IndiMusic.tv today announced the addition of IndiMusic.tv (www.IndiMusic.tv) as a new channel within Amazon.com’s TV App offering on Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, complete with an e-commerce capability that enables One-Click Purchasing via a TV remote.
The service was actually launched in July with little fanfare, and has been working flawlessly ever since.
Powered by digital advertising technology company Linkstorm (www.linkstorm.net), this functionality enables music artists to monetize their own music videos by driving direct purchases of their music, merchandise and concert tickets right from within the video.
This 90-second commercial tells the story very effectively
Further, 100% of the referral commissions on these purchases will be funneled directly to the artists themselves, breaking new ground in the trend pioneered by Taylor Swift, Jay-Z and others to put artists back in control of their compensation. The larger significance of this technology is that it finally makes real the long-time promise of making TV advertising two-way and interactive, rather than just a passive, one-way, classic TV-commercial experience.
Said Kim Goh, a partner with Hudson Ventures and an investor in both IndiMusic.tv and Linkstorm, who has also brought in other investors such as Rick Braddock, former CEO of Citibank, Priceline, Medco and FreshDirect, “The combination of IndiMusic.tv’s content and Linkstorm’s breakthrough Video Advertising technology will change the face of TV advertising as we know it.
People can now use the TV remote in place of their mouse, or the mouse itself if they’re on computer, to preview a navigation menu of the advertiser’s offerings, and then actually click through to make a purchase – all without interrupting the video. We salute Amazon for being the first to launch this breakthrough capability.”
The IndiMusic version of the product is called the “Indi Power Link,” and it allows the viewer to buy a band/artist’s music through iTunes or Amazon, view their tour schedule, and purchase tickets or merchandise. “This is a huge game-changer as it finally puts the power, creativity and monetization in the hands of the content creators, not a third party company or conglomerate,” said Chris Pati, IndiMusic’s Founder and CEO.
“For the Advertising industry more broadly, this represents a superior alternative to the Pre-Roll as the industry-standard format for advertising within video content,” said David Sidman, Founder/CEO of Linkstorm. “In the meantime it can enhance Pre-Rolls by making them immediately actionable, instead of just being a passive, one-way, TV-commercial type of user experience.
We have extensive evidence that whenever consumers can actively browse a menu of choices – even just 5 in this case, but as many as 100+ in our other ads – they click or tap through and convert at rates that are 2x-17x higher than all the other ad formats we’ve been measured against.”
When IndiMusic.tv launched in September of 2012 as the first 24-7 independent only worldwide music video TV channel and Musician Social Network, the company cemented itself as the go-to spot for the very best in independent music videos – garnering 800,000+ subscribers in over 260 countries worldwide, over 3 million visitors a month (over 100,000+ visits a day), and more than 65,000 Likes on Facebook.
After having secured a deal that puts IndiMusic.tv in 26.4 million homes through VOD on Dish Network, Verizon FIOS and Comcast, the addition of the channel to Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick is yet another thrilling inclusion in the ever-growing expansion of a company that puts the success and creative talent of its artists and musicians above all else.
Unlike the Pre-Roll ads that are typically inserted into Video content, and that force the viewer to sit through a commercial before watching their video they wanted to see, the EPK powered by Linkstorm extends Linkstorm’s patent-protected, better-performing ad format into the Video Advertising space, allowing the viewer to browse all of these offerings without interrupting the video at all.
Therefore it also has great potential as a new form of in-Video advertising, either replacing the Pre-Roll or Lower Third as the most common Video ad formats, or in the meantime enhancing them so that at least they become less annoying, more useful to the viewer, and interactive. This is a one-of-a-kind, patented technology that is unavailable anywhere else in the world.
