Is Snocap Really All That ?

Posted by Eric Hebert on May 16, 2007 in General | Comments

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What is Snocap?

Snocap claims that it is “the first end-to-end provider of digital licensing and copyright management services for the digital music marketplace.” A mouthful, to say the least.

In a nutshell, Snocap is a service that let’s musicians sell there own music. It was developed by Shawn Fanning, none other than the man who brought us the original Napster and the eventual downfall of mainstream record labels as we know it.

Snocap empowers musicians to sell there own music through their Snocap music store, and because the musicians keep all the rights to their music, they are free to allow anyone else to sell there music as well (I believe Snocap provides tracking code technology to assist in keeping track of any royalties or commissions. Some of the larger retailers who are available to sell your music include

Here’s how it works:

Musician joins Snocap and uploads music. Artists reserve the right to have DRM-free Mp3 formatting or the Microsoft WMA format. Music MUST BE in Mp3 format at time of upload.

Musician sets their own price for music. Snocap get’s a small fee for each track sold. The fees differ depending on how the transaction takes place, usually in one of two ways:

• Artist sells music thorough their “store”; Snocap takes $.39 per track
• Artist sells through one of Snocap’s distribution partners, which is either $.10 or 15% of the wholesale price (determined by the artist. Snocap’s current distribution deal is with InRadio, though on the homepage they name a few more “possible” distributors, and I say possible because they do not mention these partners anywhere else in the client management section.

Snocap hosts music and provides the artist with a neat little widget (known as a “store”) to use to promote their music on the MySpace pages and websites.

Here’s an example of what your Snocap store looks like. Unfortunately, I cannot control the size of the store without cutting it up!

Pretty simple stuff, and a great way to give you the ability to sell your music. As far as where you can sell your music, that’s a bit of a mystery. I’ll be working with several accounts over the next few months, and hopefully we’ll learn some more about the network of sites that are selling music through Snocap, and what methods are being used to track these sales.

One of the caveats of the service is that you have to have a Snocap account to purchase music. I tried to purchase some music last week, and in all the silliness of the sign-up process, then adding a Paypal account which did not verify properly, I lost the desire to own the music. There’s got to be a better way!

There doesn’t seem to be that much customization with the widget, which is kind of troubling. I added the one here for an example, but I otherwise would not have added a widget that does not fit.

Oh, I forgot to mention that it costs $30 a year after the first one? That’s on top of the money you give them for each track sold.

Artists get paid monthly, after Snocap has received final payment.

While the service does have it’s perks, and an obvious potential to get the word out, it all just seems to be a little more than a $30 music widget. The service offers no real marketing effort or proof that distributors or labels will be selling your music. It boasts that it is working with “2,300″ labels, though no one knows who exactly and how they will be a part of the service.

More on Snocap to come, as we begin to test it out and see the response; anybody out there have any experiences (good or bad) with the service?