PRESS RELEASE – Venzo Digital Pays $1.5 Million To Indie Artists

Venzo Digital Pays $1.5 Million To Indie Artists

 
PRESS RELEASE – (BIRMINGHAM, MI) – April 25th 2013 – Xeinge Group, the parent company of Venzo Digital, the state-of-the-art distribution technology platform has reported substantial growth in music sales to date. Venzo Artists has generated over $1.5 Million in gross music sales since its official launch in January 2012. More than 3.5 million units generated from digital content.

Venzo Digital is an online music platform that helps people sell their music online to stores like iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, and eMusic for free. Artists using the service are able to sell unlimited music while earning 80% royalties on their music sold.  

“Venzo Digital has shown great promises for us as a barrier to entry into the new music business. To be able to generate over $1.5 million and 3.5 million units in one year since its launch without any venture capital funding is truly unprecedented. More than 90% of our gross sales milestone came from iTunes, 5% coming from Spotify, and the other 5% coming from the rest of our digital partners. We look forward to reproduce these kind of results from this business with our app business by the end of 2015.” Says Kevin Rivers, Founder/CEO of Xeinge Group.

April 24, 2013 at 1:56 pm Leave a comment

NEW: Tomb Raider Ringtones Now Available on iTunes!

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See the full gallery on Posterous

March 5, 2013 at 7:57 pm Leave a comment

MegaUpload Successor MEGA Is Now Officially Live…

Source: Digital Music News (DMN)

This has all the makings of an incredible embarassment for Hollywood, not to mention the US and New Zealand governments.  As the FBI's case against MegaUpload and Kim Dotcom continues to weaken, Dotcom has gone and started a replacement: MEGA.  It's now live in beta, and available for your pleasure at mega.co.nz.

January 20, 2013 at 1:21 am Leave a comment

eMusic opens store to non-subscribers / What It Means for Venzo Music

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Source: Music Week

Pioneering music downloads service eMusic has made its store available to all, expanding from its original subscriber-only access.

Billboard reports that the move is part of a bid to attract more users to the service and convert them to buyers, whereas the original membership fee – ranging from $6.49 to $79.99 per month – acted as a barrier to access and turned off potential customers.

The membership fee was separate to individual track purchases that cost around 49 cents per unit, less than the price per unit at other leading music download services. Member benefits include discounts and exclusive access to the editorial archives.

Speaking from the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), eMusic chief executive Adam Klein said: "We have a number of exciting things we'll be announcing in 2013, many of which will be game changing and potentially industry-shifting," Klein says. "I'd venture to say that eMusic may even double its revenue in the next year."

eMusic began selling music downloads in 2004, four years before the iTunes store, and has since garnered 42million accounts. Its majority of sales are music download albums (82%), of which 6,202,694 were downloaded between 2011 to 2012.

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CEO Response: What This Announcement Means for Venzo Music

With the new update from eMusic opening the doors of its services to anyone. This will allow you, the artist to offer eMusic consumers a tiered way for them to consumer your music. Through our updated agreement with eMusic, you'll be able to soon offer your music as premium downloads and subscriptions. We're also in the process to deeply integrate eMusic (along with iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify) into the Intranet platform. This gives you the best possible leverage in the industry!

Below are basic questions that may sooth your mind with this awesome transition.

Q: So what exactly is happening here?

A: eMusic is now offering both premium downloads (A-La-Carte or ALC) and subscription (SUB) services

Q: How will I be able to get my music on eMusic?

A: You can still be able to use Prime, the world's power digital delivery software, to get your music on eMusic.

Q: Has the Payments/Sales Report structures changed?

A: Yes! In fact, because of this update you will be able to receive sales on a monthly basis for premium downloads. However, you'll still receive quarterly reports on any subscription revenue.

