If digital distribution paid you instantly after every sale, would you use it?

[fadeproof]

I'm working at INDISTR and I want to know what some of you gearslutz think about this. I tried asking a few questions while the panel was up, however none of them were responded to. What do you guys think of a distribution model set up like this?

INDISTR allows independent artists to distribute their music via the web and get paid 75% of the income, INSTANTLY upon it's purchase at prices they've set themselves. The service is free to use and we place no limits on how much music you can upload. And. of course, the artist stays completely independent as we don't have any contracts.

Does this sound good to anyone out there? I just want some feedback.

[GILFOIL]

where does the other 25% go?

[fadeproof]

Well, about 10% of that goes to paypal fees, and the leftover 15% goes to operating our servers, domain, and obtaining a business structure. Think about it though, if you were to use itunes or Snocap, they'd be taking over 30% and not paying you for months.

Just a thought. We pay out one of the highest percentages in the industry, and we're the only ones paying INSTANTLY.

[Gemylon]

To me as a musician, this sounds as a pretty good deal.

Yes, I would seriously consider this.


G

[heathen]

Sounds too good. Very fair indeed.

[fadeproof]

Thanks for the positive feedback guys. We look forward to seeing you over at INDISTR.com.

[dantheman65]

That sounds like a solid distribution method. Not sure how profitable it will be for you guys though?

[SKyflash34]

+1 This sounds better than what Zoomusik is offering..

Do you guys use DRM? for the most part I'm against it, but I would reconsider
with this kind of a deal.

[fadeproof]

DRM-FREE We are not fans of DRM, this is independent music!

[jamieboss1]

You guys should also check out www.noisehead.com
It's an online music community where you can upload up to 20 songs for free and sell downloads for 69 cents (40 of which is kept by the artist). It's a great place to gain exposure and check out new indie artists.
Check it!
jamieboss1
www.noisehead.com

[fadeproof]

Not bad, however, how does the artists on that site sell albums? and can they set the price in which they want the albums to sell for?

[jamieboss1]

Originally Posted by fadeproof

Not bad, however, how does the artists on that site sell albums? and can they set the price in which they want the albums to sell for?

songs can be grouped into albums and sold that way. the price is set at 69cents per song. so depending on the number of cuts..
good luck with your site!
jamieboss1

[jomo1234]

10% for Paypal fees? Since when are Paypal fees that high?

Not true about Itunes. They pay you monthly and you get that money the month after the sales occur. So if you sold music from January 1-31, you get paid during the March payment cycle for it.

You can always go to Tunecore.com and get 100% of your royalties....and you get paid monthly. I think getting ALL of your money is worth a lot more than getting paid daily.

Originally Posted by fadeproof

Well, about 10% of that goes to paypal fees, and the leftover 15% goes to operating our servers, domain, and obtaining a business structure. Think about it though, if you were to use itunes or Snocap, they'd be taking over 30% and not paying you for months.

Just a thought. We pay out one of the highest percentages in the industry, and we're the only ones paying INSTANTLY.

[musikwerks]

iTunes pays monthly.

AND

There's no wastage - paypal fees? pfft.

You're going to have to do WAY better than your current offer to compete with Tunecore. iTunes is the defacto standard for Digital Delivery. Where's your market presence and how do I know you have staying power? What are you doing to draw buyers to your service? What happens to my music if you go under? Who gets the rights? Me or your creditors? And... "about 10%" to Paypal??? Well, which is it? 10% or "about 10%". This is my blood sweat and tears in this music, I want to know specifics. not "abouts".

You're offering a service most artist can organise themselves, even the immediate payment. It's already being done. What's the advantage in signing up?

[fadeproof]

Sorry for not clarifying the "about 10%". For micro payments (anything under $12) Paypal takes $.5 plus 5%. So yeah on a $1 track it's 10% they are taking.

We wanted to offer this service to the independent artists so they can have funds more readily available to them from their purchases. Why wait a month? itunes is still going to pay you less than INDISTR, even AFTER we include these paypal fees. If your a motivated/ambitious/flyer pushing/show promoting/hard working artist, your going to be playing gigs, right?

Well, instead of your fans from the show going home and purchasing your music from a distribution site that you won't see the funds from for a month (itunes, snocap), we now have a way for you to potentially put some gas in the van the next day from last-night's purchases.

BTW, snocap has 45 days after the last day of every month to pay the artists from that month. So yeah, what I said is valid, however I don't know the exact payment structure for itunes. IT'S DEFINITELY NOT INSTANT!!!

As far as the rights? We don't have ANY rights to your music, you keep ALL of the rights. You can cancel your account at any time, with no fees, because once again we have ZERO contracts or hassle.

