive signs that the shift to decentralized, online distribution might actually be going well — and maybe economic pressures are simply ensuring the parties involved find some way to make the adjustment.

And music distribution is becoming wonderfully weird and diverse – maybe far more so than in recording’s so-called golden age, an era in the past dominated by racial division, predatory labels, and a few dominant big businesses. (Money is tough as always, but it does make you wonder why we complain so.)

What if you could record directly online from a Web browser – no additional software needed? It’s not a new idea, but online music community Indaba has an interesting new Java-based tool that gets one step closer. We took a first look at the tool last month, but it’s now publicly available at indabamusic.com today. Indaba shared with CDM some video walking us through the feature set, and the company founders also answered some of my questions. For the musicians in the audience, we’ll have some more hands-on time with this tool to see if it’s something you can use. (My guess is, it’s something you might use alongside your existing tool of choice.) For the developers and Java fans (or skeptics), I also want to dig a little deeper in the Java and JavaFX platforms behind the scenes.

What can you do when making music in a browser?

• Work online or offline.
• Record directly online and share immediately.
• Work across platforms, directly in the browser.
• Add real-time effects, mixing, and even multitrack automation for adjusting levels.

Indaba isn’t alone in some of these features, but the ability to have high-performance, non-destructive audio effects and to record directly into the program without the typical browser restraints is definitely a step forward from other solutions.

Pricing will include a relatively full-featured free plan, plus $5/mo and $25/mo tiers adding additional clips, online storage workspace, and real-time non-destructive effects. (Video sharing service Vimeo recently adjusted their free/Pro distinction, a subject Jaymis covered for Create Digital Motion yesterday.)

Here’s our own Q&A to get things rolling:

As an addendum to the Last.fm story today, what are the actual royalty rates we’re talking here? They’re not much – precisely the reason musicians will have to get broadcast-style play counts to ever see anything worth counting. For instance, Last.fm makes the comparison with the BBC in the Wired story. The BBC has more hegemony than even a giant US ClearChannel radio station, and I suspect it’d be virtually impossible for an unsigned artist to see that number of plays.

How little? Try $0.0005 per play, as Steve of sighup writes in comments. (I think that’s just radio plays; assuming you get both radio and on-demand plays, you should do a little better – but, still, you might be better off with your CD sales out of your guitar case.) Keep in mind, that’s on top of other revenue, like performance royalties from ASCAP, BMI, and such, but it’s still not much.

Low as that may sound, it’s in the same ballpark as traditional webcasting rates. Prior to the big shake-up over Copyright Royalty Board rates here in the US, its rate was US$0.0008. And that’s only in the US, whereas Last.fm is international – and some of that goes to SoundExchange, and some goes to your label, and … you get the picture.

As music listening takes new forms, that builds new business models. But who calls the shots? Who gets to play, and who reaps the benefits? One immediate danger is that major label deals will dominate as outlets vie for position. Online outlets like MySpace have started to look a bit like the same-old, same-old world of major labels and big deals. “Indie” music sometimes makes an appearance, but nearly always in the form of signed artists and often in the shadow of the majors. Unsigned artists can get onboard, but the playing field often isn’t level – and while majors negotiate lucrative deals for their music, unsigned artists and indies have to give theirs away for free. At the other end of the spectrum, unsigned artists often don’t get paid by services that benefit from their work (like MySpace).

That’s why Last.fm’s announcement yesterday was a potential bombshell. Now fully available after months of development, the Artist Royalty Program will pay artists royalties on plays directly – no label required. Unsigned and independent artists can sign up to earn royalties from on-demand plays and Last.fm’s streaming radio.

Last.fm Artist Royalty Program (last.fm/uploadmusic)

Royalties 101

To fully understand what that means, let’s back up and talk about where royalties come from in on-demand online music. This is entirely separate from downloadable music – that’s pretty straightforward. If you, for instance, sell a track on your band’s website for 50 cents, people pay 50 cents, own the track, and you get 50 cents. If you sell it through another vendor, then you get a slice of the sales pie.

But on-demand, streaming music, via radio stations or elsewhere, works differently. Since the days of radio, broadcasters have wanted broader access to music. Obviously, if they had to negotiate rights individually for each track, they couldn’t exist. So the solution has always been a system of blanket royalties. In the online space, there are two kinds of royalties, coming from two different licenses. Here’s the simplified version (lawyers, feel free to clarify):