How this works is that within every quarter (that's every 3 months), the first 2 months you will begin to receive reports from eMusic regarding your premium downloads while the 3rd month you'll receive a combined report of premium downloads + subscriptions.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up for Venzo Music and start getting your music on eMusic today!

www.venzodigital.com

January 18, 2013 at 9:22 pm Leave a comment

Mega Launches Tomorrow. What Can We Expect From Kim Dotcom?

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Source: Hypebot

Given that Kim Dotcom has teased a number of details about Mega, an encrypted file storage and transfer service that Dotcom says will introduce innovative new ideas to the Web, we probably know more about the service than the event that will launch it. The launch event will take place at Dotcom's mansion in New Zealand and it is quite likely to be an over the top affair that I'm guessing will not only introduce the service but address Dotcom's take on the U.S. action with references to Aaron Swartz in the context of musical entertainment, refreshments and busty women.

On January 19, 2012 (1/20 in New Zealand) Kim Dotcom was arrested and Megaupload's assets were seized. Tomorrow's unveiling of the new Mega takes place on the anniversary of that action.

Many may have thought that the case against Dotcom and Megaupload would take him out of the game. Yet what initially appeared to be a fatal blow has been gradually devolving into a comedy of errors with U.S. attempts at extradition being blocked as New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) turned out to not only have conducted an illegal search but to have spyed on him illegally.

In addition, the NZ government in spending a great deal of money on a case that has become one of the most expensive in their history. Possibly worse for New Zealand, in late December the GCSB admitted that this case had "overshadowed much of its work" in 2012. Given that they are NZ's international spy agency, the combination of high cost and embarassing revelations of illegality and incompetence are leading some to speculate that New Zealand may ultimately drop the case though it is unclear what that will mean for his extradition hearing in August.

Kim Dotcom Announces Free Ice Cream With Tickets at the Bottom of 10 Cups for the Launch of Mega at His Mansion

While that doesn't leave Kim Dotcom in the clear, it has cleared the way for this highly dramatic entrepreneur to move ahead with the launch of Mega and he's been applying his show biz marketing skills on Twitter, on Instagram and at an NZ ice cream shop where he addressed the crowd.

When asked by someone if there would be more than free ice cream at the Mega launch, he stated:

January 18, 2013 at 6:47 pm Leave a comment

YouTube Is Ready to Invest in Vevo, but the Deal Isn’t Done

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Source: AllThingsD

YouTube is set to make another big investment in a content partner. This time around it’s Vevo, the music video site.

YouTube and its owner Google have agreed to buy a minority stake in Vevo, according to people familiar with the deal, which hasn’t been finalized.

If it happens, it will be the second time in the last year that Google has invested directly in a video company that relies on YouTube for distribution. In May, Google put money into Machinima, the Web video network aimed at gamers.

If the deal does get done, it will allow the two sides to continue with a symbiotic — and at times contentious — relationship that has gone on for three years: Vevo gets to distribute its clips on the world’s largest video site, and YouTube gets to keep showing music videos from the big labels, which account for many of its most popular clips.

I don’t know the size of the planned transaction, but I’m told it will be bigger than the $35 million funding round Google and YouTube led in Machinima last year. Like Hulu, the TV site, Vevo is a complicated joint venture between content owners — in this case Universal Music and Sony Music — and an outside investor — in this case Abu Dhabi Media.

But while both YouTube and Vevo have signed off on the investment and a renewed distribution deal that includes long-term licenses for the videos, the deal hasn’t closed and could still be derailed.

For starters, the deal is supposed to get done at the same time that YouTube signs separate agreements with Sony and Universal, which cover subjects like user-uploaded videos that incorporate music the labels own. And relationships between the two labels — and between the labels and YouTube — have been rocky at times.

That’s one of the reasons Vevo had previously explored alternate distribution deals with Facebook and Viacom’s MTV over the past year.

But it makes the most sense for YouTube and the labels to work together. The labels would like to see more money than they currently get from YouTube, but it would be hard for them to walk away from the revenue they’re already getting.

