News

Salt Lake City kiosks offer one-stop shopping, distribution for local musicians

March 9, 2004

SALT LAKE CITY-A local company has developed a kiosk to serve the local music market, according to Salt Lake City Weekly.

Mediaport's machine enables customers to navigate a menu of independent artists, listen to snippets of songs from each, and burn their selections onto a CD-complete with custom label.

The service is free to the artists, allowing many who might otherwise go unheard to reach at least a limited in-store audience.

"Mediaport is all about independent music," says Jon Butler, Mediaport's executive vice president of strategy and business development, the Utah alternative newsweekly. "Major labels censor artists, tell them what to play, control distribution and limit the independent artists' ability to play. We have the ability to give independent musicians nationwide distribution so they can have the freedom to play music the way they want to."

Each kiosk can be stocked with up to 100 CD-Rs, complete with jewel cases.

The CDs are burned from data (.wav files taken directly from the master recordings) on Mediaport's server and cost $5 for EPs and $10-$15 for full-length albums (almost all of the participating artists have chosen to sell theirs for $10).

The artist's profits range from 50 cents per CD for EPs to $1 to $7 for full-length CDs (the amount depends on price and sales). Mediaport recoups costs from the remainder and, of course, takes some profit. But the artist's take, says Butler, is "two to three times more than [Mediaport's]."

Butler conceived Mediaport about two years ago-or, as he says, "put it to paper." About six months later, he snagged Helen Seltzer, former president/CEO of the telecommunications company I-Link (and before that, Messageclick) as well as former executive VP of Bell Atlantic, as a consultant. She was sufficiently impressed with the business model and ethos, and agreed to become chairman and CEO soon after.

Mediaport plans to place the kiosks in record stores, clubs, and college campuses offering music from nearly 70 local bands (including Trace Wiren, Thunderfist, Magstatic, Tim Wray, Purdymouth, The Dirty Birds and Alchemy), many of whom have their entire catalogs available through Mediaport. They've also enlisted bands from Seattle, Boston and Dallas, and have representatives in New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas courting bands for a planned national campaign.