The focus for musicians to sell directly to their fans continues to intensify, and looks like it won't slow for the foreseeable future. By bypassing the labels and traditional distribution channels, artists are able to take home a bigger profit and form a better, longer lasting relationship with their fans.
With this trend comes an increase in services to facilitate the sales. Some obvious ones come to mind like Bandcamp and Topspin, but there's a long list of startups in this space. That list recently got longer with the release of Getonic.
Getonic, a startup from Tel Aviv that's quietly been attracting thousands of artists for the past few months, tries to simplify the process of selling to fans. Their widget enables purchasing from within a Facebook wall post, instead of redirecting the fan to a store.
I sat down with Getonic CEO Amit Or during a recent trip to Tel Aviv.
“We wanted to give bands the opportunity to meet fans where they are instead of making them be redirected elsewhere," says Or. “People today are impatient, they don't want to click on links to other sites to check out your music. Therefore, we created a widget where the entire process from sampling music to making a purchase would be in one place."
One key feature of the Getonic widget is how fans pay. Instead of leading the through a long checkout process, which usually results in a lot of lost conversions, the widget asks users to enter their cell phone number and carrier. The charge appears on their cell phone bill.
PayPal is also an option, but Or says that the cell phone option is performing a lot better. “Because many people (especially young people who in some cases are most of the fans) don't have access to a credit card, cellphone payments are currently more popular than paypal. In the future we plan on adding new methods such as Facebook credits to our payment options."
Getonic has reduced the friction around their checkout process, which should in turn drive more sales, but that's not all their doing to help artists sell more. Sharing is also a big component of the widget.
“We allow musicians to turn their fans into partners and resell musicians' music for a cut of the profit. This allows bands to give back to their fans and increase the exposure and the distribution network for the band. Resellers today can join either by clicking on the shop or by signing up through our “Partners Program" app on the artist's facebook page."
Getonic is betting that by going to where fans already are, making it dead simple for them to purchase, and bringing them into the sharing process, they can increase profits across the industry. Artists can sign up for Getonic at http://getonic.com/. The video below gives an overview of the service.
With this trend comes an increase in services to facilitate the sales. Some obvious ones come to mind like Bandcamp and Topspin, but there's a long list of startups in this space. That list recently got longer with the release of Getonic.
Getonic, a startup from Tel Aviv that's quietly been attracting thousands of artists for the past few months, tries to simplify the process of selling to fans. Their widget enables purchasing from within a Facebook wall post, instead of redirecting the fan to a store.
I sat down with Getonic CEO Amit Or during a recent trip to Tel Aviv.
“We wanted to give bands the opportunity to meet fans where they are instead of making them be redirected elsewhere," says Or. “People today are impatient, they don't want to click on links to other sites to check out your music. Therefore, we created a widget where the entire process from sampling music to making a purchase would be in one place."
One key feature of the Getonic widget is how fans pay. Instead of leading the through a long checkout process, which usually results in a lot of lost conversions, the widget asks users to enter their cell phone number and carrier. The charge appears on their cell phone bill.
PayPal is also an option, but Or says that the cell phone option is performing a lot better. “Because many people (especially young people who in some cases are most of the fans) don't have access to a credit card, cellphone payments are currently more popular than paypal. In the future we plan on adding new methods such as Facebook credits to our payment options."
Getonic has reduced the friction around their checkout process, which should in turn drive more sales, but that's not all their doing to help artists sell more. Sharing is also a big component of the widget.
“We allow musicians to turn their fans into partners and resell musicians' music for a cut of the profit. This allows bands to give back to their fans and increase the exposure and the distribution network for the band. Resellers today can join either by clicking on the shop or by signing up through our “Partners Program" app on the artist's facebook page."
Getonic is betting that by going to where fans already are, making it dead simple for them to purchase, and bringing them into the sharing process, they can increase profits across the industry. Artists can sign up for Getonic at http://getonic.com/. The video below gives an overview of the service.