And while YouTube has worked hard to attract more “professional” content on the site — which is why it has been writing advances to video makers to create “channels” on the site — the labels’ videos remain enormously popular with its young audience.

Meanwhile, both the distribution and the investment will be crucial for Vevo, which operates a very thin-margin business.

Under both the old deal and the new one the company is set to strike, Vevo hands over about a third of its revenue to YouTube, and more than 50 percent of its revenue to the labels, which doesn’t leave it much in the way of an operating budget. Last year, Vevo CEO Rio Caraeff said his company was doing more than $150 million a year.

January 17, 2013 at 4:22 pm Leave a comment

Amazon Brings MP3 Store To Apple’s iPhone, iPod

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Source: Hypebot

Amazon MP3,  the second most popular digital music store, is now accessible via Apple's top ranked portable music devices, the iPod Touch and iPhone, for the first time. "Since the launch of the Amazon Cloud Player app for iPhone and iPod touch, a top request from customers has been the ability to buy music from Amazon right from their devices," according to Steve Boom, VP of Amazon Music.

Users also have access to Amazon features including personalized recommendations, best-seller lists and Amazon customer ratings. Downloads are automatically saved to a free Amazon Cloud Player library and can be downloaded or played instantly from an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad along with the Kindle Fire, Android phones and tablets.

The Amazon MP3 mobile website is built on HTML5 and available at www.amazon.com/mp3.

January 17, 2013 at 4:20 pm Leave a comment

Pandora To Pay Sony/ATV 25% Higher Rate

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Source: Hypebot

Just last month Pandora was in Washington asking for lower rates. Now comes a report that they've agreed to pay more. Music publisher Sony/ATV has independently negotiated a 25% increase in royalties from Pandora, according to the New York Post.  The result is likely to be more publishers demanding higher rates.

Sony/ATV, a joint venture of Sony and the Michael Jackson estate, won the big increase for the next 12 months after it pulled digital rights from BMI and ASCAP on Jan. 1st.  Sony/ATV declined to comment, but CEO Martin Bandier, told The Post: “At the end of the day, we got a terrific deal for our songwriters. Our thinking has been vindicated. Hopefully it’s the first of many.”

Pandora has repeatedly argued that it can not contniue to pay high royalty rates and survive.

The majority of royalties paid by the music streamer go to SoundExchange on behalf of artists and record labels. A much smaller share, estimated at 4% of Pandora's gross revenue of $275 million, goes to ASCAP, BMI and now increasingly direct to publishers like Sony/ATV on behalf of copyright holders.

January 17, 2013 at 4:18 pm Leave a comment

MySpace Is Back!

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Source: Billboard.biz

The redesigned Myspace finally opened up to the public Tuesday. A year and a half in the works, the site is both a social network and a music discovery destination.
 
The new Myspace would be a success if success were determined on style points alone. But as its predecessors have proven, a music site needs functionality to be competitive. Myspace appears to have a good set of tools. It works well as an on-demand music service, a personalized radio service and an on-demand video service.
 
The $35 million question is quite simple: will people care about a music-based social network in 2013 or did Specific Media, which acquired the site from News Corp in 2011, spend over a year overhauling the site for nothing?

January 15, 2013 at 11:10 pm Leave a comment

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Source: Hypebot

(UPDATED) Facebook's big announcement today had nothing to do with music, but the product it announced  – Graph Search – could be a useful tool for musicians and music marketers trying to connect with fans on the granular level: "With Graph Search, you can look up anything shared with you on Facebook, and others can find stuff you've shared with them, including content set to Public."

For example:

"Which of your friends or fans near LA also loves photography and might come shoot a show? "

Facebook Graph Search can help. It's in limited beta today and will start slowly adding users. Sign up for the beta here: ht.ly/gPYGl

January 15, 2013 at 11:03 pm Leave a comment

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