Smashing Pumpkins push pay-as-we-play model

The only thing that's less than glittering about the plans coming from Billy Corgan is that the stuff you get is very-late-period, Corgan-as-Caligula stuff from Smashing Pumpkins. But it might be a neat model for other acts:

Billy Corgan has been hinting at future models for providing music and media from the studio to the fans during interviews and other press. Plans for this service are now underway and will be executed in the form of a 12-week paid subscription service for access to various media updates detailing the creative process within the studio. The media updates will be in the form of exclusive web-video and photographs. Subscribers will be able to watch the next era of Smashing Pumpkins music take shape.

Here are Billy's hopes and expectations for the upcoming project:

The goal is to create a working model that is not profit motivated but rather information and access motivated. In exchange for a fixed resource base fans will be let inside in an unprecedented way to the creative process of preparing to make the next SP album while also inspiring an inter-active dialogue that will help shape the work. Because of the open window, further efforts will be made to provide content so that anyone participating can more readily follow the arc over the 12 weeks, with unprecedented access to lyrical and musical content.

I guess you might have to be Billy Corgan to try and sell the idea that 'rehearsing and dicking about in the studio' constitutes a twelve-week artistic arc, but the basic idea is sound.