Music Existence Because of Music, We Exist
If you work in the music industry, then you must know about Haulix, the online music promotion software which features mp3 watermarking. We got a chance to speak with Matt Brown, the founder of Haulix about how to get the most out of this awesome service.
How long have you been a music blogger? I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a blogger. Over the years, I’ve built blogging websites from scratch — and so I have more experience on the technical side. I always had a staff of writers who submitted the actual content.
What is your music website? For about 10 years it was MetalReview.com. We then changed the name to Last Rites (http://lastrit.es). It’s a metal site with articles and reviews.
What were some of your biggest challenges as a blogger in regards to working with emails and press releases? In the beginning years, I was the one checking the mailbox and entering the promo discs into our system. Now that I think back on how much time and work I spent, I think I was a little crazy back then. There were days I would sit in front of the computer for 10 hours straight. Back then, we would review every single album that came in the mail.
What issues does Haulix solve? On the press side, you can download and drop an album into iTunes in a matter of a few minutes. There’s a screen that lists all promos from all Haulix customers that send to you. You can hide albums you have covered and discover new releases as they become available. There really is no need for a physical mailbox and no piles of discs on the desk.
On the record label or PR firm’s side, they can manage all of their albums and contacts from one convenient web-based interface. The watermarking security layers are automatic and in the background. The system has the muscle to handle millions of outgoing email invitations and thousands of streams or downloads. A PR person doesn’t have to mail out physical discs or manage huge spreadsheets with contacts. They save money and they save time by using our software.
Do you think piracy is still a large issue now that music-streaming services are gaining popularity? Yes I do. I read recently that 26% of album sales are pre-orders and another 25% are in the first couple of weeks. The pre-release and early release days are crucial to sales and so it’s equally crucial that a label protects their music when they send it out to the press. An early leak can effect those sales number.
It seems like lyric videos and music videos are gaining popularity to share new music, will Haulix support video in the near future? We’ve considered it off and on over the last couple of years. As of right now, if we were to take-on a video solution, our current audio offerings would suffer because we would be splitting our resources between both of them. I want to do one thing really well rather than doing a couple things half-assed.
You guys have an awesome lineup of pricing tiers starting at $19 a month, how did you come up with these? On one of the early days, the software was built and it was time to determine our pricing structure. We sat down with a couple beers in hand and literally took an hour to come up with the pricing and the names of the plans. We obviously factored in our costs and we also took note of some bloated competitor pricing and came up with our own.
Those initial plans are still in place today and we haven’t changed them or raised our prices.
Directly contributing to an artists growth to become signed is amazing, is this type of growth common for your clients? Most of our customers promote artists who are already signed. We have had a few indie artists “shop” their demo around to labels and in turn get signed. We think that is really awesome and we’d like more artists to take advantage of what we offer.
Your blog is amazingly helpful and informative, including tips and even jobs in the music industry. Where do you come up with all these ideas to blog about? James S. is the master-mind behind our blog. We’re looking to have a strong public presence in the industry. We want to give back too by educating and sharing stories.
Do you need a publicist when you use your service? Absolutely not. Anyone who wants to promote their music can get value from using our services.
Who would benefit the most from Haulix and all it offers? Our system is optimized for very large promo loads. We have customers who have 170 albums live at one time and they distribute those albums to thousands of people each week. Anyone who wants to push music out to people and have the peace of mind knowing that there are several security measures in place that just work behind the scenes, should give us a try.
Any company that has a remote staff spread out over multiple offices and cities can also benefit from our proprietary web-based encoding process. Anyone on their staff can create watermarked promos from anywhere with an internet connection.
