WaTunes, a service that helps independent artists get their music into online music stores like iTunes and Amazon, has announced that it is making its service entirely free. The move is a direct attack on competitors like TuneCore, which also helps independent artists distribute their music but charges fees depending on the number of songs being sold and the number of stores the artist would like to sell their tracks on.
In the company’s blog post on the new pricing scheme (or lack thereof) CEO Kevin Rivers writes:
We’ve went from being free to be charged, to giving 90% of sales, to giving back all the sales earnings. We’ve finally can say that we have raise the bar even higher by providing you guys an ABSOLUTE digital distribution service. As of now, WaTunes will enable it’s customers to continue to sell unlimited music, earn 100% of the royalties, and more, ALL FOR FREE! There are no fees, cancellations, no gimmicks.
So now that the company is giving up its entire source of revenue, how is it planning to make money? I spoke with CEO Kevin Rivers, who explains that the site is moving towards launching a music-based social network with rich music widgets and a community of fans and artists (it sounds like it will compete against sites like MySpace Music). Users will also be able to buy songs through an online storefront, with advertising as the primary source of revenue. The move to make WaTune’s distribution service free is designed to attract a variety of independent artists to the music social network, which he says will launch around June.
While this seems like a great deal for artists, it also sounds a little too good to be true. There are already many online music communities, and even if WaTunes does begin to distribute music for a large number of artists, I still don’t see how they’ll be able to convert them into new users on their music portal. That said, free is free, so I doubt WaTunes will have any trouble attracting new artists for the time being.
It’s good for the indie artist to jump into the eat all you want business model, but at some stage the business model will have to induce a fee into the service, as the dynamics will crash and burn.
I like their style, offer free gain the consumers from the competitors, then position themselves as players in the sector.
It’s the age old analogy, “If it’s to good to be true, then it usually is!
Hi Jason,
Thank you for the write up. Yes, this has been a very big and challenging move for the company. We have taken a huge gamble to enable any artists the power to distribute their music without restrictions of paying for upfront fees or sharing royalties.
By doing this, we have made a clear focus to engage in our true goal to become a real social media distribution service. I welcome any artist and label to become apart of this new change and embrace unlimited possibilities to empower their music career and business.
Kevin Rivers, CEO WaTunes.com
With commodity products, we discount to gain share. Are we already selling commodities with music distribution and social networks?
I personally believe that there is room for a lot more innovation.
Shall we begin their Deadpool countdown now?
They already are, thats why they are doing this move which no way they can pay a staff out of pocket to keep up with a Tunecore level of activity.
Music start-ups are the no-fly-zone in 2009 and forward, everyone knows that.
TC is setting these guys up for a future Deadpool “music industry is dying” story as they always do.
yeah,artist don’t want this service; or need it.
“yeah,artist don’t want this service; or need it.”
what sort of a dumb ignoramus would say something like that?
if tunecore (which is a zero-tech company by all definitions — take away its founder’s connections and industry know-how and you will find that tunecore is emperors clothing by way of technology advantage) has a business charging for this, then OBVIOUSLY someone should like that same service for free.
however… what i think is important to note is that music has gone from being a behemoth industry to a cottage industry overnight. which should suit noth tunecore and watunes when they start charging again.
and, you know what? an economic downturn on the scale we are seeing probably means that this “cottagization” is going to happen to a lot more so-called industries. tunecore just took 7 million in a series a or b last year — i don’t know that anyone with any sense would invest the same money again (i can’t even say that the money they took was smart money — but good for them that they took it because the days of dumb-VC money are numbered if not already extinct).
tunecore got dumb smart-money. unfortunately for watunes, that wave won’t break again for quite some time. but i wish watunes all the best in trying to make a business of what they doing.
the fundamental challenge is this — tunecore/watunes/cdbaby/earbuzz may have business selling the service to artists. but those artists don’t have a business selling the music to buyers. recorded music stopped being the music industry 7 or 8 years ago.
lastly — when a TC writer writes something, it’d be great if they got a more complete view of the competition. CD Baby anyone?
