When I talked to Gerd Leonhard from Sonific on this blog recently, I mentioned I’d be featuring another widget-based tool for online music distribution. Introducing Nimbit.
I’ve been looking around at widgets that musicians and their fans can embed into their MySpace page, website, blog or whatever. Sonific was a really good example of something that allowed people to share tracks they liked and link directly to a way of purchasing.
Nimbit‘s a little more ambitious, and essentially wants to be the full online merchandise and music fulfillment package. I’m worried that it might look better on paper than it does deployed in the field, but its ambition seems to be its strong suit.
I spoke to CEO Patrick Faucher about the service.
What’s Nimbit?
Nimbit is sales and marketing platform that enables artists to build and manage a sucessful direct-to-fan business with their music.
Why an embedded player?
The nimbit Online Merch Table is actually way more than a player.
The OMT provides an instant way for artists to promote and sell from wherever they have a web prescence, whether that is an official website, a community site such as Myspace or other blogs that the artist has. It’s easy to set up and easy to get out onto the web and that is key to getting artists started with selling direct.
Is there anyone else bundling merchandise with music in an e-commerce platform for independent music business?
We have yet to see anyone else do what we are doing sucessfully, especially in terms of fulfilling digital music, physical cds and other merchandise
from a single solution. We are definitely the only company that does 100% of this in-house.
It’s not an easy thing to pull off and we’ve put years of development and expertise into it.
This is clearly designed to be a viral marketing tool. How can people use it?
For one thing, it’s not just the artist that can embedd the OMT, but ANYONE who wants to can share the artist’s OMT by putting it on their sites, so it
very quickly becomes a viral tool that crosses into a variety of online networks for the artist.
Soon fans will be able to build their own OMT’s using product from any of their favorite nimbit artists, even earn commission on sales, and that will expand the nimbit network even further for our artists.
Also, the OMT captures email and contact info of the fan through its connect feature.
What’s the deal? Do artists pay you a commission on sales?
Yes. Generally it’s between 15%-20% of each sale, depending on the mix of product we are fulfilling. Our policy is to pay out the highest possible
percentage back to the artist.
Who are your competitors?
For some things like the OMT and retail distribution, there are other services that artists can choose instead of us, such as Snocap or CDbaby.
If you look at our platform as a whole you’ll see we offer the only ’360 degree’ solution that deals with sales, marketing, and business management
for the artist and their team.
How is the e-commerce dealt with? How often do you report and pay out?
We pay out monthly.
Do you also operate as an aggregator and submit to other retailers?
Yes. We provide digital distribution to iTunes, eMusic, Napster and some others.
How customisable is the widget (to fit within the graphic design of artist websites?)
Right now it is not customizable. The next version will offer some form of ‘skinable’ look and feel. Also we are working on a premium flash store that
offers complete customization and brandability for the client.
Can people listen to full tracks or just short samples of music?
The artist can choose to upload a full track as the sample if they wish to.
We recommend offering a short sample, then if the artist wants to offer the full track for free, simply set the price to $0.00. That way the fan can get
the whole track, but it gets delivered in hi resolution and the artist will get the contact information of the customer, which is key.
Do sales count towards the top 40 charts?
Yes. We provide full reporting to Soundscan.
Is it easy for record labels to submit their catalogue?
Yes, we work with labels quite often.
Do they need to supply ISRC codes?
We can provide ISRC codes for whomever doesn’t already have them.
What sort of success have you had with this so far?
Things have slowly ramped up over the past three years since we started offering the first versions of the tools. In the last few weeks since offering the OMT we are starting to see higher numbers of new artists come onto our platform each week and we expect sales to double in the next quarter.
This kind of makes everyone with a website or a MySpace page a potential retailer. Are you offering any kind of kickback or margin for people whose blogs sell music on your behalf?
Not right now, but that is in the works as we expand the Nimbit retail platform.
Do you foresee difficult times ahead for dedicated shops online?
I think those sites that offer a good user experience and solid customer support should do well, providing there is real value in the selection and recommendations they offer. That said, getting into any sort of mass consumer model is very challenging, so many will fail, but some will survive and prosper.
Any difficulties in dealing with artists and labels from different territories?
In terms of offering product to consumers, not really, especially when it comes to digital fulfillment. Paying out to international artists has its challenges, though.
What’s the most compelling reason for labels to consider using Nimbit?
We provide the most cost effective platform for building a valuable long-term business for both artist and label.
We’ve integrated powerful sales, marketing and ecommerce tools around the direct-to-fan model, so that our clients are able to own their customer with no middlemen. They save time, money and hassle while generating more sales.
And where should they start?
Go to www.nimbit.com or call us (in the USA) at 1-866-8-NIMBIT
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Okay — I think it’s great… but here are my initial reservations:
First there’s the 30 second sample thing. Sonific realises that 30 second samples are of no earthly use to anyone. Nimbit defaults to a model in which you are expected to buy first, then hear and like.
We know that doesn’t work.
Also, when I went to find out about Sonific, I listened to dozens of tracks by artists I had heard of (and love) as well as ones that were entirely new to me. I loved the fact that there was a central repository of all this different music I could easily embed onto my site, no matter what sort of code it needed.
