The leading international digital distribution company, Believe Digital, today, Monday 6th July, 2009 launch Zimbalam. The new service is designed for artists and small labels looking to self-release their music to a wide audience, without the need for a record label or having to sign a prohibitive contract.
The digital music marketplace is set up in such a way that it is very difficult for individual artists to sell their music through any of the major online retailers, let alone a global network, and considering that the vast majority of artists are unsigned, this poses a problem for many talented artists trying to break into the music industry.
Denis Ladegaillerie, President and founder of Believe Digital explains:
“Artists are at the very heart of Believe Digital and everything we do. In 2008, we received more than 50,000 distribution requests from unsigned artists and were forced to turn down many promising artists. Unsatisfied with this, we built Zimbalam as a direct answer to the needs expressed by these artists to sell and promote their music whilst retaining complete control of their own release.”
Zimbalam gives the power back to the artists, giving them the freedom to control their own releases and to sell their music across 15 of the biggest digital retailers and mobile stores worldwide, including iTunes, Napster, Amazon, 3, Vodafone and Orange.
For a one off fee of just £19.99 for a single, or £29.99 for an EP or album, artists can sell their music through all the major digital retailers and earn 90% of the revenues generated through the sale of their music. The service is completely non-exclusive and artists retain all the rights to their music. Unlike competing services, Zimbalam even allows the artist to select which territories and stores they want their music to be available in, meaning the service can still be used in the instance that an artist doesn’t own some of the rights to their music. Ladegaillerie explains:
“Zimbalam has the widest network of any similar service currently operating, we give our artists more choice in what countries they sell their music, the fee for our service is the lowest in the marketplace and we don’t take any more money for hosting, subscriptions, ISRC or UPC creations or data storage, regardless of how many of our services you choose to take advantage of.”
Uniquely, Zimbalam offers the artist a range of free promotion and marketing tools to help sell their music, including a fully customisable player which can contain links to buy the music from all major retailers, preview songs, collect email addresses and send news to their fans. All the tools can be accessed using the simple and secure login area, where artists can also generate royalty reports and control the details of their release.
Ladegaillerie continues:
“It is important for artists to know when and where they are selling the most music and we give them access to daily sales reporting for free and our player tools have been hugely successful for Believe Digital artists, with several million player views and streams daily and exceptional purchases rate on click-throughs. This is a fantastic resource for an unsigned act to get for free promotion widgets that would cost them around €500 to build elsewhere.”
Launched on the 21st of June in France, in line with the 27th anniversary of the world-famous Fete de la Musique festival where artists are encouraged to take to the streets and perform for the public, Zimbalam already has close to 2000 artists signed up to release their music in the first fortnight alone.
With independent music currently more popular than ever, Zimbalam will lead the way towards all artists being represented equally and fairly online.
Artists can sign up for a free account at www.zimbalam.com
About Believe
As a leading digital European label, Believe Digital have pioneered some of the most innovative releases in the digital music industry for established artists, and have a proven track record of taking up and coming artists to the very top of the digital charts.
Believe Digital is the only European player to offer a full range of artist-centric services, with experience ranging from digital distribution through a network of over 300 digital music stores to the full spectrum of strategic marketing services covering web, radio and TV promotion and the coordination of large, multi-country global releases.
Over the past four years, Believe Digital has worked with many successful artists and taken more than 150 albums and singles to the top of the charts across Europe.
