New Organization Offers One Stop Indie Label Shopping

by , 12:00 PM EDT, August 26th, 2003

Apple's iTunes Music Store (iTMS) has over 200,000 songs ready for you to download, and download people have, more than 6.5 million times. Still, the key to the success for iTMS lies in both the quantity and variety of music, which is why the independent labels and artists (Indies) are so coveted. Apple and its competitors have both been wooing the Indies since the iTMS was launched in April of this year.

The problem in dealing with Indie labels is that they are small, which means there are a lot of them, each with its own peculiarity. Striking deals with them is like herding cats.

The Indies don't have it so grand either, especially if you are so small that you represent only one or two relatively unknown artists; its tough to get your label space in any venue, and you can forget about mass distribution in the retail channel.

Necessity, as the old saying goes, is the mother of invention, and the need to have one place to go to negotiate contract with Indie labels has become a necessity. C|Net News is reporting the birth of a new organization that will offer to represent 50 Indie labels in digital rights negotiations. The Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA) hopes to ease the access of Indie labels to the emerging music download services, like iTMS, and to help provide the variety of artists that the services need to succeed. From the article Indie Labels Lure NET Music Stores:

San Francisco-based Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA) is the latest to hit the scene. It launched Monday with deals in place to negotiate digital rights on behalf of 50 labels whose music it hopes to place with the growing Net download and subscription services. A few older companies, such as CD Baby and The Orchard , also represent the digital rights of independent artists and labels.

"What we're saying is that this solves problems for both parties, and particularly for the independent labels," said IODA founder Kevin Arnold. "Typically, independents are companies with small staffs that don't have a lot of expertise with digital rights, and don't have in-house attorneys."

The move towards organization of independent labels could help speed the acceptance of authorized music subscription and download services , most of which have focused so far on acquiring music from the five major music labels.

Read the full article at C|Net News.

The Mac Observer Spin:

This is exactly what iTMS needs; a way to easily sign up Indie labels. The task of just trying to find independents is tough enough; they are flung across the country and service relatively small audiences. With services like the IODA, Apple can concentrate on what it does best, which is improving its increasingly successful iTMS.

What we're seeing is the transformation of the music industry where the Indies are just as important to the distribution services as the Big Labels, as predicted here at TMO. As the popularity of bands under the Indies increases, so will the power of the Indie labels, whose view of the music industry is less about profit and more about the bands and the fans.

At the center of all of this change is Apple with iTMS. If you haven't bought stock yet we suggest you break out that piggy bank, quick.

Indie labels lure Net music stores