I am a big supporter of what Jeff is doing over at Tunecore, I think it's great that it's just a one time fee for their service, however if you want to add music to your profile, even if it's 1 song, you've got to pay. Also, you don't get "ALL" of your money with Tunecore, the money is still cut from itunes and the other retailers. They just mean that Tunecore doesn't take any money, which the majority of the aggregator sites do.

With INDISTR, you are in total control. You could host your music for 1 hour if you'd like, and then take it down as you please.

[BobbyPeru]

Originally Posted by jomo1234

10% for Paypal fees? Since when are Paypal fees that high?

Not true about Itunes. They pay you monthly and you get that money the month after the sales occur. So if you sold music from January 1-31, you get paid during the March payment cycle for it.

You can always go to Tunecore.com and get 100% of your royalties....and you get paid monthly. I think getting ALL of your money is worth a lot more than getting paid daily.

I also don't see how getting paid daily would be much more than a marketing angle. I get our monthly statement from Tunecore. My band manages the money by putting it into a Paypal account.

Seriously, what is the point to getting paid daily? Are you trying to get the:"Shit I hope someone buys a song today cause I need to catch the bus..." crowd?

Bobby Peru
Milwaukee, WI

[BobbyPeru]

Originally Posted by fadeproof

Well, instead of your fans from the show going home and purchasing your music from a distribution site that you won't see the funds from for a month (itunes, snocap), we now have a way for you to potentially put some gas in the van the next day from last-night's purchases.

If a band doesn't have enough money to pay for gas on the way home from a show, they probably won't have enough brains to know how to set up any digital distro service in the first place.

Bobby Peru
Milwaukee, WI

[fadeproof]

Wow, I didn't realize I'd have as much bad feedback. Lots of naysayers. We're not trying to catch the "I need to catch the bus" crowd, but if you think of how sales could benefit the artists by getting instant payment and making gas money for the next gig (especially if your on a national tour or regional tour), it all makes sense. Along with instant payment we offer a slew of other services such as no contracts, unlimited access to change/update your profile with ZERO penalty, bundled album pricing, no limit on the amount of music that can be uploaded, 75% payout (more than itunes, snocap, rhapsody,etc.)

So I don't understand how you can't admit we offer a better service than the competition.

Can you please tell me why?

[musikwerks]

Ok, you want to know? Here it is.

Who are you?

If I'm going to trust my music and my money and rights to a company I want to know what I am commiting to. When I commit to Apple I know it's a global company who isn't a) a startup and b) going to fold any time soon. It took my company a good amount of time to become authorised as an itunes store content provider. I think that's a valuable association to have for my company. My clients know that I have the worldwide reach that itunes/apple provide as well as tried and tested digital delivery. Snocap is useless outside of the USA so it's a no go and if I want Rhapsody and Amazon I use Tunecore.

Who are you affiliated with?

You are really only offering a 5% better deal in financial terms than iTunes and an "immediate" payment. Most people I know do their books monthly so to my way of thinking, daily payments of $5 here and there are a nuisance. Apple pays out monthly in a lump sum with sales data. It's easy.

I'm not saying you're doing a bad thing. I'm saying that it's already easily availble to anyone who cares to find it... so what's the hook that makes joining up an absolute MUST?

You're just not convincing me. You're unproven and that equals risk from a business pov.... and this is business.

[Arksun]

Originally Posted by fadeproof

Wow, I didn't realize I'd have as much bad feedback. Lots of naysayers. We're not trying to catch the "I need to catch the bus" crowd, but if you think of how sales could benefit the artists by getting instant payment and making gas money for the next gig (especially if your on a national tour or regional tour), it all makes sense. Along with instant payment we offer a slew of other services such as no contracts, unlimited access to change/update your profile with ZERO penalty, bundled album pricing, no limit on the amount of music that can be uploaded, 75% payout (more than itunes, snocap, rhapsody,etc.)

So I don't understand how you can't admit we offer a better service than the competition.

Can you please tell me why?

Assuming it follows a similar agreement to other sites that do this (ie total non-exclusivity, artist retains all rights etc) then thats good. But I think the mistake you've made (and as many others have pointed out) is thinking that the instant payment part is your unique selling point.

Firstly, its a waste of money in terms of paypal charges for this supposed extra convenience.
Secondly, unless you're a MASSIVE artist, the actual payment you'll recieve daily is very little indeed. If you want to offer a more speedy payment, then try something like once every 2 weeks, but instant is just silly.

It might impress the naive producers out there that think people will just suddenly start buying tons of their mp3's from your site from day one, but the rest of us know the real harsh reality of trying to sell music and know the 'instant' offer is pointless.
Also the beauty of tunecore is the user gets to choose which of the major online stores their music can be sold to. Yes albiet for a yearly fee per store, but as long as they break even, its a very good deal.
It offers the most popular stores, but for a cut thats much higher than one would get selling via a label. The label of course can generate better promotion, so it then becomes the tradoff. Higher percentage cut with less promotion vrs lower cut, but potentially more sales with the promotional tools the label might have. Ahh the wonderful world of trying to be an artist

[matt thomas]

If digital distribution paid you instantly after every sale, would you use it?

to be honest that would make absolutely no difference to me.

