The Bizmo: Digital Music Distribution

Introduction

In the age of digital music distribution, with its endless channels and intricacies,  it can be a daunting task for independent artists to try to navigate through all the requirements of each digital music distributor in order to get music tracks uploaded and ‘stocked’ in digital stores such as iTunes.   Luckily, a few enterprising services have sprung up on the net to act as the aggregator and a one-stop-digital distributor-shop, thereby greatly simplifying a very complicated process.   Today we will review one such service called The Bizmo.

 

Music Promotion

Our focus here at Audiofanzine has always been gear- reviewing, updating, testing and breaking.  But gear at the end is at the service of music creation.  Once music is produced, mixed and mastered, we will want to release the music for everyone to hear.   Artists eventually face the marketing and distribution cross roads, and more and more, in the age of DIY and independent artists, artists will try to upload their music directly on iTunes, Amazon MP3, and other leading digital music stores while at the same time doing a bit of viral marketing and general promotion.   It forces an artist to wear many hats these days, and to dedicate more time than ever before to the business of promoting music.  Once a single is ‘done’, the work has just begun, and between tweeting, performing, publishing and selling (and perhaps a day job), an artist is stretched thin to say the least.

It is for this reason we decided at Audiofanzine this week, to take a small detour from gear and recording and to focus on what happens after the track is finished.  Every artist knows that in order to promote music you should upload tracks to your various social network profiles, do an email campaign, book gigs, woo bloggers and magazine editors to review your music, schmooze, network, beg, cajole and talk to anyone online and off who will give you 2 minutes of their time.  But today, we’d like to take this a step further and introduce you to a service we recently discovered here called The Bizmo, which, in addition to the to-do-list above, can be a very useful service to help both your small time viral campaign and your big time music distribution endeavors, with minimal headache considering the mammoth task at hand.

Now let’s take a closer look…

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Conclusion

For a newcomer, The Bizmo did an amazing job building an aggregate music distribution system to simplify a very convoluted and independently impossible process.  What The Bizmo lacks in brand awareness and popularity, it more than makes up for with a ‘don’t make me think’ flat subscription pricing model of just $34.95/year for unlimited tracks (Silver account).  Furthermore, no other competitor beats its wide ranging network of stores.  Taken together with its free microstore widget- which should be more aptly renamed ‘superstore widget’ and you already got yourself the making of a record label.  Check out some other goodies from The Bizmo such as Email Harvesting (A small stand-alone widget that allows you to give away a song in exchange for a fan email address). The Bizmo crew continues to think of innovative and useful features for time-poor independent artists and labels.   Necessity is the mother of invention? No?

Advantages:

• Inexpensive and simple pricing model
• Widest network of music distributors (+130)
• Microstore widget
• Simple and clear Super Distribution System
• Free UPC & ISRC codes generated quickly
• Pay Pal checkouts on demand
• Good reporting and stats

Drawbacks:

• 85% royalties payback
• Songs uploaded on widget must be uploaded again for Super Distribution
• Metadata for Super Distribution must be entered in order of tabs
• The Bizmo listed as the label

To read the full detailed review see:  The Bizmo Digital Music Distribution