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MP3 Artist Site Comparison: MP3.com, IUMA, Riffage & AMP3.com
With the plethora of choices out there for the musical artist in the
relatively new world of MP3 downloads, it is sometimes hard to filter
out the differences between the major MP3 artist sites out there.
That is the purpose of this article. To disseminate some of the
differences between the four major MP3 artist sites out there right now.
The sites to be examined are MP3.com, IUMA Artist Uplink, Riffage.com
and AMP3.com.
There are, of course, many other sites out there that offer artists the
opportunity to promote themselves. Some MP3, some in other digital
formats, but these are the most compelling sites out there for artists
to market themselves in the ever expanding digital music world.
Let's start by examining the site that is currently the most popular.
That being MP3.com. Now MP3.com is largely touted as one of the sites
that helped create the perceived revolution in digital music, offering
artists a direct connection to download aficionados.
Their site is well managed and simple to use with many options available
to the artists that utilize it.
The first thing you notice after dealing with each of the sites is that
MP3.com communicates with their artists and fans on a regular basis
discussing MP3.com issues and updates and a recommended artist section
as well as a newsletter. When MP3.com was started, there wasn't much
competition and innovation was easy. Now with more commercially backed
sites popping up, MP3.com is trying to stay one step ahead of the
competition. MP3.com is also the only site on our list to have gone
public with an over $100 million IPO.
MP3.com also recently aligned itself with Cinram CD manufacturing
company with high quality replication plants all over the world.
Through their $13.5 million investment, they are well positioned with
one of the best in that business to handle any fulfillment anywhere in
the world. Which is one of the main features of their site, the DAM CD
program where for 50% of the take, they will manufacture and reproduce
your product and fulfill delivery for you on a near CD quality
replication of the artists product. It is not mandatory that artists
join this program to have a page on MP3.com. Many artists giveaway
their downloads for free.
The artists' sites feature song downloads, lyrics, newsgroups, fan
letters, links to band websites, favorite artists on MP3.com and
biography of the artist. The site also allows you to upload pictures
and graphics along with your MP3 files.
One of the nicest features of MP3.com is the Artist Stat Sheets which
calculate the exact usage of your site including visits and downloads in
a very professional looking graph chart. I have personally found this
useful in determining online strategies and the implementation of them.
MP3.com far and away has the most artists of any site out there and a
wide variety of styles and formats to select from. Basically there is
something for everybody there. MP3.com has also started something called the New Music Army. The New Music Army is a new program designed to promote new MP3.com
artists and assist and reward entrepreneurial members. Basically fans
and artists are encouraged to start their own virtual labels. They end
up getting 5% of each artist DAM CD sales that they sign up on MP3.com.
The participants are labeled as soldiers in the New Music Army. MP3.com is a must marketing tool for any artists out there seeking to
improve their visibility in the online music world.
The next site to be examined is IUMA Artist Uplink.
For those of you not familiar with IUMA, they were one of the first
sites to promote bands online. Started by a couple of guys in Santa
Cruz, IUMA gave bands their own online page with real audio links for
around $250 a year.
Recently IUMA was bought out by EMusic who along with Yahoo! Digital
helped to create what is now IUMA Artist Uplink.
This site is one of the most unique out there and has extreme potential
due to the company it is keeping.
IUMA Artist Uplink is one of the most interactive sites in that the
artist or marketer can create the design of the web page itself with
options ranging from background colors to buttons and text colors.
I really enjoyed that aspect of this site because it gives each site a
different look and feel and can reflect more of the artist's personality.
IUMA Artist Uplink also offers the artist, the opportunity to create a personal
picture gallery for fans, lyrics, biographies and a message board that
can be linked back to the artist's website for fan postings.
There is also the IUMA charts for the most popular artists in each genre
and Radio IUMA which plays artists from the site. A link to the artists
website and email are provided as well as any live shows coming up.
The songs that are uploaded in MP3 format are offered to music fans in
either MP3 or RealAudio format which is good for previewing an artist's
song before deciding to take the time to download it.
IUMA also has a wide variety of music available on their site.
IUMA has also announced a new revenue sharing program with artists
The program, called "It's YOUR Damn Web Site" began on December 15th.
From that date forward, all IUMA artists will receive 25% of all the
total ad revenue generated from their individual IUMA sites. Artists
will be able to visit IUMA to look at daily reports on their IUMA web
site, which will include page views, downloads and ad revenue earned.
