Viinyl is About.me for music
by Paul Hontz on Feb 25, 2011 • 11:16 pm Tweet
The music industry has changed rapidly over the last 15 years. The evolution from vinyl, to tape, to cds, to MP3s has forced artists to adapt the way they brand and market their music. For instance, instead of the 12 inches of artwork on a Vinyl jacket artists previously had, today we’re limited to an MP3 file and accompanying JPG.
Along with the format change our purchasing preferences have shifted. Most people no longer buy whole albums, but instead prefer to pluck a few singles from iTunes. The single is undeniably king. Unfortunately this comes at the cost of lost art.
Armine Saidi’s company Viinyl believes it has the answer. Viinyl launched yesterday at Superconf in Miami, and their aim is to give singles the art they deserve. Their motto is “1 Song. 1 Site. 1 URL.”. In a sense Viinyl is hoping to be the About.me of music. A place where artists maintain their own creative vision.
Preliminary case studies show favorable results for artists using Viinyl. 24% of visitors who saw the artist’s Viinyl went on to visit the artist’s social media page, and 5% of listeners decided to purchase the track.
You can check out a demo Viinyl here. For more startup news, follow us on twitter @startupfoundry.
(Special thanks to Auston Bunsen for inviting me to be on the judging panel at Superconf).
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This is such an amazing product for any artist or band. I’m going to be recommending it to every music artist I know!
I’m not the biggest fan of the autoplay video on page load but it’s a great concept, it’ll be interesting to see if it gains traction.
It’s a bit strange to see just one song being featured on a page. When I come across a song I like, I can’t help but feel like I want to hear more from that artist. I dig the 1-song-1-art concept, but my initial reaction is that it feels frustratingly limited. But perhaps I’m too old school and younger generations truly think in terms of one song at a time.
I’m no music expert – but I think this is a great concept fully in-keeping with the direction the internet is heading in – socially referenced, specific, multi-platform content rather than bulky generic web sites
This might be a good idea as a start-up that brings $$ but I have doubts about usefulness of such approach for people. I’d rather see less one-day songs and less coverage on them… looks a bit like an innovative spamming technique.
Also, only a part of all music (less profound and artistic in most cases) exists and being distributed in “song” format. What about a piano concert, symphony or jazz improvisation set? The fact that Viinyl demo is focused on marketing items that I can barely consider as belonging to a domain of Music instantly draws me off. Well, that;s personal of course.
I am just wondering about SEO. Is this really optimized? I tested a title that uses the platform and it was no where to be found. That should be the purpose too. And how can people buy the song? People listen listen, but they need to be able to buy too.
After reading the page I decided to give it a try. Here my page . The song is in French. combiendetemps.viinyl.com/