JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Musician Message Forum WaTunes 2 Revealed

Hello JPF members,

For those of you who do not know who I am, my name is Kevin Rivers, Founder and CEO of WaTunes.com. WaTunes ( www.watunes.com ) is a new social media distribution service that combines digital content management services with social networking and media services that cater to both indie artists and the fans.

Currently WaTunes 1.5 focuses primarily on its digital distribution services, providing the power to enable indie artist, record labels, distributors and aggregators, music stores, and social networks to upload unlimited songs and albums for a one-time $20 setup fee. Music store services includes iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, and eMusic in which the artist earns up to 90% of their earnings.

Today, I'd like to give you all a sneak peek at WaTunes 2.0, which truly combines a social essence to our digital distribution program. By going to: watunes2.blogspot.com, you'll be able to see a screenshot of what the homepage will be like.

For more information about our digital distribution service, visit our website at: www.watunes.com and see if WaTunes is right for you.

Best Regards,

Kevin Rivers
President/CEO, WaTunes.com

I'm on CD Baby now and get much the same things you are offering, what do you offer that would entice me moving to your site? Would I not just be duplicating the service I am now getting? I'm not knocking your service, looks good to me, and maybe for future CDs I might consider using it.

Hi Everett,

Good question. The major difference that separates us from CD Baby's digital distribution system is that we require only a one-time $20 setup fee to get you started selling your music. From there, you have the power to sell as much songs and albums as you want and still get a high royalty rate (90%) of your sales.

Although I think CD Baby is by far a great service for physical distribution. However, in order for you to get their digital service, you have to have their physical service too. Not only that but you have to pay for UPCs for each of your albums.


The cool thing about us is that because you can sell unlimited songs and albums digitally and get FREE UPCs, you can still retain your physical deal with CD Baby.

A cool note is that we're becoming known for our sense of speed. Getting your content place at music store services in less than a month. Although we still say (like everyone else) that it may take up to 4-6 weeks for your content to be live at the music store services. We've had success in getting content placed on all music stores within 3 weeks.

I'd like to point out that CD Baby does not require physical product either. So the differences now are that CD Baby's cost is $35 one time setup fee, that can include physical product. The Artist/Label gets 91% of the net of the sale or stream (not up to, they get it). How can Wa-Tunes promise 90% of the sale when Apple takes 30% off the top, a little misleading isn't it?

As for paying for the UPC - there may a legal reason for that. The smart artist would get their own UPC setup - it's a costly one time fee, but that allows them track where sales went thru with their own name with the UPC - That includes physical and digital. Don't forget the need for ISRC numbers - again the smart artist would sign up with the RIAA and get their own - that's free to do.

As for speed of CD Baby's delivery, it happens once a week to any given service. From there it is in the hands of the service itself to get it up in a timely fashion. Thus why CD Baby will say give them 2 to 6 weeks.

Kevin, it would be wise to remove the Sony Connect ad from the signature. Sony Connect has been gone about 6 months or so.

You're only half-right. CD Baby does charge a one-time $35 setup. However, its per CD. So for example, for me to sell 5 CDs on iTunes (and get physical distribution as an added bonus), I would have to pay $175 vs $20 using WaTunes.com. Again the greatest advantage I would say with CD Baby is their physical distribution. Which our customers do use in conjunction with our digital distribution program.




Not necessarily. For you to conjunction something like that is for me to say that CD Baby also misleads their 91% of their sales. Because thick-n-thin, iTunes also deducts 30% of their annuals just like they do with any other distributor. Like CD Baby with their 91%, WaTunes promises 90% of the net sales from the music store services.



This is why I love working with CD Baby customers. Because once they have their unique UPC prefix, they don't need to buy another UPC just to use for their upcoming album. With our current UPC generation tool, anyone can generate any valid UPC code using their own unique prefixes setup by places like CD Baby, GS1, and the RIAA.



That's plays well good and bad. It's good because if gives the CD Baby customers assurance of fast delivery. However, the majority of indie artists wants to see their content on iTunes faster than any other music store service, and to say a minimum of 2 weeks could be quite misleading. Which is why we say 4-6 weeks, because initially it does take iTunes roughly 30 days to make the content available at their store.

