Magnatune, an independent, online record label that hand selects its own artists, sells its catalog of music through online downloads and print-on-demand CDs and licenses music for commercial and non-commercial use. Based on the principle that ‘we are not evil,’ the company offers fair-trade music to consumers by equally sharing all revenue from the sale of albums with artists and allowing artists to retain full rights to their music. Magnatune is a music business where everybody wins. In early 2005, Magnatune released a fully-loaded flash music player called TunePlug.
Strategy
Magnatune relied on Landis Communications Inc. (LCI) for innovative public relations strategies to distance TunePlug from an increasingly-large field of digital music players and, in promoting TunePlug, to distance Magnatune from larger, more famous online music services. LCI devised a strategy that played upon Magnatune’s unique fair-trade business model and the fact that TunePlug was the first digital music player to come fully loaded with songs.
Tactics
LCI began the Magnatune promotion by sending a targeted pitch, press release and TunePlug product samples to a select list of music writers and new product reviewers at music trade magazines and at the top 20 national daily newspapers. LCI then conducted heavy media outreach to the selected media contacts.