Direct-to-Fan: Adding my stuff

Preface: Before I start today’s post, I want to acknowledge some key, critical facts.  The folks ’round the Nimbit, Topspin, and Hollow Vixen camps have expressed their concern about the very nature of doing something like this.  They’re smart people, and while they may be right to express their concern, I also greatly admire the fact that they trust me and allow me to do this.  The entire experiment succeeds (or fails!) based upon my ability to use both products and report out results in a way that only serves to educate and advise.  The only winner in this whole process is any band/artist/manager who is trying to create a direct-to-fan model for their career.  Focusing on their success and struggle is the whole point here.  Everything else is commentary.  It also deserves to be mentioned that I am really grateful for everyone’s comments -positive and negative- thus far.  More than anyone else, I’ve learned a lot, and that’s awesome.

And now, the rest of the story ….

Having gotten the tracks back from mastering, I needed to get ’em up onto the Hollow Vixen website. Since we’ve got various Topspin and Nimbit players/widgets on the site, I had to upload the product via both platforms, and I wanted to get the stuff submitted to the various digital distributors since not everyone (yet/alas…) shops direct-to-fan via the artist.  I started uploading the tracks via Topspin.  Here’s what happened…

The process is fairly simple and straight forward:  log in, select “catalog,” and create a new package in which I’d upload the tracks.  This doesn’t require much previous knowledge, just a bit of common sense.  I was particularly impressed that I could upload various formats (WAV, AIF, etc … ).  Then I hit a rather odd roadblock.   Having chosen my file format (WAV), I couldn’t figure out how to actually upload the product.  There was no button to click.  I tried dragging and dropping from the file folder on my desktop, but that didn’t work either.  Here’s what that screen looks like:

The problem, I realized, is that I was using Google Chrome (on my black MacBook running Mac OSX 10.6.3), and the Topspin stuff utilizes Flash.  Flash is super cool, and it provides (for me at least) a really consistent, smooth user experience.  But, take a look at this screenshot (using Safari) and notice the extra (and very significant) button that appears.  I was totally confused, and tried doing the upload a bunch of times in Chrome before I went “oh, wait a minute …” and switched to Safari.  Once I did that, some cool things happened.  For starters, I could simply grab the group of files and

upload them right away.  And the uploading (considering the pretty massive file sizes) was fairly swift.  I also had a lovely status bar telling me my progress.

From there, I needed to do a lot of data entry:  titles, track order, publishing info, etc.  You can do that across all tracks for the repetitive info, and then track-by-track for the unique stuff.  Cool.  All things considered, once I got the right browser/track upload happening, it was a pretty easy process.

Using the Nimbit platform (in Google Chrome) was equally straight forward.  From the home screen (dashboard…) of the Nimbit account, I have some activity directors.  I chose “Add a Product” and a step-by-step path asks the appropriate questions (what kind of product are you adding, etc.).  Unlike Topspin, you’re uploading MP3s only.  This is where I could insert commentary about the quality of MP3s, or that folks prefer to listen to Lossless audio, but that’s a debate I’d rather leave to other people.  The guys in Hollow Vixen are interested in offering the “deluxe” hi-quality audio as a special option down the road.  Not a bad idea, but that’s for another time (too).

Uploading the MP3s into the Nimbit platform is about as straight-forward as it could be.  The process is slightly reversed from Topspin in that you enter a lot of the “background” info first (see image).  Then you click ahead, and add the track titles, times, and other info.  Once that’s all in there, you’re then prompted for some more stuff.  (see second image).  A unique thing (for Nimbit) is that it automatically rips your samples, generates ISRC codes, and a UPC code if necessary.  It’s included in the monthly/annual cost of an account.  If your stuff is going to iTunes and other digital distributors they’ll require the ISRC code to track and report sales.

After that’s done, you then get to go in track by track and upload your music.  Unlike Topspin, it can’t be done as a “group” of files, but since you’re uploading MP3s, it didn’t take me all that long to upload each track individually.  And at that point you can also add lyrics, choose pricing, and indicate other stuff.  Mostly the same with Topspin, I just didn’t mention it up above.  Now you know.

At this point, assuming you’ve uploaded your music successfully, it’s time to consider a few other options:  where to sell your stuff, and what versions of your music.  The guys in Hollow Vixen wanted their tracks available on their website, Facebook, and MySpace — but also on iTunes, eMusic, AmazonMP3, and other places.  From Nimbit, it’s a prompt that asks you if you want to do this, and a few distributor specific questions (agreeing to distributors TOS, pricing options, etc) and off goes your music – but you need to send a physical copy to Nimbit.  That’s a bit of a downer ‘cuz it delays the process a bit, but considering you’re doing everything from inside the Nimbit platform, how picky can you be?  The other option would be to use Topspin plus some other distributor, and since you never got the ISRC codes from Topspin, they’ve got to come from somewhere.  Maybe that other distributor can provide ’em — no idea and not part of this discussion.

So the verdict on all of this: I’m honestly not sure.  Once I got past the Flash/Chrome conflict, I liked using the Topspin interface.  It’s pretty cool.  But the Nimbit platform seems more complete to me — with the exclusion of adding additional audio formats.   And that’s something I could see some value in.

Oh yeah… someone commented on the fact that I didn’t mention pricing.  So here’s how it works:

Hollow Vixen members took BerkleeMusic’s “Online Marketing w/ Topspin” class.  It cost around $1000 and includes a Topspin account which takes commissions on sales (sliding scale, averaging around 20%).   So technically they’re not paying for a Topspin account, but they did pay to take the class which (they told me) taught them some cool stuff.

On the Nimbit side, they’re using a nimbitPro account.  That costs $24.95/month or $249 per year plus a 20% commission on direct sales (i.e. non-iTunes, etc.)

That’s it for now.  Hope it helps…