Simple Means Sales for DownloadMusic
17th of August 2007 by conor
In the launch story on Monday I said that I expected to see more and more combined Web/Mobile applications appearing in Ireland. On Wednesday I talked to Johnny Beirne of DownloadMusic.ie and got a valuable lesson in Long Tail businesses.
On the surface this is a simple online music store built on a standard osCommerce platform. Johnny launched it nearly a year ago with a mission to bring independent and unsigned Irish acts to a much wider audience. In the initial months sales were light and he focused on building the relationships to artists. Then earlier this year he added the ability to buy songs via SMS and the site took off at an amazing rate.
This simple feature hides a lot of depth and understanding of people and demographics. Quite simply, the average indy music fan is probably a teenager or young adult who may not even have a credit card. Enabling them to buy tracks via SMS lowers the barrier to entry enormously. Even for those with a credit card, sending a simple SMS is even easier than using PayPal.
However it even goes beyong that. Johnny is a music fanatic and attends many gigs at which his client bands are playing. In many cases the bands hand out flyers with the SMS codes for their songs printed. In some cases they are even calling them out from the stage! As Johnny says this is real social networking. At Cork OpenCoffee this morning we discussed the fact that none of the interesting mobile applications are coming from the operators. Johnny has some clever ideas for leveraging user interests/purchasing on his site with the real world networking at gigs via the ultimate social device, the mobile phone.
As DownloadMusic is fully registered with IRMA, each download counts towards the charts and their sales have enabled 10 Irish bands to get well into the charts. He gave a recent example of a band that had 177 downloads in one week on his site but only 10 on iTunes. This brings up an important aspect of the Long Tail. Just because a mega-site like iTunes has your songs doesn't mean you'll get any more than one or two downloads. Because DownloadMusic focuses on a very specific niche they can highlight bands and drive downloads.
They have also partnered with Eircom, the main telco here, to provide music to their users and have an Eircom branded Flash music player. It will be interesting to see if they start extending out into MySpace or the Irish obsession, Bebo.
Many think that Web2.0 is about technology and Ajax and tagging. I don't believe this at all, it's about people and enabling them to do interesting, useful and fun things together that they couldn't previously. DownloadMusic.ie understands this innately and their passion for making independent music more accessible can easily translate to a wider European audience.
Comment posted by Joe's Blog Blog Archive Fluffy Links
at 8/26/2007 1:34:41 PM
[] blognation DownloadMusic.ie based around independent Irish artists but also makes novel use of []
Comment posted by Ken McGuire
at 8/18/2007 4:08:40 PM
Working on the ground level with unsigned Irish bands (outside of the 9-5) I've got to say I'm impressed with the way DownloadMusic.ie is operating and assisting unsigned acts in the country.
Sure enough, the bands won't make a fortune from the sales generated from the site but it is putting their tracks into the hands of fans immediately and the connection with IRMA is perfect. It combines the best of freely and readily available technologies to boost a band's profile and reputation, something of a revolution for the Irish music scene.
Have hosted some of the bands in the eircom flash player above (most recently The Aftermath with their new single available on Downloadmusic.ie) I've been able to chat to the bands about their participation with DM.ie and I've yet to hear a bad word. It has become a simple and cost-effective way for a band to introduce their music to main stream media heads and as you pointed out, they're charting as a result.
Long may the growth of it continue.