Today we meet the team of iMusician, digital music distributor, who tells us more about the many services offered by the platform, adapted to all artists no matter their level of development.
We are in daily contact with independent artists and labels and we can assure you that there is a real need that Groover meets.
– iMusician –
iMusician, can you present your project?
iMusician is a digital music distributor : we sell, manage and monetize your music on streaming platforms and download shops worldwide.
In order to support independent artists and labels in a 360° view before, during and even after their music is online, we offer various complementary services around distribution. Among which monetizing your music on YouTube, promotional tools like smartlinks to optimize your release and since last year, online instant mastering.
We also put our members in touch with partner services for example for cd and vinyl pressing or with Groover for promotion 🙂
How was the idea of iMusician born ?
Twenty years ago, our two co-founders were producing electronic music on their own music label. In the early 2000s, when the first legal music streaming and downloading platforms were born, they saw an opportunity to offer their peers fair access to the music industry. This is how iMusician was created in 2010. Since then, with more than 200,000 independent artists and labels, the vision of offering all artists access to the same conditions for creating and distributing their work has never left the company.
| Read also : How to get signed by a label when you are an independent artist?
What are the advantages for an independent artist to distribute their music with iMusician?
Selling music online with iMusician brings you the following benefits:
The first is the one-time payment. You only have to pay once to get your release online, that’s it. We don’t charge an annual fee to keep your music online like most other digital distributors where you have to pay every year. This is a long term financial advantage as 20 years later your release will still be online and you will still only have paid the initial cost of uploading it.
It’s also good for your mental health. Managing your music project as an independent artist is a lot of work. Our mission is also to lighten this workload so that the artist can concentrate on what they do best: their music. It’s hard to be 100% on the creation when you have to pay every year and risk your release disappearing if you forget.
Our strength is our Artist & Label Relations team. True experts in online music, they answer your questions in less than 48 hours in 6 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. This is not insignificant in an industry that is still geographically very unequal: having our website, application, customer support and resources (guides, webinars, etc.) available in their own language is a benefit that appeals to many of our artists.
Another advantage that fits in with our mission of inclusion is our global reach. We offer the possibility to distribute on 200 platforms from the majors (Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, Youtube Music, Deezer) to the more niche ones:
- Local: Yandex in Russia, AWA in Japan or KKBox in China;
- Genre-specific such as Beatport or Traxsource for electronic music;
- High sound quality like Tidal or Qobuz.
Finally, we do not ask for a minimum income for the artist to request a payout of their royalties from the platforms. You can request a transfer to your account from the very first cent earned with your music.
What is your pricing?
For digital distribution, our pricing structure is designed to grow with the career and goals of our artists and labels.
Our three release packages (Starter, Regular, and Rockstar) all allow you to distribute your music with no annual fee, benefit from customer support and get your isrcs and UPC/EAN codes for free. Their price increases according to the number of platforms (1 to all) and the commission charged on your sales (from 0% to 30%).
For artists and labels with a high volume of releases, we also offer a subscription at €499 per year for unlimited releases without commission on sales, telephone support and many services (YouTube monetisation, uploading within a week, tools for your music promotion etc.) included for free.
With the recorded music market constantly evolving, it is also increasingly difficult to set a strategy and a timeline for your releases: for example, the album is no longer the most obvious format choice for all artists. That’s why we also offer special release packages based on digital-friendly release strategies. For example the Spotify Special plan, you release one single per month for a year, which gives you 12 times more opportunities to end up on Spotify playlists.
Finally, monetisation of your music on Youtube and Instant Mastering are priced per track or per release, all prices are available on our website.
Get 10% off on music distribution with IMusician using the voucher IMD-GROOVER
What’s a day with the iMusician team like?
As we speak, we are in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, so the days are similar…
More seriously, we are an international team with a passion for music: we enjoy supporting the artists who trust us and developing new services for them.
Music unites us: for example, every week, the whole company suggests their own favorite releases to highlight on our website for Release of the Week. It’s a moment of communion beyond the teams where we take the time to listen to and appreciate the work of the artists we work for every day.
| Discover also the Groover Hot 10
Selection of the 10 best tracks discovered on our platform each month.
What are your plans for the coming year?
Our long term goal is to become a 360° service provider to independent artists and labels around our distribution platform.
In the process of expanding our services to meet the many needs of DIY artists, we launched our new online mastering solution last year which allows you to get professional quality audio files at lower cost. Fast and professional, you can try it for free.
This online mastering solution has been designed to allow all artists to have access to professional quality mastering regardless of their purchasing power, connections or knowledge of sound engineering. It is placed upstream of the release value chain, before digital distribution, and is not reserved to artists distributed by iMusician. It is therefore an obvious first step towards the 360° and inclusive structure we wish to become.
And finally, what do you think of Groover?
We believe in what Groover offers. Many members of the iMusician team are artists themselves or run their own labels and all those who tried Groover were very satisfied. Groover’s model is a great idea. We are in daily contact with independent artists and labels and we can assure you that there is a real need that Groover meets as many struggle with the promotion part of their journey.
Just as access to the physical distribution network, signing to a record label or getting media coverage are some of the bottlenecks that made the “old” music industry so far out of the independent artists’ reach.
While music streaming and the internet have helped break these barriers, having your music online is not always enough: music marketing and release promotion are all the more important as with tens of thousands of new tracks on streaming platforms every day, you need to be able to stand out.
We particularly appreciate the notion of guaranteed feedback because we know how important it is for artists to get feedback. Getting in touch with media and record companies can be a hard task: hours and hours of work to get no response can be discouraging. Groover’s guaranteed feedback can be life-saving in this case and can help to better understand the target, strengths and areas for improvement of one’s musical project.
Try Groover now and contact the best labels, media and music industry professionals, feedback guaranteed!
