SONG CONTEST BLOG

Over the weekend, I learned that Nimbit, which has been on my radar since Jon Delange of Tinderbox Music introduced me to the company’s CEO, Patrick Faucher, several months ago, has secured venture capital to the tune of $1 million.  The company provides eCommerce solutions for artists and music promoters, and bespoke services such as digital distribution, CD/DVD replication and merchandise production, and web design.  The company’s turnkey approach incorporates web technology to market and distribute digital music with physical solutions such as download cards and promotional prints.  Nimbit appears to be acting in two ways: the first, as a technology company developing digital retail and marketing solutions such as embeddable storefront apps; and, the second, as a broker for commercial print requirements, from CD/DVD replication to custom-branded merchandise which complements its web facet. 

Nimbit’s DownloadCards (credit card-sized branded cards with a unique ‘download’ code) can be sold or given away to the fan at the live venue and later redeemed online as digital tracks through a custom Nimbit store.  This is an excellent example of digital commerce converging with physical commerce, however, DiscRevolt offers an almost identical solution.  Emusu is also competing for a share of this market.  In terms of digital music distribution, Nimbit is facing strong competition from TuneCore, ReverbNation, and CD Baby.  As for print and duplication, Discmakers dominates the US music market and recently acquired Oasis, another formidable opponent in this space.  Although Nimbit’s individual services are not particularly competitive as stand-alone features, the services, as a group offering, and Nimbit’s convenient all-under-one-roof approach, may satisfy artists and promoters with a slight edge.

SoundCloud is an online music collaboration and large music file management platform.  The company positioned itself as a digital music exchange offering but it’s so much more than that.  The SoundCloud audio player displays the waveform of the track, allowing listeners to view and intercept specific segments of the music and comment on it.  As an artist collaboration solution, artists can share, mix, and remix their music under the Creative Commons licensing designations, enabling the creative process to continue long after the master is ‘complete’.  I particularly like the fact that SoundCloud is a music-oriented digital distribution solution, making it super easy to send and receive music files within a community of producers, engineers, DJs, labels etc. who deal with hefty music files on a daily basis.

I’ve been following Bandcamp for a little while now (see earlier post) and I noticed today that the company made some revisions to its home page.  Most notably, Bandcamp created a “features” page which lists the entire suite of tools and services.  I was also delighted to learn that Bandcamp now provides Creative Commons licensing designations:

Under the Creative Commons licensing designations, artists who make their music public, in this case via Bandcamp, are providing limited rights to other artists and music fans who wish to remix, share, or use the music in a variety of ways without having to formally ask permission.

Not yet familiar with Creative Commons?  Overview:

Kyte, the San Francisco based company providing turn-key solutions for online and mobile digital content production, distribution and monetization, has announced the launch of custom iPhone and iPod Touch apps as a new means for music fans to access their favourite artists’ music, videos, news, and exclusive content.  In a separate affair, 90’s rock group, Presidents of the United States of America, who made a name for themselves with “Lump” and “Peaches”, have just released their own iPhone app along the same lines.  For $2.99, fans can stream the band’s entire catalogue over a Wi-Fi or cellular connection, as well as gain access to exclusive content and previously unreleased music.  This is exciting music industry news!  iPhone apps are hugely popular and provide an unparalleled platform for artists to access their audience and visa versa.  It won’t be long before we see more and more artists, from megstars to indies, harnessing this technology to promote themselves, monetize their catalogue, and upsell associated initiatives and assets such as concert tickets and merchandise.

Nashville-based finger-picking singer/songwriter, Chris Volpe, wins Round 4 of the 2008 Lyric Writer Awards.  This is not Volpe’s first success story with We Are Listening.  In 2006, he won The Singer/Songwriter Awards song contest and spent a weekend with us in London recording his selected song, “Shoes”, at Sphere Studios in South London with Producer, Steve Williams.  “Shipwrecked”, Volpe’s debut studio album, will be in hand within a week and slated for distribution shortly after.

DiscRevolt provides an esthetically pleasing physical solution for the digital delivery of music media. Like DropCards, DiscRevolt is music-centric and caters to the artist’s need to promote on the field (street, venue, what have you…) with a product that’s a cross between a flyer and a CD (or perhaps an alternative to a branded USB Wristband?).  The company prints the artist’s artwork on a double-sided plastic card and includes a custom code for the receiver to redeem digital music media from the DiscRevolt storefront.  At $90 per 100 prints, it’s a little cheaper than manufacturing CDs and its wallet sized for convenience.  It looks smart and can be sold or given away.  Downloads are tracked and available through DiscRevolt’s social network applications on MySpace and Facebook.  See MusicPin also, a competing solution which showcased at Midem 2009.

TuneCore, the do-it-yourself digital music distribution platform, landed $7 million in a recent round led by Opus Capital. The company offers immediate access into stores like iTunes, and poses serious competition to existing indie distribution companies like CD Baby.

Artists can distribute their albums or individual tracks across a number of digital music stores for under $30, and keep the royalties, a model that has yet to be tried and tested by the major digital distributors on behalf of long tail clients.

TuneCore, a digital music distribution company with a front door, fixed fee revenue model, may have conceived of the very solution independent artists have been seeking to get their digital tracks on major, online music outlets. Unsigned artists often rely on CD Baby for digital music distribution as they specifically cater to individual, burgeoning artists. More established artists and labels turn their catalogues over to the major digital distributors including The Orchard, IODA, IRIS and INgrooves. Without exception, digital distributors have been servicing their clients’ catalogue for a percentage of the proceeds paid to them from the retailers (i.e. iTune, Napster, Rhapsody) and pay the artist or label the remainder in monthly or quarterly intervals. 20% to 30% from the top, depending on who you are and the size of your catalogue is a standard distributor cut.

TuneCore, in contrast, charges its artist and label clientele upfront: 99 cents per song and 99 cents per store for each album and an annual $9.98 charge per album, instead of dipping into any backend percentage of proceeds due to the artist or label from downloads. It’s a simple and rather refreshing plan – certainly affordable – and, in my mind, challenges the services that the other distributors are offering. More importantly, it promises individual artists with a low profile and small or fledgling labels to access all the necessary portals for MP3 retail.

Online music will arguably be the fastest moving and consistently evolving industries in 2007. Previously undiscovered artists will come to the fore via high-traffic tastemaker blogs such as Stereogum, innovative retail platforms such as Amie St. and the ease and availability of content distribution. The traditionally reluctant giants of music, such as Universal and EMI, have already embraced the idea of becoming more than a ‘record company’ by providing their large catalogues to a variety of digital platforms and, I expect, will re-brand themselves as leading digital purveyors rather than the illegal file-sharing ‘arm of the law’.

With the much anticipated advertising-driven download services such as SpiralFrog, Napster and eMusic lending themselves to mobile networks such as Cingular and TicketMaster’s $13.5m investment in iLike (founders of Garageband), the music space will become, quite literally, universal. More artists are likely to show up on the radar due to, say, an unexpected public vote on a music community such as PureVolume or a great show at a festival sponsored by the renowned artist service, Sonicbids. By the end of the year, I believe that the increase of independent music communities and number of online artist profiles will pave the way to greater choice, more accurate recommendations to consumers and more alternatives to expose previously unheard-of music.

And while all of these multi-million dollar start-ups promise more exposure and business for unsigned artists and a better experience for music lovers, as musicians, we can still depend on good ‘ol fashioned live venues – another sector on the up & up. T-shirt anyone?