Midemlab 2014: Direct to Consumer Sales and Content Monetisation
Midemlab 2014 is just around the corner with the event starting on Saturday the 1st of February in Cannes, France. After the first two instalments earlier this week (here and here) today Rockol brings you an overview of the 10 startups shortlisted for the third category at the event: Direct to Consumer Sales and Content Monetisation.
3plet is an Estonian company that creates mobile apps specifically aimed at promoting music releases. The company calls it a “digital container” that includes music, lyrics and images and is linked to the artist's YouTube channel. 3plet prepares and delivers the applications to the iTunes App Store, Android Market, Windows Market and OVI all at the same time making it an appealing offering.The website doesn’t offer pricing information at the moment but it could be an interesting way of increasing the reach of a release, in spite of the known challenges in making fans download artist-specific native apps.
10tracks hails from Russia and it aims to take on the big leagues - iTunes Match and Amazon’s Cloud Player - to provide a cloud storage solution for users with large music libraries that want to access it from the cloud. The service offers 3GB of storage for free and then incremental increases up to 30.5GB if users post promotional messages for the company on social networks. The company also offers an unlimited storage option for just $25. The product looks well thought-out and easy to use but with individual track sales and digital album sales declining in the US for the first time in 2013 it's unclear whether users will be looking at a "bridge" solution like a cloud locker service in the future.
Bandstand hails from Ireland and provides bands with a platform where they can engage fans on mobile devices. Bandstand aims to create a new avenue of monetisation for artists by allowing fans to subscribe and therefore receive exclusive content right on their devices. Subscriptions of this kind are a very compelling proposition for artists that want to monetise their fanbases but since only a portion of fans will go to the lengths of downloading the app and an even smaller portion will end up subscribing it will be interesting to see if the final numbers are meaningful enough to make the effort worthwhile.
Metable is a UK company that is approaching the problem of music metadata from a fresh perspective. The platform allows rights holders to create a complete set of metadata and rights information for their release which is then stored by the company in the cloud, making it easy for Metable to distribute it as directed thanks to integrations with distributors, PROs but also the likes of Shazam (for the all-important instant recognition), SoundCloud and more. This has the potential to cut down the time labels spend compiling and delivering metadata and also eliminates the chance of mistakes - provided of course that the first set of metadata submitted is correct. The company may not work in the "glamorous" end of the industry but could provide an invaluable service to labels in the future.
Capsule.fm comes from Germany the goal of the company is to create “audio narratives” from content you consume every day. The company has developed an advanced form of text-to-speech tech that is implemented in its first product “The Morning Edition”, an iOS app that allows users to experience a personalised wake-up service with relevant news items, weather updates and ambient music played to you automatically. The idea is great, but the app itself right now doesn’t seem to allow for customisation of the news items that you can receive which is a shame, also it would be pretty cool if the could integrate the app with existing streaming services to play you relevant, commercial music instead of generic ambient.
Pulpix is a French startup that is exploring the monetisation of music premieres. The service allows bands to invite fans to attend exclusive music and video premieres, selling them a limited number of tickets. The startup aims to capitalise on fans’ eagerness to get hold of new material by their favourite artists, but as YouTube and SoundCloud plays are becoming a really important currency when it comes to securing live slots or radio plays it’s going to be interesting to see at what level artists are prepared to relay the initial spike of traffic derived by the unveiling of a new release to a closed ecosystem. The key to the service’s success could be in how it manages the transition from a closed-off event to an open release for which artists want the most amount of exposure possible.
Weezic is a French company targeting the yet-to-be conquered space of digital sheet music by introducing its Augmented sheet music standard based on HTML5 technology. The company provides practicing musicians with useful features like automatic page turning and real time gamified assessments. There’s plenty of room for for innovation within the digital sheet music space, especially as tablets are such a perfect device to have perched on a music stand. Hopefully the format will progress to fill this giagantic gap in the market.
Songspot is also a French company and it wants to reinvent the jukebox. Focusing primarily on bars, pubs and public spaces the app allows users to pick a song, that song is then cued up for play just like with a normal jukebox. While we’ve come across services of this kind before SongSpot has decided to mimic the monetisation model of jukeboxes by charging users between €0.20 and €0.89 to play a song, charged via In-App purchases. The service also offers a parallel product that allows to cue up songs for a private party, presumably without charge. Only time will tell if users are prepared to pay for a virtual jukebox.
UK startup Screenburn has created a Facebook-based on demand video platform that allows artists and film-makers to monetise their video content. The company’s website (which really slick by the way) showcases some of the firm's biggest music projects to date including Paul McCartney’s Rockshow, The Rolling Stones’ Crossfire Hurricane, The Libertines’ There Are No Innocent Bystanders and more. There's a desperate need to find new ways of monetising high-quality video content beyond YouTube avertising and this could be a good option. At the moment the company works on ad-hoc projects but one could see there being the potential for an interesting self-service option down the line.
Australian social music discovery platform Kicktone wants to make it easy for music fans to discover/share new music and for artists to sell music directly to their fans. Focused on independent music, the company wants to offer bands a better experience through perks like instant payments on purchase, high-quality audio formats, 100% flexible price points and unlimited uploads. As always, creating an ecosystem where both bands and fans can thrive is a tough call as it requires a large volume of users but Kicktone has certainly delivered a polished, functional product.
This ends our roundup of the Midemlab 2014 startups, we’ll be reporting on the winners early next week.
(Andrea Leonelli)