Today we meet the team of iMusician, your ultimate-one-stop-360 music business partner, who tells us more about the many services offered by the platform, adapted to all artists no matter their genre or 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 not just another digital music distributor. Originally born in Switzerland, our ultimate purpose is to sell, manage and monetize music of independent musicians on the widest range of streaming platforms and download shops worldwide.
On top of that, 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 digital distribution. Among these are monetizing one’s music on YouTube, music analytics tool that helps musicians discover their potential, a promotional tool in the form of Artist Hub to help optimize one’s release and break through the noise, and online instant mastering.
We also put our members in touch with partner services for example for CD and vinyl pressing, or merch designing, or with Groover for promotion. 🙂
Get 15% off on your first purchase with iMusician using the voucher IMD-GROOVER
How was the idea of iMusician born?
More than twenty years ago, our two co-founders, Shigs and Tobi, were producing electronic music with their own music label. In the early 2000s, when the first legal music streaming and downloading platforms were born, they saw an opportunity, and obligation, too, to offer their peers fair access to the music industry. This is how iMusician was created in 2010. Since then, with more than 500,000 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?
It’s important for us to know that everything we do benefits the artists first.
At iMusician, we provide musicians with truly unlimited music distribution. All they have to pay is a single one-time fee to get their music on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and all other streaming and download music shops and stores – FOREVER AND EVER! This means that unlike other music distributors, we don’t charge an annual fee to keep their music on these platforms, regardless of the subscription they’re on. This way, we want to make sure that their music stays online forever, leaving their legacy behind, while continuously generating streams and royalties.
What’s also truly unlimited, is the amount of artists on one account. Music is often created through powerful synergies of artists, who come together to write dazzling melodies and write compelling stories. With us, one can release compilations with as many artists as they’d like, whether it’s one or one hundred.
It’s not only the creative synergies, but also the diversity of genres that we want to empower. This comes along with our belief that the genre of music one makes should showcase their strengths, not cause them trouble. Therefore, unlike other digital distributors, we’re proud to distribute every possible genre, including electronic and classical music. As a result, we also cover the largest selection of electronic music shops, including Traxsource, Beatport or Juno Download. Simply said, with iMusician, artists are sure to maximize their reach to their audience, while staying true to their choice of genre and artistic vision.
Providing ultimate flexibility is another benefit that comes with distributing music with iMusician. As musicians ourselves, we understand the common need of artists to stay as flexible as possible, especially when it comes to expenses. This is why we want to prevent artists from getting themselves locked into any long-term contracts that can seriously hinder their careers. With us, artists can downgrade and upgrade their current subscription plan, at any time and for as long as they need to. Whatever the case, their music will still be online and their revenue still accessible.
A great strength of ours lies within our Artist & Label Relations team.True experts in online music, they are here to provide artists with the best service in the distribution industry. And they can do so in 6 different languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. You can ask them anything and they’ll be more than happy to guide you through all things music business. We’re also proud to have built our iMusician Community Forum – a dedicated digital space where musicians and other industry experts get together to discuss music-related topics, share their work, and provide expertise to one another.
Finally, we deem ourselves completely transparent with artists. It is often the case that digital music distributors charge hidden fees, like withholding taxes. As a Swiss company that constantly strives to provide customers with high quality services and reliability, we simply don’t do that. Instead, our goal is to make sure that musicians’ tracks are released right the first time, with no bad surprises coming later.
What is your pricing?
For digital distribution, our pricing structure is designed to grow with the career and goals of our artists and labels. We are also in constant search for new solutions for independent musicians, in order to make the distribution of their music cheaper, easier, and more powerful than ever.
This is why earlier this year, we introduced two new subscription plans, AMPLIFY and AMPLIFY+, that are to enrich our standard, Free offer. While the Free plan helps one launch their music career, allowing them to deliver their release worldwide, to up to 4 shops of your choice, the AMPLIFY and AMPLIFY+ give them the opportunity to level up even more with a wide range of supplementary features.
These features include the Artist Hub Pro and Artist Hub Pro+ promo tools, Music Analytics, Pre-saves, one-to-one support, premium YouTube support or editorial playlist pitching. On top of that, with AMPLIFY and AMPLIFY+, artists keep more money with a lower commission rate of only 5% and 0% respectively. This means they’re able to keep up to 100% of their revenue, which, we hope, can help them gain better financial stability and artistic freedom.
Eventually, whatever plan of ours a musician chooses, they will be provided with fully transparent, always flexible and truly unlimited music distribution. As said before, there are no annual fees included, you pay once and you have your music online forever.
Finally, we offer additional tools and features, such as YouTube Content ID, Studio Mastering and Instant Mastering, that are always available for musicians as add-ons when they need them. These are priced per track or per release with all prices available on our website!
Get 15% off on your first purchase with iMusician using the voucher IMD-GROOVER
What’s a day with the iMusician team like?
Although the way we run as a company has changed substantially over the past few years, with remote work dominating among our teams in both Berlin and Zurich, we are always united by our passion for music. We enjoy supporting the artists who trust us, developing new services for them and celebrating their successes. When they break through and win over the scrutinies of the music industry, it truly feels like we’re the winners, too.
While music unites us, it’s the great effort that we make together that keeps us connected as individuals. No day goes by without brainstorming ideas, sharing progress as well as difficulties, inspiring each other and cheering each other on. As a team of 40+ members representing around 15 world nationalities, we also love learning about each other and celebrating our cultures.
| Discover also the Groover Hot 10
Selection of the 10 best tracks discovered on our platform each month.
What’s next for you?
Overall, as the music industry is always evolving, creating new opportunities and challenges for artists, we too are moving with the times. The music business just never stops, and neither can we.
In the process of introducing our new subscription plans, we have also relaunched our Artist Hub promo tool, that is now available as an add-on for every artist, no matter who they distribute their music with – a free smartlink for everyone.
We’re already working on the next big steps to provide great new features and products, so stay tuned!
And finally, what do you think of Groover?
We definitely believe in what Groover offers and think that its model is a great idea. Many members of the iMusician team are artists themselves or run their own labels and all those who tried Groover were very satisfied with what it offers. 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, especially nowadays as, on average, 49,000 new songs are being released on a daily basis. With that amount of new tracks on streaming platforms every day, musicians need to be able to stand out. And Groover is there to help them do so.
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.
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Try Groover now and contact the best labels, media and music industry professionals, feedback guaranteed!
