iMediaTV.net’s purpose is to provide a mechanism for the the creators in the world to make more money. It is crazy who is making the money in the industry. Bands are paid less than a penny for each view in most of the current streaming services or nothing at all on YouTube or FaceBook.
Licensing
And then there are all these people posting videos with a crappy mono microphone. These video posters are breaking the terms and conditions of Facebook or YouTube etc. unless they get approval from the band, the venue, the promoter, the person that originally wrote the music being played… The list goes on but we tend to forget items that may cost us money or someone may say “No”…
On this site everyone that needs to be asked is asked. Licensing fees are paid where they are needed. We are currently paying for licensing on over 48 million songs!
Quality Snob
Don’t get me wrong I enjoy some of those videos but most of the time think it’s not the best recording you could’ve had… Yes I am an audio snob… I love incredibly great recordings and yes I am very opinionated on how sound should sound. I have worked on sound quality my entire life.
Tell me more about iMediaTV.net
iMediaTV.net is actually the culmination of an idea that I was introduced to in Junior High School by Bernie McCole the Audio/Video director for Hinsdale District 181 Schools… Bernie had this vision of a “dial retrieval” system where in any classroom you could dial in a number and it would play the video or film right in that classroom. iMedia TV.net allows you to do just that… But from anywhere in the world.
When you request a video the files are moved somewhere geographically close to you on planet Earth to make your experience better…
We use the same content delivery network (CDN) that Netflix runs on… Amazon CloudFront one of the services at Amazon Web Services (AWS)…
For you nerds… iMediaTV.net is load balanced with multiple servers taking turns handling requests.
When we get busy we spin up more servers to make the user experience better… It has a common database and common data store between all the instances.
It is resilient… The two servers are in different availability zones at Amazon so one entire Amazon data center can go down and it will keep running.
Media Delivery
Delivered media (audio and video) is encoded at different bit rates so the user gets the best experience possible. Hopefully the end user’s video or audio never stops until they tell it to! This is the equivalent of a bicycle derailer. When you are going up a hill or your Internet connection is crappy the stream will downshift to a lower bit rate stream. The player checks the connection every two seconds and will upshift or downshift accordingly. Currently our videos are encoded at seven different bit rates. It has a seven speed derailer.
What about theft of my videos and audio files?
Media files can optionally be encrypted before delivery. The player every two seconds requests the current encryption key of the stream. The media stream is delivered in two seconds chunks . There is not just one file being streamed to the end-user.
Why am I telling you all this?
You need to know this is not just some single server solution, not just some computer sitting in someone’s basement… The quality of the user experience reflects on YOUR image.
But wait there’s more!
iMediaTV.net provides full e-commerce capabilities for selling your bands merchandise… There’s a full shopping experience… Some people don’t care about the music side they only care about shopping! The e-commerce section of the site allows us to…
1. Sell different types of products… The product types include simple, grouped, external/affiliate, variable, simple subscription, and variable subscription.
2. Subscription functionality in days, weeks, months, or years with a free trial term.
3. Pay per view functionality.
4. Media and the e-commerce are tied together. We can group video viewing privileges and the purchase of physical or virtual goods into one product.
5. Products and availability are automatically sent to Facebook and Instagram online stores.
E-commerce merchandise sales can be very profitable.
Our supply chain is almost completely automated. Orders received from the Internet flow through to our fulfillment partners… Each externally fulfilled product has a different recipe, the garment or object, the graphic, the ship to, etc. Perhaps you may be receiving some orders to fulfill yourself like CDs or other items you keep in your physical merchandise inventory. If it is one of our custom created products we then login to the suppliers website, approve the graphic and pay for the items before they are released to production… The fulfillment vendor uses flexible manufacturing to create the product, then packages and ships using our packing list and label that we sent to them electronically.
This is how we will beat the Chinese and bring manufacturing (and jobs) back to the United States… Flexible manufacturing!
Sales on Social Media
Facebook and Instagram are our primary social media partnerships… Facebook and Instagram e-commerce stores are automatically populated and updated using the products and inventory quantities in iMediaTV.net. When a person buys through the Facebook store they are redirected to their cart already populated with the items selected in Facebook in the iMediaTV cart. The sale is then finished and paid for on our site using our payment gateway.
Very simply what is it?
A subscription and e-commerce solution to allow bands to sell online entertainment and merchandise with little to no investment.
What is the process for a band to get started?
1. The band clicks on this link to purchase an e-commerce subscription. It is fair for the band to pay for the resources that they are using.
2. The band prepares graphics to be paired with physical products from our customization products catalog. Certain physical products can only be customized in certain manners. We currently provide direct to garment (DTG), screen print, die sublimation, and embroidery customization options. This document lists the specifications of your graphic files. Your prepared graphics are then uploaded using the uploader on this site. By using our uploader your files will go in your own folder on our site.Send us an email telling us what you uploaded when it is done.
3. We order our first products for taking marketing photography. This step is optional but product images showing band members using the products will sell better than generic computer-generated images.
4. Media is prepared for distribution. This is the most costly part of the entire process. A great video shoot using great cameras, great photographers, great post production, and a newly mixed audio track can easily go over $10,000. iMedia can help you on this or you can do it yourself. It is a lot of work… Many musicians dislike live audio… After all the sound is their brand. Some artists will not let anything go out that has not been remixed. Personally I love live audio… I get to use the room in the mix. I want to feel like I’m in the room. Most of my early recording was in churches where I loved using the building as one of the instruments and attempted to use no digital effects. Your prepared media is then uploaded via the uploader on this site. Send us an email telling us what you uploaded when it is done.
5. All the products and media are uploaded and tested. The FaceBook Page integration is completed and tested.
We are ready for launch!
We will make a post or posts announcing both our videos and our eCommerce. Perhaps we should talk about why we want the fans to pay. If we don’t address this change it may be addressed by some poster that doesn’t think they should pay for anything anytime. I’ll reveiw; Creating a great video is a big investment, Beautiful Live Concert video is the only way to get into larger, higher paying venues. Licensing must be paid. The venue and/or the promoter may be partners in the video or audio created.
Commercial-free for now!
No viagra commercials, etc. I did turn on a commercial stream to see what we would end up with….. Almost all pharmaceuticals attempting to scare me about this or that. Hopefully we don’t need commercials.
Our vision is for us to create the best entertainment experience possible.
I imagine each of our viewers sitting on their couch with someone enjoying the amazing channeling of talent that touches everyone’s souls. Alternatively our videos and audio sound amazing on a phone anywhere you are.
How do we tie in our Live concerts with our eCommerce Store?
6. This is part of the process that you must agree to… We create a “small gift” like a printed photo of the band to give away to fans at concerts. On this gift will be both a printed URL and QR code of a landing page on iMediaTV.net that will have a presentation of your available videos, audios, and merchandise. We will be able to track when people use those links. We can create multiple links for multiple marketing campaigns if you really want to be smart. We have also implemented the FaceBook Pixel so that anyone that has visited iMediaTV will not cost to be advertised to.
Something fun since you made it all the way to the bottom.
Here is an audio only concert of Mr. Blotto at 210 Live in February 2018. This is a rough cut. It is even missing the beginning, sorry! This is a preliminary mix that converted the multi-track recording to a two track audio. This probably has maybe 12 hours of work in it but could use a bunch more.
I love Mr. Blotto! These guys are the best! Couldn’t be any nicer guys! Even Mike! Love Paul’s vocals… Enjoy!