Recently, I had the pleasure of putting 10 questions to co-founder and CEO of Nimbit, Patrick Faucher. For those that don’t know about Nimbit, it is what I believe is one of the best technologies in helping independent musicians manage their careers and use an all-in-one technology service to grow their fans list and make more sales at their site. This interview has some real gems, so get your favorite drink, sit back and read through the entire interview.

1. Patrick, thanks for agreeing to do this interview. So you’re a co-founder of Nimbit. Give us a brief intro into yourself, your music background, Nimbit and what motivated you to start it.

I’ve been a musician my entire life, as a horn player, arranger, vocalist and sometimes guitarist. I have education in both music and technology and was into computer programming in the early days of the PC, way before the MAC and Windows were around. I graduated from Berklee College of Music in the early 90’s and gigged around professionally, then decided to figure out how to apply technology to the music business and make it easier to make a living at it. I ended up being part of some of the very first e-commerce applications on the Web for people like Aerosmith, Phish and a few others that were pioneering the world of online sales back in the late 90’s.

The concept of Nimbit [New Ideas for Music Business & Internet Technology] came from discussions I had with collegues at the time. We wanted to find a way to make it possible for any emerging artist to manage their content and market themselves more effectively online. So, my friend and Web guru Matt Silbert and I started working on Nimbit in 2002, building out a website and content management system that was easy to use and cheap.

Two years later we met Phil Antoniades who was running another company [Artist Development Associates] that was somewhat similar to CDBaby at the time, but also offered a number of other great services to indie artists. We quickly decided to put the two companies together to form what you see today as Nimbit, a complete marketing, sales and distribution system for artists and labels at every level.

2. Can you talk a little about some of the features Nimbit offers and perhaps share a few tips on how musicians can best make use of the Nimbit?

My favorite topic, not only because I am proud of what we’ve built but because one of our biggest challenges is to get artists to use everything they have available to them on Nimbit. Here are my top 5.

Tip #1 - be sure to put your entire catalog of products up for sale. Nimbit supports the direct sale of cds, t-shirts, downloads, tickets, books, just about anything through our storefronts, so that your fans can get whatever they want.

Tip #2 - put your Nimbit storefront everywhere you are. Our storefronts work on Facebook, Myspace, blogs, fan sites and of course, your official site.

Tip #3 - TELL PEOPLE TO GO AND BUY FROM YOU AT YOUR SITE! I can’t emphasize this enough. If a fan simply finds you on iTunes and buys a track, you will never know who that person is. With a Nimbit storefront, you get ALL the customer contact info, so you can re-market to them the next time you have something to release. Do I even need to mention that you keep more $$ when they buy direct also?

Tip #4 - continually give fans a reason to come back to you online. With today’s technology, there is no reason you have to let fans wait 2 years for new material. It’s a great idea to put up live tracks from the road, unreleased songs or songs in the making, anything that keeps the fans engaged between major releases.

Tip #5 - use your gigs and your fans as the biggest marketing tool you have. Get out there and mobilize your fans, give them incentives and praise. They want to connect to you, so let them. Use our new nimbitCard program to give away promotional tracks in exchange for email and cell phone numbers. Use our store tracking tools to run a contest to see which fan can can sell more of your new album from their own fan blog, using nimbitOMT’s share. Get creative and find other ways to use your fans to help promote and sell.

3. What major changes in the music industry do you see in the next two years?

Certainly more of what is already happening with regard to ongoing fragmentation and volitility at the upper levels of the market and significant expansion of what I call the middle class of artists in the market. While it is arguably just as hard to rise above the noise as an indie musician today as it ever was, making a solid living as an artist is more acheivable than ever today because of exposure to fans through various venues online and offline coupled with access to distribution and sales platforms such as Nimbit.

4. What are you top three success traits in independent musicians?

Perseverance, dedication to your craft, and ability to understand and manage the business aspects of your career.

5. What do you believe is the number 1 reason why many musicians fail?

They are unrealistic in their expectations and the amount of effort it takes to win.

Patrick, I asked my readers to share some questions that they would ask you and I didn’t want to throw them at you so I picked my top five and here they are.

