Rdio Adds Countries!

Continuing its recent push into international markets, Rdio announced today that it has expanded its free streaming music service in seven new countries, bringing its total global presence up to 24.

The free music option, which launched to its first international customers in January, is now available in Austria, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, and Mexico. The expansion comes on the same day that Bloomberg reported that music streaming rival Spotify was close to deals with record labels to expand its ad-supported mobile radio service outside the U.S.

Much like Pandora, Spotify’s music service has advertisements seeded among songs. However, Rdio’s ad-free service is free to new users for the first six months, after which time they will need to sign up for a subscription to continue using the service. Rdio also announced today it had extended its free Web offer to music fans in Brazil.

Rdio CEO Drew Larner said the company was developing “smarter tools” to improve the music discovery process.

“By opening the social circle to seven new international markets, we’re making Rdio an increasingly global way to play, discover, and share music,” he said in a statement.

Launched in the U.S. in 2010 as an alternative to other Internet music streaming services, Rdio offers access to a library of more than 18 million songs that can be listened to and shared across the Web, social networks, and mobile devices.

The service also launched an updated iOS app today that delivers a new look, including more prominent presentation of album art work and social features.

Source: C|Net

Grow With Rumblefish!

If you haven’t heard, we have partnered with Rumblefish! Rumblefish is a music licensing company and a true innovator in finding new ways to make your music make money. Rumblefish is also a crucial partner of YouTube; therefore Rumblefish is your one-stop-shop for YouTube monetization too.

We are sending you a notice of an important and potentially beneficial addendum to your current Distribution Agreement that will allow you to get on board with Rumblefish. If you are interested, reply back to this message and I will send you the addendum for your consideration as well as answer any questions you may have. This is not mandatory however, we highly recommend!

There are the two central highlights of the Rumblefish addendum to consider.

1. You agree to distribute content to all 3 of Rumblefish’sentities, including:

A. Friendly Music: Allows consumers to create soundtracks for their personal videos and any non-commercial media to upload on YouTube. (www.friendlymusic.com)

B. Rumblefish API: Technical interface that third parties use to connect their products to Rumblefish’s services in order to obtain content, such as integrating licensed music into a web/mobile app.

C. Music Licensing Store: Search Engine for music supervisors and such professionals to search and license music for usage in film, TV, trailers, advertisements, video games, and any and all such media. (www.musiclicensingstore.com)

2. You allow Rumblefish to monetize your content on YouTube exclusively.

A. Why have Rumblefish monetize on YouTube for you? Because through their partnership with YouTube, Rumblefish assigns each track a unique audio fingerprint, or “Content ID,” and monetizes for you each and every time anyone ever uses your music on YouTube. Rumblefish automatically monetizes and protects your music across the vast spectrum of YouTube.

B. So, you will not be able to monetize your own videos, but you will not be restricted from uploading them on your own unlimitedly. You’re still getting your money – just through Rumblefish. Now you won’t have to fool with that and you’ll have more time for your core business – making music.

If you are interested, contact our Licensing & Publishing manager, Kaitlyn Raterman!

SFX Buys Beatport!

As first reported by The New York Times, SFX Entertainment has continued its buying spree in the EDM world with the purchase of music-download site Beatport. The deal was for slightly more than $50 million, the source said, although SFX chief Robert F. X. Sillerman declined to name the price. The news was first reported in the New York Times.

Beatport’s chief executive, Matthew Adell told the Times that he believes SFX can help Beatport expand by tackling live events, especially in booming markets like India and Brazil. “We already are by far the largest online destination of qualified fans and talent in the market,” Mr. Adell said, “and we can continue to grow that.”

We here at Symphonic Distribution want to congratulate the Beatport team that has worked incredibly hard since the launch of the popular site in 2004. Many are unsure of what this means for the brand however, we are sure that with the new owners at the helm the brand and its suppliers will continue to flourish.

Spotify Expands!

Spotify has launched in three new European markets: Italy, Poland and Portugal. The expansion takes the total number of Spotify markets to 20: USA, UK, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, The Netherlands, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Luxembourg, Italy, Poland and Portugal.

Catalogue delivered to Spotify will be automatically available in the new territories! Congratulations to our friends over at Spotify and we’re pretty sure there are a ton of other territories to come in the near future!

eMusic Adds A-La-Carte!

Our partner eMusic has just launched their a la carte service in the USA! Now, you no longer need to be a subscribed member of the platform to enjoy the millions of songs available and can instead make purchases at eMusic at standard retail prices.

Catalogue delivered to eMusic from Symphonic Distribution labels and artists is already included in the launch which will see pricing of single tracks to be .99 and albums to be 9.99 unless other pricing is specified and stated per label and release.

Offering a la carte purchasing will enable eMusic to monetize more of their 30MM monthly site visitors, and will help be a better source of revenue for all label partners.