C’mon TC. Stop being half-assed journalists and start looking — i know tons of people want you to write about them but there are often a plethora of real businesses who have laid the groundwork for those opportunities.
Bandbox (http://www.bandbox.com) has a better approach, I think.
Compare to Jango, they move to other directions,with same order of competitions. Jango wins in “distributions and Watunes win in “free space”however if I were musician why I prefer provider that can give me “wide distribution rather then “free space”well I think what I say this also follow by other
Congrats WaTunes! Instead of building a business you can give away your valueable services away for free. Tell mom you’ll be moving back home in about 18 months. Bravo. As for TuneCore, they’ll have one less competitor to worry about.
nice way o supporting music artist
http://www.heal...tedirectory.com
What’s with all the negativity? If someone offers the possibility to add music to iTunes Store and Amazon free of charge I say way to go (as I just paid a number of bucks to TuneCore the other day..
. It might be so that the move is done just to gain attention, or that the free part will be removed soon but if it’s free now I’d recommend it. It’s not like you get outstanding service at TuneCore for the bucks you pay.
Hi Tobbe,
I thank you for your nice comment. To be precise, this model will be permanent. We don’t have any plans to change it at all. Now will it give us attention? We surely hope it does as we believe it will not only help musicians and labels out there but also save some green in the process which can go towards the marketing of the artist or label.
Another great note about our service is our communication. Majority of our customers usually are able to reach me quite easily and I try my best to respond to any of their inquiries in a timely fashion. Some of them I speak to them via a conference call and share with them tips to help them succeed. WaTunes isn’t just another company aimed for success but a company aimed for the success of it’s customers. Personalization is a crucial element we value in providing customer service.
I hope you guys here that is viewing this article would be in engaged to see what we have to offer.
Kevin Rivers, CEO WaTunes.com
This is going to just head towards the deadpool. It might been a quick way to grab attention in the short term, but it cant last.
The site itself doesnt look professional at all and it doesnt seem like they are getting any artists or traffic at the moment.
Can someone say Marketing Ploy thats not going to pay off!!
Professional? You just insulted watunes on public forum. Where is your professionalism.
Can someone say your afraid becuase your going to lose all of your clients? !!
Why would an Artist want to let this company collect their royalties? What happens to the Artist’s royalty stream from the distributed music when WaTunes goes under?
Nightmare scenario is that WaTunes sticks around b/c they are paying employees from the escrowed Artist royalties. Until that model doesn’t catches up with them. Then they go belly up, and the Artist can’t collect from iTunes, b/c iTunes already paid those royalties to WaTunes. Can you say Bernie Madoff for the indie musician?
In other words, your digital distributor not only gets your music up at retail, but also processes and pays out the royalty payments – they are a bank.
Would you bank with WaTunes? Sounds like banking with WaMu? How’d that go for ya?
If Watunes can answer the comment above by big playa with any legitamacy then I will think outside; credit crunch mode, and be convinced the Watunes free music innovation, has legs!
This is to inquire on Neno Brown’s inquiry to answer to Big Playa’s legitimacy. So here we go:
Firstly, Big Playa’s inquiry is based on the assumption of WaTunes closing down. In this case, every artist and record label will receive what we call a quarter-end report. What this is, is a report in which we are able to issue out the final quarter payments (as music stores like Napster and eMusic issue out quarterly payments). Every artist is able to receive their final reports before we initiate a shutdown transition. Unlike most sites that just shut off for no apparent reason, we have an exit plan in place to smoothly transition to a shutdown to prevent such nightmares.
Secondly, we’re not a bank. We’re a digital distributor which means that we are obligated to issue out all occurring payment to every customer. Unlike banks who would pay out employees because of escrowed royalties, we don’t do that because we don’t need it. Remember as our goal is not to take a percentage of money or get an upfront cost from the customer but to provide a strong access route to the customer without restrictions. Another goal is to REALLY help the artist succeed (Check our blog on features that we’ve secured through iTunes as an example). As my Chief Marketing Officer stated above, we’re more dedicated enough that we’re willing to work for free (digital distribution service) as we move forward to setup WaTunes 3 which will then generate sufficient revenue for the company.
