rVibe Blog

From the press release:

Bethlehem, PA – December 19th, 2007:  rVibe, a community based online music download service has launched its Artist Portal.  The portal allows musicians, record labels, and distributors to register and manage their content and sell their music through the software.

According to Braydon Johnson-McCormick, founder and Managing Director of rVibe, “The rVibe Artist Portal is a big step forward in helping musicians of all kinds control their music and increase sales. By combining the rVibe social network with the ability to track sales and create advertising campaigns, the rVibe Artist Portal gives musicians a powerful instrument to help ignite their business.”

rVibe members can purchase and download near CD quality tracks, make money from their recommendations, stream music to their websites, and give their rewards to charity.

Check it out at:

http://portal.rvibe.com/ps

I just got off the phone with EMI.  In an indication of the tide shifting in the major label space, EMI is pointing us in the direction of “aggregators” (where an aggregator is a company that has licensing deals to extend licenses to other retailers).  It’s not so much that they don’t want to do a deal - it’s that deals are slowing - and heading toward bigger players.  The reason for this is simple:  bigger player results in higher immediate revenue and greater margin. 

I suspect this means two things:

1. A consolidation of music distribution to a few leading “aggregator” companies
2. Fewer unusual business model deals coming out

So - they are open to us, and think what we’re up to is interesting, but from a business standpoint they need more financial guarantee before moving down a direct licensing deal.

The feedback from our artists has been pointing us in the same direction:  a tool to manage their tunes.  So - we’re coming out with the rVibe artist portal.  It’s just about ready and will allow artists and labels the ability to view and modify their content that’s for sale on rVibe.  They will also be able to generate a variety of reports on activity that people are doing to/wtih their content - pretty great stuff.

And soon, it will be tied to the forthcoming advertiser portal, allowing artists to promote their work as well.  Looking forward to announcing it soon!

We’ve had a relationship with EMI For a couple years now. And we’ve held off on actioning it for a few reasons:  1. Our software wasn’t complete 2. They used to insist on DRM 3. We couldn’t afford the pre-payment for content. Now that 2/3 are out of the way, we can explore interesting partnership arrangements with them to start delivering their content. 

It’s important to offer as much content as possible - particularly with our “non-storefront” model. So engaging EMI is a big step toward that and offering their content will be very exciting.

 -Braydon