Rock Is Religion spoke with Toronto-based, Yangaroo’s CEO John Heaven about its patented Digital Media Distribution System (DMDS), a secure B2B digital delivery solution for the music and advertising industries. DMDS replaces the physical distribution of audio and video content for music, music videos, and advertising to television, radio, media, retailers and other authorized recipients with more accountable, effective, and far less costly digital delivery of broadcast quality media via the Internet.

Record labels originally know Yangaroo as Musicrypt, before the company changed its name in hopes to generate a broader reach into new markets (television, advertising distribution and film and television production support).

RIR: How does Yangaroo’s technology allow record labels to send their artists’ music directly to radio station personnel over the Internet in broadcast-quality format?

JH: Record labels upload their artists’ broadcast-quality music and music videos and select destinations, which can be radio-station personnel and even television personnel for music videos.  The intended recipients are notified of the files availability and can download them directly into their equipment on site for review and for later broadcast. Music files are protected by biopassword authentication of users, digital watermarking, secure file encryption, and access rights management to prevent piracy.

RIR: Is this a free service?

JH: Receiving broadcast-quality audio and video files via DMDS is free and rates for customers vary according to volume.

RIR: Yangaroo’s tagline is “Better… Faster… Greener” -how so?

JH: DMDS eliminates the environmentally unfriendly and costly practices of producing physical media such as beta tapes or CD’s and printed promotional materials, and shipping them by truck or plane to their intended destinations.  It has been estimated, for example, that per each CD produced and packaged with promotional information about an artist, .7 pounds of fossil fuel are consumed.

RIR: How does this system mutually benefit both the labels and broadcasters?

JH: This system benefits both labels and broadcasters in many ways.  It’s secure, it’s quick, it saves them money, and it allows labels to instantly gauge the interest in their artists’ songs as they can track content accessed from DMDS.

RIR: What made you design this technology?

JH: Our team’s background in the music industry made us realize that the Internet could be used to the benefit of the industry for distributing and receiving music securely, quickly, and cost effectively.  We first went about devising a means to make it more secure, which resulted in our Biometrics Rights Management System, a patented method that combines biometrics with encryption and web-based distribution.  Content owners and distributors with whom we had relationships were quick to adopt this technology not long after we began making it available in 2003.

RIR: Is Yangaroo the only service broadcasters/labels use to send music?

JH: Yangaroo is the proven leader in this field, having first developed DMDS and then, just this past year, enhancing it to provide labels with the ability to transmit television broadcast-quality video files.  We completed our first successful tests of video delivery in the fall, the first video deliveries ever to broadcasters in the U.S. and Canada.

RIR: What are Yangaroo’s plans for 2010?

JH: We will be expanding our television broadcast quality content distribution for television advertising, music videos, award shows and film and TV program production support. This will complement our continuing growth for audio content delivery for record labels, artists and award shows such as the Grammys.

ReverbNation is the music industry’s version of a “Web 2.0 Fairy Godfather”…

If you’re an artist looking to market your music online, but don’t know where to start, ReverbNation is a platform that provides Artists, Labels, Managers and other Industry Professionals with their own set of digital marketing promotional tools.

Now artists have the ability to manage their fan base, create widgets and banners, distribute music on iTunes, create geo-targeted campaigns and send e-newsletters -all from one platform (and did we mention it’s free?)

The most refreshing part about digital distribution on ReverbNation is how they’ve created a business model that puts artists first. For $35.00 per release/per year artists can distribute one song or an album of up to 99 songs – best of all, ReverbNation does not take any percentage of the sales.

ReverbNation offers both a free and premium service. Features include:

• FanReach: fan managements system with customizable and targeted email system

• Widgets & Banners: Music Players, Fan Collectors, Street Team Collectors, Press, Shows, Shows w/ Map, Exclusive Song.  Widgets and Banners are also trackable

• Digital Distribution: distributes music on iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody and emusic

• RPK (Reverb Press Kit): electronic press kit (EPK) that allows the   recipient to access music, videos, bio and photos. Artists also have the ability to geo-target fans and track number of click-thrus

• Fan360: reveals the contact information for emails e.g. name, age, sex, gender, zip code and how many Friends, Fans or Followers on Myspace, Facebook and Twitter

• Street Team Functionality – every artist gets their own Street Team Program to help activate their fans and make every promotion “viral”. These promoters will help artists gain exposure by talking about the artist on blogs, message boards and by posting music, banners, tour dates, etc.  The platform even tracks everything these Street Team members do and creates a Leaderboard that measures impressions, number of plays, clicks and/or conversions

• Facebook and Bebo Applications – the MyBand Application is currently the #1 Artist Application on Facebook.  It puts almost everything from the ReverbNation profile right into the artist’s Facebook Public Profile page.  Artists can also include “Buy links” e.g. music, tickets, merch on their Public Profiles

Currently there are over 400,000 artists using ReverbNation including 50 Cent, Kenny Chesney, Madonna, Pantera, Judas Priest, O.A.R., Natasha Bedingfield, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Sara Bareilles, Lamb of God and Jason Mraz.