Sell Digital Music Worldwide With Mixeeba & Glnk

[Updated] Once music is made available through online stores such as iTunes and Amazon, both artists and third-party websites can generate revenue via affiliate programs. Artists can increase their percentage and third-party sites can get a cut of sales that occur due to their news and reviews related to the music. But with the Internet providing a global presence, being able to offer one's music through appropriate national outlets gets complicated. Mixeeba and Glnk are two services with different approaches that address that problem.

Mixeeba

Mixeeba is based in London and launched as a host for DJ mixes which were monetized via affiliate links. They eventually decided to focus on the monetization aspect and developed a service that allows you to choose between multiple options for generating affiliate links to Juno Records & Juno Download, iTunes and Amazon that will display the correct regional outlet to online shoppers.

The options include adding some JavaScript to your webpages, a link-generator that requires you to enter links to create a playlist and an API for projects with developers. For sites with a lot of content, the Javascript option is particularly appealing in that it automates the process of identifying and creating links to downloadable songs.

Mixeeba also provides a Publisher Portal so you can track your clicks and earnings. They keep 10% of the affiliate revenue and you get 90%.

It sounds like a truly useful service though the promo blurbs seem to be from a couple of years back and could stand some updating.  However, you can check the Mixeeba Twitter feed for current news.

Glnk

Glnk or g-link looks a bit dodgy at first glance until you see that it's a hack by Lee Martin who heads experimental development at SoundCloud. He's responsible for a variety of projects such as promo pages for Tenacious D and The Flaming Lips as well as the Wave Raid game.

Glnk has been flying a bit under the radar though lots of people have been using it and Martin continues to develop the service. I found out about it through a Daily Rind post. Glnk uses iTunes and:

"allows you to define a bundle of links with country codes. when users click on your glnk they are redirected to the link specific to the country where they are from. works great for album preorders."

Apparently he's said more in the past as revealed by Todd Tate who's successfully used the service. He quotes Martin:

"This was built after working so many album pre-order campaigns where I would be building pages with fifty different country-specific pre-order links. One time I put a little flag next to each link, making the page look more like the United Nations than a pre-order! But now I can build a simple page with one link: ‘BUY THIS SHIT’ and fans will be redirected automagically to the appropriate purchase link"

Definitely a useful tool that is apparently a free service built to satisfy the developer's need and now shared with musicians in the know.

Hypebot Features Writer Clyde Smith blogs about business at Flux Research: Business & Revenue Models and about dance at All World Dance: News. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.