VibeDeck, Eventbrite and harnessing new viral retailing

17 August 2011

by Eamonn Forde

New offerings from VibeDeck and Eventbrite have placed a renewed emphasis on direct retailing between artists and fans.

VibeDeck, following a partnership with SoundCloud earlier in the month, is now letting acts sell tracks straight from their official YouTube videos. Artists need to be signed up and active on VibeDeck first (i.e. have uploaded at least one track), then authenticate their YouTube channel on the platform to get going. Tracks can be sold or given away in exchange for data capture.

Back in 2008, YouTube integrated with iTunes and Amazon MP3 to offer related downloads from YouTube videos, which was partly a concession by the video service, in the light of growing copyright concerns on the platform, to align itself more closely with content owners.

VibeDeck already allows acts to sell via SoundCloud, Facebook and their own sites, and this move to YouTube is clearly designed to put artists in front of the biggest aggregate audience possible. It is arguable that YouTube is the single biggest music platform globally, but it is synonymous in the mind of many consumers with free content.

On top of this, several pieces of software (such as KissYouTube and SaveYouTube) already exist to rip audio tracks from YouTube and convert them into MP3 files without paying anyone.

The moves by VibeDeck and others to place a direct download commerce wrapper around YouTube is admirable, but they are but dinghies bobbling around on a sea of free.

While VibeDeck is looking to monetise the moving image online through download sales, Eventbrite and ThingLink are looking to do the same for static images and ticket sales.

Finish company ThingLink will use its Rich Media Tags platform, which debuted in June, to integrate with any acts promoting events through Eventbrite. An embeddable and interactive image, that can be dropped on any site or social network, can be clicked on to take the user direct to ticket sales. The idea being that acts can open up sales opportunities for their shows wherever they are on the web.

Both new offerings are built around impulse purchasing, but recent uptake figures around QR codes indicate how big a challenge it is to really harness the opportunities here.

A report by comScore into smartphone usage in the US discovered that a mere 6.2% of users scanned a QR code in June.

While it is to be applauded that everything is done to put legal purchasing options in front of consumers, that is the easy part; getting them to click through, no matter how seamless it is, is another battle entirely.