I also loved that I could listen to as much of any of them as I wanted to, and so could anybody who visited my site that had the embedded widget on it.
When I went to find out about Nimbit — I couldn’t find any music. Not any.
There was an example widget (Dave Coffin) on their site, but it wasn’t a working model — just a display piece. So I decided to look further.
Nimbit ‘powers’ the websites of a handful of artists their site links to, but there was no sign of the actual widget they’re promoting.
All of the other websites that have reviewed Nimbit seem to have either posted a screen grab of the Dave Coffin example, or have simply not bothered.
I had to email Patrick back in order to find some other artists that use Nimbit, and get a code to embed the widget above.
He had three examples for me: Chris Obrien, Nate Lapointe and Trebek (shown above). There was a problem with line breaks in the email, and so I had to edit it a little to make it work.
It might be early days for Nimbit, but it shows promise, yeah? It’d just be a bit encouraging if there was a massive catalogue of music for fans to choose from as there is with Sonific (after all, how many fans of only one band do you know of?).
While it’s not really their job to sell your stuff (they give you the tools to do that yourself) it would still be nice to sign up to something that would help new fans find you. That and the customisation thing need to be job one.
But don’t let that stop you getting involved. The more of you that get involved, the more likely it is to be an ultimately successful model. You just might want to encourage Patrick to read the 20 Things e-book.
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Don’t let my analysis cloud your judgement. Go have a play. See what you think. What do you like about it? What would you change? Let us know in the comments.
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[...] The company that launched Nimbit started out as a CD pressing and fulfillment service. Just as DiscMakers’ acquisition of CDBaby allowed the merged company to roll up a vertical solution for independent music production, promotion, and sales. By 2007, they were experimenting with viral media tools, like plug-in media players. [...]
16 Comments
Hey,
I appreciate these kinds of “viral” tools. SnoCap’s MyStore and indie911′s Hoookah are great ideas…not to mention the great job Sonific’s doing. I agree with you that SnoCap has a leg up on most of the competition because of their aggressive acquisition of catalog, so much like Sonific, you can get a lot of different stuff on MyStores.
I think a key feature here is the “kickback” idea. Let me be rewarded for what I do, and I’m increasingly likely to be pro-active in spreading the word. Allowing me to take my fave band’s content, mix and match, (selling a few mp3s and a t-shirt of a couple of different bands would be nice!) all while getting a percentage would encourage the highly touted, though currently not-oft-utilizied, viral component of the stores.
This is encouraging as earlier in the year I put the earlier version of nimbit in the “nice try” category with Artists First and others, and now theyve come back with a bit more going on and features added look like theyre moving in the right direction. I like the merchandising (do they do video and ringtones like musicane?), I like the built in mailing list, but Derek and CD Baby have, in typical music 2.0 style, won a lot of loyalty from me. But now Gerd’s gone and given me a hard on for the possibility of instant, automated licensing/synching being handled in a similar fashion . . . well . . .
But again I agree with you Andrew – it’s the same myspace thing, who cares about the interface, the design. Are people gonna use it? You know what kiwis are like, theyre not freaking out about frauds and scams and feeding their credit card details into strange brand-anonymous apps when theyre on itunes. Celebrity board member endorsement perhaps?
There are definitely some great ideas coming out of Nimbit. I like the idea of being able to sell t-shirts as well as CDs and downloads. I also really, really like the idea of anyone being able to embed a player of their favorite artist(s) on their own web site, and getting a cut of sales they generate. That’ll take viral marketing to a whole new level.
Like Andrew, though, I also think the 30-second sample idea is a bad one, for many of the same reasons. 30 seconds is long enough for someone to determine they have the right song and that’s about it. In short, it assumes they’ve heard the whole song already, and just need to make sure they’re buying the right file. It just doesn’t work for someone trying to decide whether or not they like someone they’ve never heard.
Just to reiterate, I really do love seeing new ideas tried, and I wish them the best of luck.
Thank you all for your insights.
Just these three responses will help us get both the application and messaging honed on the Online Merch Table.
To be clear, you can give away a full sample of a song. You set the price to 0 and it will show up as “free” in the OMT. This requires the fan to at least give up a valid e-mail address for the free track.
When it comes to “sample” song streaming, that’s a dicey subject that I’m spinning about right now. From a fan/discovery point of veiw, full songs can be intriguing. We’ve not approached the OMT as a fan “discovery” tool. Why do fans land at an artist’s website or myspace page? Probably some connection already to the artist. Do you all think that’s enough to give up an e-mail address for a free track to seal the deal?
In the brave new world of search engines and viral content, the artist centric model is here to stay. We provide digital distribution through third parties as a necessary evil, but the key is selling direct so the artist actually gets to own the fan’s contact information. Nimbit is giving the artist as many tools as possible to sell direct and own thier customer (fan).
As a founder, I can say that nimbit is far from fufilling our own goals for getting more exposure for the artist, but we are hard at workk developing other tools that will make this possible. That’s what’s intriging to me about the thread so far; as a full song player, will that make such a big difference in “discovery.”