Thirdly, most would consist of WaTunes to fall due to their own assumption of our maintenance cost which I’ll have to clarify that it’s very quite inexpensive at the moment.
I hope this answer the inquiry and as always, we’re willing to help ANY artist and label to succeed by communicating with them on a personal level and really get hands-on with their contents as this is one of our core values.
Kevin Rivers, CEO WaTunes.com
Thanks for your reply Mr Rivers.
As an artist, I would be concerned with what happens if this company does go belly up — your music an royalties could get stuck in legal limbo for a long time…
Your the CEO of routenote right? We actually utilized your 10% deal you have right now. It doesn’t work. At the end of the day your still taking money out of the pockets of hard working artists who deserve 100% of their sales. Why should you make money off of their hard work. There’s no big catch here people, we really want to help you. To the person who said we’d go belly up due to paying staff to manage the site. I’ll work for free everysingle day of the week to prove to you guys that this idea will work. It’s natural for skeptics at this point, in a year though, you’ll look back and remember how watunes changed the music platform for every single aspiring artist in the world. Thanks for all the support, my email is tonypytleski@watunes.com, contact me at anytime.
The message is directed towards Steven Finch. The CEO of routenote.
Hi – I work at RouteNote with Steve; I don’t want to exacerbate the argument here, but we’re in the same industry and we know how much admin work it takes to check incoming music and properly process payments from sales partners. It’s not something we can afford to do for free, or something we can fit in around a day job that pays our rent.
Free is always going to be the best deal for artists, no argument there, but it isn’t unfair to expect some recompense for doing a good job, and getting paid for your work means that you have a truly sustainable business model.
As well as working in music distribution, I am also pretty conversant with online advertising rates, and to generate enough traffic to pay five people’s wages is not a small undertaking.
Assuming a $30K salary for each employee (not unreasonable) you’d need 375million pageviews annually at a $0.40 CPM to generate that kind of revenue. That’s without paying the artists whose music is onsite a cent for all the streams of their music. Myspace achieved it, because they were innovators, but now that there are other models established, with existing major record label partnerships, how are WaMusic going to distinguish themselves against competitors like Spotify and Last FM?
No hard feelings here guys, we’re all trying to find ways into a market that’s tough enough without slinging mud… race you to an IPO?
first off, I’m part of WaTunes and working on getting Asians to be part of this platform – think 4x the market size of the U.S. (i.e. China) being part of this
That’s really amazing to see a service like this for independent music producers. Do they have anything like this for independent filmmakers?
Best of luck to them, although it seems a bit like they’re winging it on the revenue side, and haven’t exactly figured that minor detail out.
Gives options, which is good.
Gives options, which is good.
I’m going to try this out
Indie music is gaining a lot of steam. That market segment must be growing rapidly, those trying to build support for it are growing exponentially it seems. This is a significant gamble, but if this segment gets half as big as foretasted it will be worth the risk. Before I purchased something off one of these sites I’d check it out at This digital security site though.
It’s great to see more companies offering independent artists digital distribution–just goes to show how much demand there is in this sector. Congratulations to you on joining into this business, Mr. Rivers, welcome. I mean it. I know first hand how difficult it is, and how much fun it can be.
All of us, TuneCore, CD Baby, we’re all building businesses that aim to get the artists into the stores without making them sign their lives away by entangling them into vicious contracts. Good. I don’t want anyone to lose sight of how noble that cause is. Anyone willing to try and build a company without exploiting musicians is a good guy in my book.
You’re trying a bold strategy, I admit, and I’m really curious to see how it goes, especially if you scale. Should be interesting.