If I understand this right, If I only wanted to put up singles to sell as downloads from ITunes, Napster,etc. it would be better to use your service, but if I had a physical CD to sell on line, it would be better to go with CD Baby, who could get me on download sites and sell my CD and do the shipping and take payment, etc.

I'm sure there is room for both services. If I had strong single songs to sell and did not want the cost and hassle of doing a CD, your service would make the most sense. Is there a minimum number of songs that these upload sites will accept per artist? How do they display them to the buying public?

Even if you have albums, utilizing our service saves you money. But it also depends on what an indie artist wants when selling their music. Either they want both physical and digital, or just digital, or just physical. If you're guy that just wants to get on iTunes, by far our service make more sense. If you're a guy that wants both, in a way our service makes more sense in terms of digital because it saves you UPC money, so you don't have to worry about spending an additional $25 for another unique prefix.



All music store services accepts a minimum of 1 song (single). Usually all of them will display them as either singles or EPs (which is 2-4 tracks). But anyone (regardless of which distributor your music is serviced) can sell a 1 song wonder on iTunes.

CD Baby does not mislead their customers. They are very clear that they pay you 91% of the net sale on any source of digital income (sale/stream). Apple = iTunes. Look at the part quoted from me, I mentioned that Apple takes a 30% cut off the top. With other services, some take more, some take less. If there's a hidden annual fee to be an Apple distributor, CD Baby isn't passing that cost on to the artist. All I did was clarify net sales/streams.

Talking about the UPC thing for a moment. Now, there's an issue. One cannot take the UPC code they get from a 3rd party company like CD Baby and then go make up another barcode number based on the prefix. Why? Because that prefix is registered to CD Baby (the RIAA does not create UPC codes). If an artist or Wa-Tunes reused that prefix with another number for another release without checking with the company they got it from, to know if the new barcode was in use already, there would become an issue with products carrying the same barcode. MAJOR problem, it would be fraudulent use of a barcode.

Each prefix is good for 9999 releases of a particular product category. I know as I have my own UPC setup from the UCC. Those setups/prefixes cost money, big money compared to when I purchased mine - the price has gone up considerably. Each setup/prefix is registered to the person/company that bought the prefix. Then there's the 9999 variants to use per prefix. I highly doubt CD Baby or any third party reseller is spending over $750 for a UPC setup/prefix to give to an artist for $20 (that would be bad business). Thus if this is how Wa-Tunes is doing things in terms of 3rd party barcodes, reusing a 3rd party prefix and creating a new product number - I wouldn't go advertising that. Here is CD Baby's FAQ on barcodes: http://cdbaby.net/barcode

As for speed of a service, I'm probably a bad example, usually happens within 2 weeks for me (for iTunes). And I mistyped. CD Baby declares a minimum of 3 weeks to a max of 4 months - but they're referring to all the companies they deal with.

I realize that CD Baby is the recognized leader of sales in the non-signed music world. I realize they are the company to shoot down when another company competing in the non-signed music business is working on comeuppance. They didn't get to that position by screwing people or being misleading. I applaud you Kevin for working on being upfront and clarifying about things.

You're getting prefixes confused with the manufacturer code. The prefix number is the first digit which is assigned to CD Baby. However, the first 6 digits is assigned to the manufacturer (or the artist) and is not assigned nor is it recorded to CD Baby in SoundScan. The next 5 digits is the product number followed by the last check digit.

However you are right, this does present a problem if CD Baby users were use to the prefix (or even the manufacturer code) using our system. In WaTunes case, we don't advertise our ability to do that for we provide our customers with our own prefixes/manufacturer codes free of charge. Our UPC system is designed for anyone who has their own unique code to simply place the product code and generate their own UPCs easily.



Places like CD Baby, the Orchard, IODA, and TuneCore are big-ups to compete in the digital-music market. However, I have bigger plans regarding them that may actually benefit them and WaTunes in one go.

Kevin, I am seriously considering using your service for my next CD. How much traffic are you attracting from the listening public? How many artist are you attracting? Are your artist getting many downloads?

