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Posts Tagged ‘Rhapsody’

Zimbalam brings mass distibution to indie musicians

Zimbalam, which launched in Europe in 2009 to help artists get their music widely distributed without a lot of work, opened its doors to US stores this week, meaning any artist using Zimbalam can now sell their music in the United States.

Zimbalam promises to distribute an artist’s music across multiple services, from Spotify and eMusic to behemoths like iTunes, Rhapsody and Amazon. The company is hooked into 35 different outlets, which lead to hundreds of other stores – a huge distribution network for musicians. Like competitor Tunec

The company’s revenue stream is simple: It charges $19.99 for an artist to distribute a single, or $29.99 for an album. After the initial release, there’s a yearly fee of $9.99 or $19.98, respectively. The company keeps all the royalties from sales until that figure is met and then gives 100% of subsequent royalties to the artist. In a surprisingly musician-friendly move, if the music doesn’t make more than the subscription fee, Zimbalam only charges what the music earned, and no more.

Through March 31, because of South By Southwest, Zimbalam is offering an even better deal for artists, charging only $3.99 for a single release and $5.99 for an album. All a musician has to do is use the coupon code SXSW when they sign up.

Zimbalam offers some free tools as well. It has developed a number of widgets for artists that let them do everything from embed their music on a website to create apps on Facebook and MySpace to interact with their fans.

Like its competitor Tunecore, Zimbalam takes a non-exclusive right on the sales of an album. Users can pick and choose where their music gets distributed, and can see aggregated or individualized reports on how their album is doing. They also get control of the price and release date of their album, as well as all the details of how it gets sold.

Zimbalam’s parent company is Paris-based Believe Digital, which says it’s the “leading digital distributor and services provider for independent artists and labels in Europe.” Zimbalam seems to be a natural extension of what Believe Digital already does and takes advantage of the relationships the company already has. The company was founded by music executives from around the world, with a lot of experience in the digital music industry.

The model seems to be working in Europe: Zimbalam’s website boasts that Believe Digital has paid $22 million in royalties since 2005 and has had 10 number one digital singles in the same time span. If the company can get similarly entrenched in the American music scene, it might become an invaluable resource for independent artists in the US.

Believe Digital, based in Paris, is a 70-employee company with $8.5 million in funding from xAnge and Ventech.

Companies: co:believe digital, co:zimbalam

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RealNetworks to spin off Rhapsody, give up control
Seems like times are tough in the streaming music game — Warner is making noise about dropping free streaming rights to its catalog, and now RealNetworks and Viacom have announced plans to spin off the Rhapsody subscription service. The new company will obviously be known as Rhapsody, and both Real and Viacom will hold a sub-50 percent stake in the outfit and remain on the board of directors. Real’s also contributing $18m in cash to the cause, while Viacom’s committed to providing $33m in advertising — we’ll see if Rhapsody can make it on its own once that all runs out.

RealNetworks to spin off Rhapsody, give up control originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Future of Music Coalition’s Brian Zisk: The Do’s of Streaming Music

In 2008 the idea of another subscription-only music service was enough to get your knickers in a torrent. Sure Rhapsody was doing well, but they’d been around for forever and in 2008, freemium was the music model du jour. With a year to reflect, co-founder of the Future of Music Coalition and longtime San Fran Music Tech Summit organizer Brian Zisk tells us what it takes to survive in today’s music environment.

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In August 2008 ReadWriteWeb asked What Would the Perfect Streaming Music Service Look Like? While Pandora, Imeem and Muxtape were mentioned, services like MOG’s All Access, Spotify and Rdio hadn’t even been hatched. Given what appears to be a major shift in the industry, we asked Zisk to weigh in on some of these upcoming features:

RWW: A number of companies are offering cheap all-you-can-eat music services where users pay a set price for unlimited playback and streams. How important is price in this instance?
While price and large catalogues are important, having full songs goes without saying as the most important feature. People will pay for convenience and I personally am not interested in a service that only lets me play the entirety of a few songs and then forces me to listen to 30 second clips.

RWW:The killer mobile music application appears to offer offline caching of streams. Is this a make or break feature for streaming music services?
It’s important to have a killer mobile app or device integration, but as connectivity improves, I’m not sure just how important offline caching will be.

