Jamroom Help: Looking for a music sales management tool
ppofandt
Joined: 22 Sep 2003
Posts: 2
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 09/22/03 21:43
G'day
I've got a client here who has a band (two actually).
They want to start looking at using the Internet and their website as a distribution medium. It's one that's ideally suited to small emerging bands. What they'd like to do is be able to offer listeners a sample of their music, and allow them to purchase individual songs - for say $2.00 (AU) each or so.
To the meat of the question. Do you have any suggestions as to the best way to go about doing this?
Ideally I'd like to find a ready-made solution that allows a person to edit their band details, upload their own songs, offer previews and handle sales transactions.
Jamroom look kinda cool and I'll suggest it as a possibility but I don't think it allows for sales of music. There are plenty of merchants selling music via paypal/ebay but they usual offer full CDs.
Joined: 09 Jul 2003
Posts: 37583
Location: Seattle, WA
Posted: 09/23/03 06:11
Thank you both for writing...
At this time, I haven't begun any work on a payment "backend" for Jamroom, but one WILL be coming. I have to be honest and say it is weeks (3-4?) away from beginning though, as I have another developer friend who is going to be developing it along with me. Initially it will use PayPal's IPN since it is well documented and should not be too difficult to design. However, whenever you are dealing with $$, you have to take extra care that everything works as it should.
I went online and checked out authorize.net, and it does appear they have a interface method for online merchants. It also appears they have the ability to host your order forms for you, so the integration is competely on their server, which looks kinda cool.
One of the downsides to selling something small, such as a song, for a small amount of money, say $2.00, is the merchant fees that you have to pay on each transaction (say .25 + 2% or something like that) makes it so its more lucrative to offer sales of albums instead of individual songs. But it IS doable, and one that will be tackled, it just hasn't begun yet.
Joined: 22 Sep 2003
Posts: 2
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 09/23/03 21:33
Thanks.
I'll keep an eye on things here and see what develops.
On a related note. I was following up the possibility of using oscommerce for selling music and one of the posts recommended Centipaid as a merchant provider for low cost transactions. The specialise in handling low cost transaction down to as low as 100ths of a cent but not using fixed transaction fees. Commission is approx US$0.20 for a US$1.00 transaction. Have a look at them sometime - http://www.centipaid.com
In an email exchange with them on the subject of selling music, they referred me to a site called music4cents - a site to allow independent artists to sell their music. might also be worth a look - http://www.music4cents.com