The direct connection of artists to fans is the most under utilized tool that a musician has for viral growth. Nimbit intends to give artists a suite of tools to organically grow and manage this. The rest is magic.
Thanks for the comments about the website.
All criticism is very helpful.
I’m asking for it, so swing away!
Andrew, I found this company while reading Techcrunch a couple of weeks ago. This is really an eye-opener. It’s amazing how many companies are gearing up to disrupt/transform the music industry. This is the best list yet of all of the contenders.. http://simplespark.com/catalog/music/
Yeah, I saw that at the time and was really impressed, Bruce. Unfortunately, that day my brain simply couldn’t handle it and went into overload. I think it may have blown a valve.
I pegged it as something to return to when I could give it my proper attention, and it fell through the cracks — so thanks for bringing it back to the top of the pile.
You’ve just linked to the music section — but once you realise what a small part of that site it is, your brain starts to melt.
My advice to musicians: take a month out, go to the SimpleSpark Music section link above, and work through all 223 currently listed sites one at a time to figure out what sort of engagement and presence you want with every single one of them.
It’s not all jam sessions and groupies, you know — get to work.
Thanks for that, Bruce.
That’s the thing, Phil. If people can put a player of their favorite acts on their web site and let people listen and buy through them, then yes, it is a discovery method for the people who regularly visit that web site. Someone like Andrew can post a player of his picks, and someone like me can come along and listen to what’s in it, and for acts I’ve never heard before, I want more than 30 seconds. In fact, this scenario really makes your widget an extremely powerful discovery method for new music, and again, one that could bring viral marketing to a whole new level.
Or I might be way off-base. I’m a relative newcomer to the business end of music on the web, but I still think I have something to contribute as someone who has made a habit of finding new music through random surfing.
Great point Darren. My question would be, will full length, lower resolution samples suffice? There are many issues with offering a “free” streaming system. Bandwidth is expensive and there are development needs around protectiing the streams from easy copying.
As the system is now, you can load as long a sample as you wish. It’s not limited to 30 secs, rather it’s limited to file size. So, you CAN upload a full length sample, it just can’t exceed 9mb. That’s a healthy low res sample!
Thanks again for your feedback.
Well, 9MB will hold 9 minutes of stereo audio at 128kbps. That’s good enough fidelity to match your basic FM radio broadcast. So, unless you’re a prog rocker making 20-minute songs, 9MB would be more than enough. (For the record, I am a prog rocker, but I don’t write long epic stuff.) :-)
As an IT guy myself, I can most definitely appreciate the bandwidth costs of a service like you offer. I do believe though that Nimbit could become a phenomenal viral marketing tool if these ideas could be implemented. I don’t want to come across in an arrogant way or sound like I’m trying to tell you how to run your business. I’m just a guy who’s thought a lot about this, and I really do appreciate that you actually listen.
It’s too bad Flash-based players don’t support Ogg Vorbis. You could make good-quality previews at lower bitrates, since that’s where Vorbis really shines. If you get a chance, encode the same song as a 64kbps mp3, and as a 64kbps Ogg Vorbis. The difference really is night and day. (Note that I would suggest Ogg only for the previews within the player, not for the delivered purchased file.) That would be one way you could save bandwidth.
Andrew, great post. Thanks for the article. A very good music widget indeed.. In fact, this is one of the best one I’ve seen.. I think it could use a couple of features though – It’d be really cool if I could, as a fan, earn commission on sales. This is something that Hookah is doing, and I think it’d be cool to let fans act as distributors and actually pay them for that too.
Secondly, it should let consumers decide what kind of format they want their files in. Artists can simply upload WAV files and Nimbit can encode them on the fly – MP3, OGG, FLAC…
oh.. and they do not accept Paypal! C’mon!!
After spending some hours in setting up a proper nimbit account i was very disappointed to see that their shopping cart doesn´t work with myspace.
Robert, you are using the wrong embed tag or you have not activate your account. The shopping cart most certainly works with myspace!
nimbit Releases eTickets
We just releasse the beta version of eTicket capability through the Online Merch Table. I can’t wait to get the feedback!
We have not had ANY requests for multi-formats from fans yet. The couple of threads here that mention server side processing of mutliple formats have me wondering if this is a “wish” list thing or of major importance. It just hasn’t come up when surveying end users.
Thanks again for everyones input.
I’m a musician and my site is completely in flash. I’m already extremely happy with the host that I have now (I’m also stuck with them for another year and 11 months) so I don’t require nimbit’s webhosting services. Although I love what nimbit is doing otherwise, I’m forced to look at other digital distribution solutions because it seems the only way I can get the nimbit service integrated into my site is if I use their developers and hosting service which would amount to about $1000 after all is said and done. OR I’d have to completely redo my site in html which would mean my investments to date was just money out the window. I find this completely aggrivating.
I really think that Nimbit should release an SDK for flash integration. I’d understand if Nimbit wouldn’t do it for the free accounts but at least for retail and pro accounts. I’m slowly going to spend more on this digital crap than I did for my instruments. Come on Nimbit, you’re almost perfect! Release an SDK so I don’t have to use somebody else!
How much space for uploads do ypou get????