This article was published on August 12, 2011

VibeDeck now lets artists sell music from YouTube


VibeDeck now lets artists sell music from YouTube

VibeDeck is a web service that lets music artists sell their music directly to their fans, without incurring any additional costs.

Launched in beta two months ago following a $2m investment round in June, VibeDeck last week announced it had deployed SoundCloud integration, which lets artists sell tracks, with associated metadata and artwork.

Fans simply click the ‘buy’ link within the SoundCloud player, and they are directed to PayPal, and then allowed to download the music. It’s completely free to use too.

And this week, VibeDeck launches another new service called ‘Sell on YouTube’, which inserts a ‘buy’ link for music associated with a video on YouTube.

The service should be launched into public beta today, and here’s how the service will work.

For those that have already signed up to VibeDeck and uploaded at least one audio file, they will then have to authenticate VibeDeck with YouTube. Then, click on the ‘options’ icon to the right of the track in VibeDeck:

VibeDeck fetches all your available videos from the associated YouTube account, and you then select from the options:

A call-to-action is added in the form of a link-to-purchase below the video, and the payment flow for the fan, and the set-up process for the artist, is similar to the set-up with SoundCloud. Artists keep 100% of sales and payments flow directly to the user’s PayPal account:

So, from the fan’s perspective, VibeDeck doesn’t really play a role in any of the process.  But from the artist’s perspective, VibeDeck takes care of everything.

Artists will be able to choose whether fans pay a fixed price, name their own price or download for free in exchange for personal data or a promotional tweet. Lior Shamir, CEO at VibeDeck, said:
“The beauty of this is that the punter is not purchasing YouTube’s compressed audio. Instead, the artist has ‘associated’ a high quality MP3 (320 kbps + metadata/artwork) with a YouTube video. It’s the instant and seamless digital version of going to see a film you love at the cinema and popping into Tower Records on the way out to pick up the movie soundtrack.”
The technology behind the platform could also be used across other industries in the future. Shamir said:
“There is no reason why our software won’t be equally as useful to authors, photographers, designers, teachers, consultants and other proprietors of digital goods as it is today for musicians.”

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.

Also tagged with