CD Baby attracts a lot of traffic and have many, many artist(which of course is what attracts the traffic). There is good and bad in that. With so many artist, even with lots of public traffic, how does one get noticed. I've had a certain amount of success with CD Baby(not as much as I would like) with CD sales and downloads. So to switch is a gamble. Do I stay with a proven service (though more expensive to register) or gamble on a new cheaper service that offers single song uploads but no physical CD sales. Decisions, decisions.

Because we're still relatively new, we have over 1,000 artists, record labels, distributors, social networks, and even music stores that uses our service. With the launch of WaTunes 2, we'll be focusing on attracting both artists and the fans. Although you can try our service now, I'd highly wait for the public beta of WaTunes 2 to come (roughly around August/September). Using our new system, your deliveries are automated upon your uploading your music. WaTunes 2 is changing a whole new outlook on the music market.

Also we work directly with music stores to negotiate features and placements to help boost sales of our customers.



Again its dependent on what you're looking for in terms of rather physical, digital, or both. Many of our customers use CD Baby for their physical distribution and we allow them to use our UPC prefix specifically for physical CD purposes. However, with our UPC tracking system, there is a protection that prohibits users to use our prefix without our permission when using CD Baby or any other 3rd party service providers.

If you're the artist who just wants the digital, WaTunes is by far a good service to try out.

I understand I can upload music directly to your site, I am on dialup, so uploading high quality can be a problem. What quality of upload do you suggest or require?

For Dialup users, uploading to our current site will be a complete hassle. This is why we offer our customers to submit 1 CD to our mailing address in which we'll process the content ourselves. That CD should contain the following:

- Audio Files (.WAV format/CD Audio 16-bit: < You can use iTunes to convert your MP3s to this format)
- Image File (600x600 image JPG)
- Metadata File (Excel spreadsheet template completed: < This template comes with the WaTunes Manual which shows you how to upload your content).

Once you have put all these files into a CD, you are simply mail it to our CD Delivery Center and we'll began processing your content immediately.

For all JPF members,

The new WaTunes 2 music site is coming. If you are interested in becoming the first of many to be apart of the public beta coming up next month, shoot me a PM here on JPF and I'll put you in our user-friendly mailing list.

Best,

Kevin

Hello JPF Members,

Just to give you some insight that we do have a BlogSpot in which you can gain the latest information about WaTunes 2 and post your feedback. Visit our blogspot at: http://watunes2.blogspot.com. Also PM me here if you wish to become the first of many to test the WaTunes 2 site and I'll place you in our user-friendly mailing list.

I look forward for the excitement for our site and to provide a more luritive service for everyone.

Best,

Kevin

The WaTunes 2 mailing list is now completed. Simply visit our website at: www.watunes.com and suscribe today. For more information on our website visit our blog at: http://watunes2.blogspot.com

Remember everyone to subscribe to our mailing list at: www.watunes.com. If you have any questions, comments, and anything else that flows on your mind about WaTunes, feel free to post them here.

Thanks for your patience with us, Kevin. Glad to see you've addressed the problem with slow dial-up clients. I'm still interested in the digital distribution deal... no physical CD sales are desired at this time. Is it possible to do without the social networking aspect or is that going to be a mandatory part of watunes-2?

I've signed up for your newsletter which will announce the exact start-up date of watunes 2. Like Everett, I look forward to establishing a mutually beneficial relationship. My catalog of songs keeps growing and I need to move some merchandise.

Regards,

Dave Rice

http://www.showcaseyourmusic.com/DaveRice

Hi Dave,

Thank you for your interest in WaTunes 2. To answer your question, yes, the social networking aspect will be an embedded part of the new site. The cool thing about that is that you'll have your very own artist profile page (along with album pages) in which people can view and listen to your music. Also this can help you direct your fans to the site, sign up, and support your music faster and easier.



It's going to be very huge. Utilizing our new XDI software (Which brings WaTunes 2 to 'life'), we promise to make your music distribution experience fresh and innovative as we move forward to the new year! I look forward to be working with you Dave regarding our new service.

Now with ANY beta launch of a company, there WILL be bugs and errors that may aggravate you. WaTunes 2 is no exception. Which is why we urge you to report any bugs or errors to help us, serve you much better in the future.

Best Regards,

Kevin