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Business News Labels & Publishers
Consolidated launch independent digital storage service
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 8 January 2009
Digital services company Consolidated Independent has announced a new service designed to streamline the workload for independent record companies who distribute their digital catalogue around the world through various partnerships with different distributors, aggregators and download stores.
It would also mean that if one of those distributors went under – as distributors have a habit of doing these days – a label could immediately channel their digital content through an alternative distributor.
The service, which Consolidated call the Digital Archive Service, enables a label to store all its digital assets with the firm, who would in turn make the assets available to any distributors or aggregators, or back to the label, as and when required.
It means digital assets are held by an independent party, so that if any one distributor goes out of business it is easy to provide a replacement distributor with everything they need to quickly take over distributing a label’s digital product. The service is designed to be very affordable for indie labels, with the cost being set at just a pound per track stored per year.
Eric Namour, COO at Consolidated, told CMU: “CI’s mission is to provide independent access to the digital music marketplace. Our new Digital Archive Service provides the foundation that underpins this and means that no label need ever be at the mercy of a third party when it comes to managing its digital assets”.
Beggars Group’s Simon Wheeler, who is also chair of the New Media Committee of the Association Of Independent Music, added: “It has always been of critical importance to Beggars that we maintain independent control over our digital assets, and this is even more important now that digital makes up an increasing proportion of our overall business”.
“The experience of many independent labels, including Rough Trade within the Beggars Group, in the wake of Pinnacle going into administration, shows that a digital archive service is an invaluable way to future proof your business”.
