ONErpm Announces Partnership w/INgrooves, Naxos, IRIS Distribution for Facebook Music Stores

ONErpm, the NYC-based global digital music distribution company and social commerce platform continues to expand its reach. The company announced that it has finalized partnerships with INgrooves, Naxos, and IRIS Distribution to power those labels’ music stores on Facebook.

ONErpm has been making deals on the strength of its Facebook Store capabilities.

INgrooves is a leading global distribution company that manages a catalog of one million tracks. Naxos is the world’s largest record label specializing in classical music with 35,000 albums, and IRIS is a top tier distribution company serving the independent label community (see more about IRIS Distribution in the SonicScoop feature from last year).

The combined catalogs will also be available for sale on the ONErpm.com store, where customers can download music in WAV and MP3 formats.

Through these partnerships, ONErpm is able to provide labels and artists with an efficient way to sell their catalogs on Facebook. “Labels often face technical and legal barriers when selling their music directly on Facebook,” explains Emmanuel Zunz, CEO of ONErpm. “By partnering with their distributors, we have overcome these hurdles so that labels can immediately start selling music on the world’s largest social network.”

ONErpm’s Facebook stores now account for 15% of the company’s global retail music sales. According to ONErpm, this early success of its social commerce platform is due to its simple setup, which allows labels to create multiple stores on Facebook, displaying either their entire catalogs, or featuring specific albums on their artist pages, each with customized configurations.

ONErpm’s alliance with INgrooves, Naxos, and IRIS Distribution coincides with the launch of its newly designed Facebook store adapted for Timeline, along with several upgrades to its social commerce platform, including a dedicated video page and improved back-end analytics.

(via Sonic Scoop)

Essay: Distribution Consolidation is BAD for Indie Labels

If you’ve been reading this blog frequently, you know we’ve been paying attention to the big consolidation deals done by IODA + Orchard and INgrooves + Fontana. Everyone knew this was going to start an ongoing trend where the industry tries to see if bigger really is better. But is it? The co-founder and CEO of BFM Digital Steven Corn viscously argues otherwise, saying:

-The more accounts one company takes on, the less amount of quality service it can dish out to each account, a.k.a. indie labels get less attention, individually.

-The distributors previously known as “indie” companies no longer can carry that persona.

-Deal structures with outlets like Amazon and iTunes will suffer.

-Coordinated promotions for individual labels will get less attention.

-Service will become a DIY message. AKA: Dear Label, sorry, but we don’t have time to help you.

Reaction: The essay makes a lot of good points, especially the impact on direct service, and its something a lot of people have been mumbling about in the past couple of weeks.