Do I think TuneCore strikes the perfect balance of fair price and awesome product? Well, sure, but I’m biased. Do we need improvement? Every company does, and we’re working on it. So it’s a race, like any industry, and the consumer is the the judge and the ultimate winner.
So as I say to everyone else in this space, best of luck: may the better model and the best service win.
–Peter
peter@tunecore.com
I don’t understand why people are running away from a company that is giving a free service. This doesn’t make any sense. You complain about the price when its too high and when you get freeness you want to look a gift horse in the mouth. At the end of the day, I think what they are doing are great. For the paid VIP service you get a lot more stores which is incredible as it knocks Tune core out the system and I am a big fan of them also. I did a load of research on this yesterday and i must say Tunecore, Ditto Music and Wa Tunes have to be the best so far, in terms of what they are offering.
I got as far as “We’ve went….” (I googled this page as an associated website – musicexpand.com – had as of their 7 – only 7 – faq questions – how could they have missed this ” Is all sales final?”
Yes, suh, they sho’ izzz!
If this is what the “CEO” does to English, I wouldn’t like to see what he does to money….
They be from Atlanta Gowgia, sho’ ’nuff!!
I’d love to give you all a big hug, Kevin, Tony, Peter, all you out there who genuinely help artists achieve their dreams and have their music listed.
Thank you for your efforts, thank you for your innovative ideas, my crew will certainly be utilizing them and using your services.
I would spend very little time responding to negativity, wouldn’t waste these wonderful creative minds on that.
Keep up the good work please. Looking forward to waveTunes new model. Cheers guys
Hey Kevin,
What you are doing is genius! The digital environment has created a paradigm shift not only for the music industry but for all business.
Alot of comments I have read here seem not to factoring in the phenomenon (That has arisen from the paradigm shift) that “free” is a legitimate model (Did anyone pay to be on facebook? or Myspace? or Linked In?….E.T.C.).
Companies that use a freemium model (like kevin has chosen to do) are open to succeed in new ways because they will be creatively developing new ways to build strong relationships with customers and leading the online economy with innovative ways to earn money around “free”.
What a perfect way to entice your customers to join your community. Give them something free that will A) help them make money and B) help them achieve their life long dreams of being a successful artist.
Once kevin has built his community around helping, he will have infinite possibilities to earn money with his active audiences. (The real money or currency on the web is “attention”)
I wish you all the best Kevin from one entrepreneur to another, enjoy the ride my friend it looks like its going to be an adventure!
If you need any help I would love to have a brainstorming session with you.
Peace!
“Infinite Possibilities!”
Hey guys,
Thank you for your inspiring words. It is your support that makes us work hard to provide ways to help music artists succeed and achieve their dreams.
@Missy: Thank you for your awesome words. I’d like to give you a hug too. All of us at WaTunes truly appreciate your kind words and support and I hope that we’ll be able to assist you to make your music career a tremendous success.
@RealityArchitect: Thank you for your inspiring words. It truly pleases me to see great feedback of what we’re doing. Our goal is to create a huge change in the industry. There is a void to fill and we’re here to fulfill it. Creating this whole new music world is just the beginning for WaTunes. As you’ve said “Infinite Possibilities”, I strongly value those words as with WaTunes, I aim to make those possibilities truly endless.
Until next time, I thank everyone for your feedback (whether it is positive or negative) as this makes us find ways to improve and provide a much friendlier, faster, and quality service. Thank you once again for making WaTunes possible.
Kevin Rivers
CEO, WaTunes
Yea right, another scam, they say its free but that’s BS, 10 dollar montly fee for artists to upload songs.
Hi Rightwind,
That is a false statement and is far from the actual truth. WaTunes no longer charges $10 per month as we eliminated that whole model way back in March when this article took place.
As of now, WaTunes enables every artist & label to gain access to iTunes for free (meaning no upfront charges + 100% of your royalties). For other store services, you can upgrade to VIP for $29.95 per year or do NOISE for $69.95 per album.
You’ve heard it straight from the source!
Kevin Rivers
CEO, WaTunes