The music industry is currently very close to my heart, especially on the internet. This is mostly due to the new project our company will be launching very soon, RouteNote.
With all the recent talk about the music industry and how it is suffering, there has been a few companies trying to push the envelope and develop a new model by which the industry will adopt. These models are ad supported and they come in different sizes and shapes. Within this post I will discuss these companies and there endeavors to change the industry their own way.
Imeem: Imeem is a social network that focuses on providing services and platforms that are fully supported by the advertising generate throughout the site. They are currently based in San Francisco right across the road from Snocap. Imeem is primarily focused around the music industry and they have been signing a lot of distribution deals with companies such as EMI. Imeem has also joined the new Open Social platform from Google, which is a big step forward for developers. Imeem doesnt allow users to download all the songs on the site, but it does pay artists for the amount of streams they receive compared to the overall streams on the site.
Qtrax: Qtrax is still yet to launch and is based on a innovative p2p file sharing platform. Qtrax has already signed deals with Universal, Sony/ATV, Warner Music Group, The Orchard, EMI Music Publishing and EMI Music, TVT Records, Go Digital, ASCAP and BMI. The Company is based in New York, New York and Melbourne, Australia. This platform pays artists royalties based on advertising, but they dont disclose much information at present.
Ruckus: Ruckus, the premier digital entertainment service for colleges and universities offers a myriad of ways for college students to connect with one another. Currently Ruckus has over 3.2 million tracks licensed in its catalog, from a mixture of indies and major labels. Ruckus dont really talk to much on their website about how they pay artists but im guessing it must be from streams on their player. Im not even too sure if you can download any of the songs from their catalog and be able to place them on your iPod!
These are just some of the major players in the ad supported music space at present, but there are several other notables, such as Spiral Frog, Slacker, RCRD LBL and We7.
I have been reading various articles this week about CDBaby and how they broke their deal with Snocap. I have actually seen all of the CDBaby figures on how much their artist were selling on Snocap and the figures weren’t too bad. However if you are a music aggregator and trying to work with Snocap it is a little more difficult than just providing distribution to online stores. The issues with Snocap is the amount of time it takes to implement a widget store and which songs will need to be selected.
CDBaby is now offering for their artists to sign up with Snocap individually and receive the first year free. If however this doesn’t work for you then make sure you head over to RouteNote which will be launching in a few months and already has Snocap signed as a founding partner. RouteNote will also not charge any signup fees and can license your music for TV, Radio and Advertising at the same time.
RouteNote has just signed a deal to provide our content on Audio Lunchbox. Audio Lunchbox will sell our content on their sites and services for the next three years. Audio Lunchbox has a licensed catalog of over 2 million songs in 79 sub-genres. Audio Lunchbox is the only service on the web to offer both a la carte and permanent subscription downloads side by side. Well thats what they claim.
There has been a buzz around the blogosphere in the last day or so about Pump Audio and how they have finally been intergrated with Getty Images. As most of us know Pump Audio was purchase by Getty Images for about $42 million. Pump has a catalog of approx 20,000 independent artists in which their music is licensed for use on the Web, TV or Radio. Pump’s customers range from major TV shows like The Colbert Report to advertising agencies and podcasters.
Getty yesterday announced that they have re-launched Pump Audio under the name Soundtrack on the Getty site. This must be the most over-hyped event from Getty in a very long time and I cant believe the blogosphere (Techcrunch, Mashable) has jumped onboard. It is as if Soundtrack was a completely new product and it has just be released, but that is the complete opposite to what has really happened. Soundtrack is a tool designed by Pump Audio most before the purchase and I have been using Soundtrack for the last six months or so. All Getty has done is place a link on their site to the Soundtrack tool. So why the hell is this getting blog and press coverage??
Imeem, the service that offers a widget for sharing your music playlist, has reached a deal with Sony BMG to legally offer their music to users. In exchange for allowing Imeem users stream Sony BMG music in their widgets, the record label will get a cut of the advertising revenue. Imeem previously signed a similar deal with Warner Music, after the record company first tried to sue them.
Imeem has already signed with RouteNote. RouteNote has a private beta test launching next month, so make sure you signup.