Cash will be paid to each artist at the end of each calendar quarter
starting March 31, 2000. This is certainly unique to IUMA and may set a
trend for other sites to follow.
Riffage.com is operated by ArtistDirect who also handle the Ultimate
Band List, which is one of the best online marketing sites
available to musicians.
Riffage.com has designed one of the fancier sites out there.
This JavaScript heavy site is great for high speed computers and modems,
but for the average computer user, it is quite a strain and has been
known to crash more than a few browsers. That is the first thing you
notice when you come to the site. I personally prefer sites that load
quickly and navigate smoothly. That is the only detriment to the
Riffage site. It is improving, however.
Otherwise, it is a very high tech offering in the MP3 artist site
community. Riffage offers artists the opportunity to upload pictures,
bios, lyrics and links and has one feature that is unique to its site,
which is the song rating system whereby listeners can listen to the
artist's song and rate it from one to four and deliver any comments which
can then be viewed by subsequent visitors to the page as well as compute
the average fan rating. It's a nice feature for artists to utilize and
creates a connection to the fan.
Riffage also offers the artist the option of charging for their digital
downloads, but is not a requirement for having an artists page.
Another nice feature of the Riffage site is the technical review and
artist help pages they have set up. You can find information on many
subjects that are helpful for the independent artist. I think this is
a result of their experience with the UBL site and gives them a nice
angle to work from.
Riffage also does a lot of advertising to get people to the site and
offers contests and incentives for coming to the site and turning
others onto the site. It is always helpful to the artist when the sites
try hard to bring in potential fans and customers through massive
advertising campaigns. Riffage.com has recently set up alliances with listen.com and other sites to get their artists content heard and reviewed.
And that is why these four sites stand out
amongst the many others out there. They all have large advertising
budgets to vie for the massive online digital music consumer market
as well as the artist stable to back it up.
The final site to be looked at is AMP3.com
AMP3.com was voted the best indie music site on the web and with over 2
million downloads, who can argue with that?
AMP3.com has a very user friendly database and showcases their artists
nicely. They are not afraid of a little friendly competition between
the other major MP3 sites and even list their competitor's news on AMP3.com's tech
news and reports section. That is a healthy sign of competition and
shows the confidence with which AMP3.com operates.
AMP3.com offers artists a Pay for Play program. They advertise that the
purpose of their site, unlike many other MP3 web sites on the Internet,
is to compensate the artist for the hard work that goes into creating
their music.
AMP3.com offers a distribution model that allows for compensation each
time a song is downloaded.
The songs on the AMP3.com web site are made available to advertisers.
They will then embed 3 to 5 second jingles at the beginning of the
songs in an MP3 format.
All songs on the AMP3.com web site are initially sponsored by AMP3.com.
They pay artists 5 cents for every legitimate download.
The idea is as more advertising sponsors join them, they will have the
option of sponsoring specific genres of music.
Each time a listener downloads an artist's song that is sponsored by a
genre advertiser, AMP3.com receives compensation. This compensation is
divided equally by AMP3.com and the Artist, in essence a 50/50 split
between the Artist and AMP3.com.
The 50/50 split is based on the ad rate card submitted to that
particular advertiser which could be affected by ad agency discounts and
or other promotions, but the bottom line is that the commission will be
50 percent of whatever AMP3.com nets for the sponsored downloads.
AMP3.com artists are paid quarterly for their downloads.
Other sites are attempting to model programs after the AMP3.com example.
As for the interactive features of the site, they are not as flashy as
some of the other sites, but just as functional. You can upload songs
and graphic files and artist information as well as any logos.
There is also a $1 million artist contest featuring artists on AMP3.com
that are voted on by listeners and the amount of downloads of each
submitted song. There is also a stat section to monitor your activity.
These four sites provide the blueprint for the artist of the future to
implement their digital online strategies and compete in the new digital
marketing age of music.
Linkography
MP3.com - www.mp3.com
IUMA - www.iuma.com
EMusic - www.emusic.com
Yahoo! Digital - digital.broadcast.com
Riffage.com - www.riffage.com
ArtistDirect - www.artistdirect.com
UBL- www.ubl.com
listen.com - www.listen.com
AMP3.com - www.amp3.com
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