The a la carte offering also opens us up to exciting business development opportunities with electronic device manufacturers and other partners, which will lead to growth that benefits all of our content providers.

Conference Room Concert!

We are excited to announce that we will now be featuring a new monthly series entitled “Conference Room Concert”. Every month, local singer/songwriters and bands will take over our Conference Room and turn our meeting area into an intimate concert setting. Every act will play original material LIVE to staff, family, and friends. These acts will be recorded, photographed, interviewed, and featured via our social networks in order to get more exposure and develop more fans through our networks.

To launch the series, we will be featuring the talented duo, Drake and Sofia! If you are in the area, you are welcome to join us for a special, unplugged session at our offices on February 22, 2013 at 5pm Eastern Time! Check out what Drake and Sofia are about below!

Symphonic Distribution’s core business is to deliver music from independent artist and record labels to stores such as iTunes, Spotify, Amazonmp3, eMusic and more. Artists and Record Labels are facilitated with tools and resources to be able to deliver their music to the vast platforms for music fans around the globe. Each client has the option to choose a deal that suits them best and can receive up to 100% of royalties from all stores. Symphonic also specializes in providing Mastering, Web / Graphic Design, Piracy Protection and Marketing. Symphonic Distribution currently distributes to over 4,000 clients from around the world and over 100 ‘s of territories world wide. Our office is located at: 26829 Tanic Drive, Suite 102, Wesley Chapel FL, 33544. Call us at 1-866-238-7939 for more details!

Links:
Drake and Sofia Facebook

Deezer Expands To TV!

Our good friends over at Deezer have just inked a deal with LG, Samsung, and Toshiba to bring its music service to smart TVs. According to a report posted by Engadget, with this move, the Deezer application, and music distributed to the service from Symphonic Distribution record labels would be available to a “potential audience of at least 600 million people across more than 150 countries.”

There’s a slight caveat, however, as the recently announced deal comes with somewhat of a limited scope — namely the fact Deezer’s set to only be usable on Samsung smart TVs in Europe that were produced in 2011, while the same goes for LG’s but with the exception of a worldwide availability. Toshiba, on the other hand, will be able to bring the music offering to its 2011-range in Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific, as well as the company’s new 2013 smart TV lineup to users all around the globe. This, naturally, excludes us folks in the good ol’ US of A, since, as you may know, Deezer is still trying to figure things out here.

Pretty nifty video too and we’re pretty sure this is the beginning of another music revolution as these services begin to launch via Smart TV’s and eventually Apple TV worldwide.

AT&T Music Integrated!

We’re very happy to announce the full and complete integration of AT&T Music to Symphonic Distribution! Powered by PacketVideo, AT&T Music is a complete carrier music platform that supports all content types, including streaming, full track, bundles, ringback tones and ringtones. The music catalog contains millions of tracks from all major and independent record labels, and offers rich APIs to trusted third-party developers.

Our labels can select to deliver music to AT&T Music through their Content Portal. This is one of many new partnerships for the 2013 year that we are quite excited about! You can access the application via various mobile carriers and learn more about them by clicking here!

2013 Breakspoll Awards

It’s time once again for the annual Breakspoll Awards! Breakspoll is all about recognising the best of the breakbeat scene – combining a online worldwide vote for your favourite music and artists, and culminating in the Breakspoll Awards being presented live on stage. We are very proud to see that many of the record labels that we distribute made the cut this year! BIG CONGRATULATIONS out to:

Royal One Records
Kick it Recordings
The Pooty Club Records
Digital Records
Distortion Records
Breakz R Boss Records
Funn Dark Records
Elecktroshok Records
N-Mity Sound Recordings
Spektra Recordings
Broken Robot Records
Dusted Breaks Records
In Bloom Recordings
Bassrock Records
Hard & Hits
Riot Riot Records
Sound Perfect Breakz
Acida Records
13 breakz
Anarchy in the funk records

Cast your vote by clicking here! Voting begins now – so cast your all important votes and help decide who will come on top of this years International Breakbeat Awards!

AmazonMp3 & Apple!

Pretty cool news to share to everyone! Amazon says iPhone and iPod Touch users will be able to buy music from its digital store for the first time beginning 1/17/13.

Amazon.com Inc. said that its MP3 library has 22 million songs available (including catalogue from Symphonic Distribution record labels and artists).

Steve Boom, vice president of Amazon Music, says that since the launch of the Cloud Player app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, customers have been asking for the ability to buy music from Amazon directly from their devices.

The Apple device users can browse Amazon’s MP3 store for music using Apple’s Safari Web browser. Music users buy gets saved to their Amazon Cloud Player libraries and can be downloaded or played instantly from Apple devices or other gadgets such as the Kindle Fire

Source: Yahoo