All that matters is that consumers actually use the service. Thats were most digital distribution companies fall..

narco

[slaves666]

Immediate payment would be a nightmare if you had any clients with 1000's of titles in their catalogs. Your controller/accountant would kill you.

[T_R_S]

iTunes Music store only sends reports for the previous month so the quickest you can find out bout iTunes sales are 30 days delayed. I am not sure about Rapsody or Napster but I would think that they would not do daily reporting. From a administrative point of view daily reporting is a lot of work. You would need some pretty good database programing skills to automate the processes.

[fadeproof]

Once again a bunch of negative naysayers. Why is everyone so bitter? You almost sound angry about this whole topic of discussion, which doesn't make sense to me. Aren't gearslutz supposed to be open to new ideas and concepts in the industry that are beneficial to the artists?

How did you trust itunes from the get-go? What if they were to fail? Everything in music/business is a risk, so don't even bring up that debate. We're not going under, we can operate as a business just by the response and sales we've brought in up to this point. We're not some HUGE startup venture capitalist backed company, we're small and that's fine. Everyone has to start somewhere.

And as far as the books/automated process goes, if you looked into our service, and did a little research, once you sign up, you'll find that in your profile you have a "DAILY" report of sales. It's up to you when you want to run numbers for your books, you could do it monthly, daily, weekly, it doesn't matter the reports are ALL there for you!

As far as caring that the consumer uses the service, it's up to the independent artists to MARKET themselves, that's why we provide you with FREE embeddable players to put all over the internet that direct your fans/consumer to your profile page to purchase your music.

[musikwerks]

you're not hearing me.

I haven't said what you're doing is no good. I'm just trying to find out from you why I should sign with you as an artist when there are so many other, proven options. If you're not open to this then that's ok. Go your way and do your thing. More power to you.

But remember, you asked the question. If you're not interested in the answers then don't ask in the first place.

[matt thomas]

Originally Posted by fadeproof

Once again a bunch of negative naysayers. Why is everyone so bitter? .

You are mistaken. What you have recieved (on the whole) is honest, constructive criticism.

narco

[T_R_S]

Originally Posted by fadeproof

How did you trust itunes from the get-go?

Easy ...
Each song on iTunes is encoded with a ISRC Code (Just like a CD from a label)
These codes are tracked by Nielsen Soundscan. If you have a SounScan account you can get sales reports for any period you choose.

[fadeproof]

Your not getting the point. We offer the same services to track your sales/listens. What I was saying is if you started trusting itunes just because they were the only ones a few years back who broke into this market, then how can you not trust any other digtal distributors? You're saying you can't unless they are some HUGE funded corporation?

What happened to the people with a vision and good concepts?

[BobbyPeru]

Originally Posted by fadeproof

Your not getting the point. We offer the same services to track your sales/listens. What I was saying is if you started trusting itunes just because they were the only ones a few years back who broke into this market, then how can you not trust any other digtal distributors? You're saying you can't unless they are some HUGE funded corporation?

What happened to the people with a vision and good concepts?

Its not that its a HUGE funded Corporation. Its a T-R-U-S-T-E-D Corporation. Apple has been around forever with a great track record for innovation.

Nobody knows who you are and the last thing anyone on the artist/producer end of the industry needs right now is to get screwed in some way. I'm not saying that you're out to screw people. I'm just saying as potential customers we have absolutely no way of knowing who you are or if your venture will nose dive - whether it be from poor planning, poor execution, laziness, or whether a humming bird in Hawaii is flapping its wings right now.

You asked who would be interested in a service that pays daily. According to the responses you got on this forum, the answer is almost nobody. If that is your main selling point over the other services, you might as well pack it in.

Bobby Peru
Milwaukee, WI

[fadeproof]

If you looked into the site, you'd have noticed that we offer much more valuable services than just instant payment. My intentions on this thread were to see if independent artists would like a service that did such a thing. The fact is, you don't know if we're venture capital funded or not. Who knows. I'm not saying anything, however you must also realize that when you talk about risk with signing up for INDISTR, the only "REAL" risk is that your taking 10 minutes of your time to upload your music. There is NO risk!
If, let's say, we go under, what's your loss? NOTHING. We don't hold any rights to your music, nor do you have to sign any contract to use this service. 2 more bonuses for using this service!!!

I'm personally a big fan of the fact that the artists can sell the albums at whatever price it is that they end up choosing.

Thanks for all of the feedback, negative or positive, I appreciate it!