6. Question from Steve Pasek: Is it still worthwhile for an independent artist to try to get retail distribution, and if so, what is the best way to go about it, and the best practices for billing to make sure you get paid?

It’s really not worth it for an independent artist to try to get retail distribution. There is simply less shelf space and more competition for that space so an artist must “pay” to get a position and must move significant numbers in order to break even on the initial distribution expense. In the end, that money would be better put to use promoting the release. If you are going to sell direct to small stores, sell outright for a low wholesale price instead of putting product up for consignment. You are better off getting $4 a disc in hand than having to track down payment in the future. Other than significant airplay, as in charting for a while, there is no reason to go after a bricks and mortar distribution channel.

7. Question from Clebo: I am comparing Nimbit and Catapult distribution. With Catapult 91-95% of all proceeds go to the artist, and they distribute your music to over 60 music stores. They charge a simple $25 fee for a album set up and no monthly fee. Tell me why the nimbit retail packages would be better for the independent musician who merely wants some way to sell and distribute their music.

91-95% of what? My guess is that is of the amount of money that the distributor will pay you. So a with $.99 download at iTunes, iTunes pays the distributor $.69, you get 95%, so you get $.65. With nimbit you get $.80 for your $.99 download but more importantly you get the customer information. My next question would be how many sales actually come from the 59 other stores that aren’t iTunes? We don’t see a huge value in putting undiscovered artists into 60 stores where they will remain undiscovered. Moreover, will you know who buys your music? Our focus really is on getting the artist out selling direct to their current fans and expanding from there. We aren’t against broad distribution but be sure to sell direct as much as possible so you know who bought what from you! We see iTunes and a couple others as necessary places to be for fans that opt to purchase at those outlets, but our real value lies in all the direct-to-fan sales and marketing tools we offer, which is not what Catapult does.

8. Question from Brenda: Apart from retail placement with other digital retailers (eg. iTunes), how are current nimbit artists making the most money using the nimbit OMT? In other words, where/how are successful sellers placing the nimbit OMT, and what kind of marketing are they doing with it, to get the most sales?

We see most of the nimbitOMT sales coming from people who have done a good job marketing from their Myspace page and using the OMT. We’ve helped over a hundred artists makeover their Myspace with an OMT and seen great results. For an example you can check out a band called The Mile After at www.myspace.com/themileafter Other sucessful artists are using their official site to sell, using nimbitSkin and those sites tend to have higher sales than those artists just selling from Myspace.

9. Question from Jon: Searching for music to buy online (retailers, myspace, etc.) can be time consuming and inefficient. A person could spend hours sifting through music at any given site, then decide to just “buy what’s popular” in the way of major label artists. How can an independent artist proactively increase their potential to be found with such large databases of music?

Your best bet is to think small and viral. 40+% of music recommendations are coming from blogs. You need to find your niche market. You need to nurture your fanbase to spread the word. Submit your music to be reviewed at any site that will have you. The more pages that show up with your reviews, the faster you fly up the search engine rankings.

10. Question from Pat: CDBaby is by far the oldest and I believe the best in the market for online distribution of independent music. As someone who uses CDBaby, I’d like to know your opinion on CDBaby, and what Nimbit offers me that CDBaby cannot?

First of all, I have a tremendous amount of admiration and respect for Derek and what CDbaby has done to push the evolution of this industry. I like to consider Nimbit as the next step in that evolution. One key differentiation is that with Nimbit, the artist can sell virtually ANY type of product from any website, all with the same storefront solution that gets managed within the Nimbit dashboard. For example, you can sell an MP3 with a T-shirt or an eTicket with an album, etc. This opens up a number of marketing and bundling opportunities for the artists catalog. Also, we are rolling out integrated marketing programs such as nimbitCards, that fans can redeem for music directly in the artists storefront on their website, driving more traffic and sales directly to the artist. It’s all about driving the fans to the artist and engaging them with compelling offers and a great buying experience. With Nimbit you can do that very seamlessly, quickly, for very little money which is something you won’t find anywhere else.

11. Any final thoughts or messages, Patrick?

If you have talent, know-how and determination, there is no reason you can’t be sucessful in this day and age. All the opportunities are there. Go. Create. Prosper.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Please leave your questions, comments and thoughts for both Patrick and Kavit.

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