Launching a beta this week, RouteNote is a platform connecting artists with distributors. With deals in place between the site and major retailers like eMusic, Limewire, AudioLunchbox and iTunes, musicians can upload their tracks, get access to over 90% of the market for digital sales, and manage all their commerce from one place. Music uploaded to the site can also be included in a library available creative media people to search through, select from and then to generate a license tailored to their intended use. Added to all this will be a self-promotion toolkit including sales widgets, banners for artists’ sites, interviews with industry professionals, sessions from up-and-coming musicians, and old fashioned good advice.

If the big retailers were to deal individually with every independent in the market, the burden of processing millions of contracts and literally billions of low value transactions would swamp them. They refer to deal with record labels and other aggregators that have already cleared the rights to the music from these artists – like our RouteNote. This means we can act as a bridge between artists and retailers, without artists having to sell their rights or sign away big chunks of their income to a record label.

RouteNote provides a hub for artists to manage their relationships with all the retailers selling their product from one place. Artists choose where they want to sell their music, and we handle the delivery of their content to all the places they select, collate all the sales information, and forward their earnings once they reach the level the artist has set. All the information about who is selling what, when, where and how is onsite for artists to analyse.

RouteNote is still in beta, and is only accepting limited numbers of users. If you are interested in the site you can sign up at www.RouteNote.com to be included in the audience.