User:Earbuzzdon

earBuzz.com is a music website and company dedicated to the independent music artist community and was conceived by founder, Don Kimenker, in 1997 and launched in 1999. It has gone through several business model changes and design modifications, the most ambitious of which was the 2005-2007 redesign and redevelopment of the brand and site to include high-quality digital downloadable in addition the the physical CD offering the site has offered since its inception.

earBuzz.com's current business model is based on membership from artists who provide $2, $3, or $5 per month and in doing so are able to list their physical CD product and digital songs and albums while earning 100% of the purchase price on all sales.

History Don Kimenker, a guitarist/singer/songwriter, finished recording and mastering his 1997 release, "Blessed Naive" and found that there was no place to sell the CD online and realized there was an opportunity to provide a home for CD sales that could be created for the independent artist. The concept was to bypass the traditional music business model of labels so that an artist could sell their own music directly to the music buyer. Kimenker spoke with a business representative at Amazon.com and he pointed out a market that wasn't currently being service - hoping to convince Amazon.com to expand their book-selling model into indpendent music. That year Amazon launched their "Advantage" program which allowed music creators to list their CDs with Amazon, however Amazon's royalty on all sales was 50% - an amount Kimenker felt unjustified and excessive considering Amazon.com had not invested into the creation, production, recording, or manufacturing of the product. Kimenker brainstormed names and came up with earBuzz, a web-name available and reserved it. Kimenker, who then worked for Knight-Ridder's Contra Costa Newspaper Group, discussed creating a music site that returend the majority of proceeds to artists with two colleagues, Scott Tucker and (fill in name of that young whipper-snapper who went on to Wired). Scott and (name) decided to pursue other interests. During the fall of 1997, Don landed a job with MacAddict Magazine. One of his clients, Mac-o-Rama's founder, Jason Dietrich discussed the possibliity of creating the music website for Kimenker using Filemaker and Lasso through Dietrich's company, Imagabella. Kimenker hired Dietrich to create the site for under $5,000 and 10% of the first year's revenues.