RWW: While some services offer a community curation feature, it’s a select few (Hype Machine being one of them) that manage to maintain a sense of cool. How important is curated discovery?
I don’t think this will be the most important feature of a service, but I could be wrong. I mean, how many folks would listen to the Village Voice Annual Picks or the Amoeba Records picks even if they were available online?

RWW: If not through editors, then how do you like to discover new music?
One of the features that I love is the ability to drill down into the music any way you want. For example, with Spotify you can search on a band and find their albums, and then start listening to their body of work chronologically. From there, you can choose whatever song you like, listen to it again and again, and then pivot on that song to hear versions from the other folks who have played that same song.

RWW:And what about social features?
Zisk:Lala’s feature where you see what your friends are listening to is cool, but I think the social aspect or the curated aspect is more important to others than it is to me. While I think it matters on a favorites level as in “You have to hear this band”, I don’t know how deep it actually reaches. I wonder if folks don’t already feel like they hear what they want from a radio station or recommendation-based radio like Pandora.

Zisk is hosting a SF Music Tech mixer tonight as a precursor to his Dec 7 San Fran Music Tech Summit. To register for the event visit sfmtsmixer.eventbrite.com.

Photo Credit: Rossina Bossio Bossa

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Sonos adds a portable music player with room filling sound

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Audio, Hardware, Multimedia, Music

Sonos, best known for wireless music systems that link to your iTunes library and internet services like Pandora, Rhapsody and Napster, is offering a one piece, 5 speaker system that can be placed in any room. It’s called the Zone Player S5 and it’s US $399 direct from Sonos or dealers around the country.

Sonos shipped me a review system to try for 30 days, and I thought the sound was great. I already had a mutli-room Sonos system so adding the new portable player was just a matter of plugging it into AC power and pressing two buttons on the S5.

If you don’t already have a Sonos system, you have to plug your unit into a router to connect to your music library and the internet. If that doesn’t work in your home layout, you can buy what Sonos calls a Zone Bridge (US $99) that plugs into your router and lets the S5 make a wireless connection. Once that basic pairing is made, you can add as many other Sonos music systems as you like, all connecting over a wireless mesh network.

The system sounds quite good, given the limits of the small desktop-friendly size (8.5 x 14.4 x 4.8 inches). There are 5 speakers, two tweeters, two 3″ mid-range drivers, and one 3.5″ woofer all driven by individual amplifiers. The woofer is a ducted port design and the rear port serves double duty as a carrying handle.

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TUAWSonos adds a portable music player with room filling sound originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rhapsody App approved by Apple: 8 million tracks streaming to the ether

We had a feeling this day was coming. After Spotify’s subscription music app was approved, offline listening intact, there was every indication that Rhapsody was next for christening. Especially with the feds watching Apple’s every move. The free download just went hot and requires a $15 per month Rhapsody To Go subscription — you can try it for free for a week — and streams 64kbps quality (ugh) music over WiFi or cellular data (only, no off-line access) from a catalog of about 8 million tracks offered by the MTV and RealNetwork tie-up. Now go ‘n get it.

[Via Komo News, thanks Bill Y.]

Read — Rhapsody App [iTunes link]

Filed under: Software

Rhapsody App approved by Apple: 8 million tracks streaming to the ether originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Spotify launches on iTunes App Store and Android Market, premium members only

As expected, Apple has blessed Spotify’s streaming subscription music application with a home in its iTunes App Store. Additionally, the app is also making a first, less ballyhooed appearance on the Android Market. The free app allows you to to stream any of its nearly 4 million tracks over WiFi or 3G and syncs playlists for playback while disconnected. It’s available exclusively to Spotify Premium members in the UK, Sweden, Spain, France and Norway — only the iPhone app is available in Finland. Great, so does that mean Rhapsody is next? Magic i-ball says all signs point to yes. Video overview of each app after the break.

P.S. We’re seeing reports that the iPhone app won’t play music in the background. The fix? Android.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read — Spotify on Android
Read — Spotify on App Store

Continue reading Spotify launches on iTunes App Store and Android Market, premium members only

Filed under: Software

Spotify launches on iTunes App Store and Android Market, premium members only originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Sep 2009 05:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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