Nimbit, Inc. was a

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

-based company (owned by

PreSonus PreSonus Audio Electronics, Inc. (often known and styled as PreSonus) is an American manufacturer of professional audio equipment and software, used to create, record, Audio mixing, mix, and Audio mastering, master music and other audio. This inc ...

) offering sales & marketing services for

independent music Independent music (also commonly known as indie music or simply indie) is music that is produced independently from commercial record labels or their subsidiaries, a process that may include an autonomous, do-it-yourself approach to recording a ...

ians,

independent record labels An independent record label (or indie label) is a record label that operates without the funding or distribution of major record labels; they are a type of small and medium-sized enterprise, small- to medium-sized enterprise, or SME. The labels ...

and other organisations, using a

web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

-based, direct-to-fan system. This includes a virtual storefront, which allows users to sell music and merchandise on

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

and other websites, and tools for users to perform fundraising campaigns. Nimbit was shut down on December 9, 2020.

History

Formation and early years

Nimbit was originally formed and incorporated by Phil Antoniades, Patrick Faucher, and Joseph Twarog in 2002, in

Framingham Framingham () is a city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. Incorporated in 1700, it is located in Middlesex County and the MetroWest subregion of the Greater Boston metropolitan area. The city proper covers with a popul ...

. The company launched Nimbit WebTools in 2003, which was a content management system of website management tools and hosting services, designed for the entertainment industry. In 2004, they partnered with ASCAP to provide members with access to this package. In 2007, Nimbit launched nimbitOMT ("Online Merch Table"), a system for selling

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

CDs The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Octo ...

, e-tickets and other merchandise across

social networking websites A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, act ...

, blogs and other websites. In 2008, this was followed by nimbitSkin, a customizable music storefront allowing the sale of products from any website. Also in 2008, the company introduced nimbitCards: physical cards which can be distributed to customers, who then use them for later redemption of items in the corresponding Nimbit store. In September 2009, Nimbit released "MyStore" for

, which integrated the previous promotion & sales features directly within a user's Facebook profile. In April 2010 Nimbit announced that they were bringing on Bob Cramer as their CEO. Nimbit's "Spotlight Store" for Facebook was released in March 2012, providing an expanded version of the original Nimbit "MyStore", optimized for Facebook's new timeline view.

PreSonus ownership

In July 2012 Nimbit announced it had been acquired by

, the manufacturer of

music production A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure.Virgil Moorefield"Introduction" ''The Producer as ...

software and hardware, for an undisclosed sum. PreSonus expanded Nimbit functionality the following year by adding localisation options for language and currency in the virtual storefronts, and automatic customer follow-up from promotions. In January 2014, several new features were added to the service, including custom fan lists, a new event check-in service, a new

email marketing Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to s ...

tool, and additions to the event management tool. Shortly afterwards, in June 2014, PreSonus announced a redesigned version of Nimbit, with new functionality. Further expansions made in 2014 included a re-designed store page, plugins for embedding Nimbit features into external websites, support for HD audio, and a re-designed product management page. Nimbit was shut down on December 9, 2020.

Services

User profiles

Nimbit users are provided with an online interface to create a profile for themselves, including any promotional photos or videos, and a calendar of their public events. In addition, the profile provides access to the corresponding store for their music and merchandise.

Sales and tips

Nimbit provides virtual storefronts, which users can leverage for selling directly to fans. These storefronts can be embedded onto external websites. In addition, Nimbit provides means for including connections to these storefronts within other

social networking A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

websites, such as

, Jango,

PledgeMusic PledgeMusic was an online direct-to-fan music platform, launched in August 2009. It was started to facilitate musicians looking to pre-sell, market, and distribute projects; such as recordings and concerts. It bore similarities to other artist p ...

, and Fanbridge. Users can sell both digital and physical products from these virtual storefronts, and customers can also provide additional money to them in the form of "tip jar" contributions. Since June 2013, storefronts can be displayed in English, French, German, or Spanish, and allow users to sell in their local currency. Nimbit storefronts utilize

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

, allowing them to accept purchases via

or credit card, in any of

's supported currencies. Nimbit users have the option to define split payments, whereby an existing

account can be set to automatically receive a custom percentage of profits from the storefront. Users also have the ability to create UPCs for the products on sale and submit the resulting sales to

Nielsen SoundScan Luminate (formerly Nielsen SoundScan, Nielsen Music Products, and MRC Data) is a provider of music sales data. Established by Mike Fine and Mike Shalett in 1991, data is collected weekly and made available every Sunday (for albums sales) and eve ...

for tracking.

Marketing and promotion

Nimbit's "Promotion Tool" provides the means for users to share details of specific promotions via

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

Email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

, and embedded components on other websites. The tool includes options for embedded video, embedded audio and links to free or discounted content on the user's virtual storefront. In September 2012, the tool's functionality was expanded to include an automatic follow-up, which would encourage customers who accessed the original promotion to make another purchase.

Fundraising

Nimbit also includes the functionality for users to conduct a fundraising campaign via the following options: * A presale item in the virtual storefront * Optional customer contributions for a free item in the virtual storefront * Physical merchandise items in the virtual storefront, each associated to different levels of campaign contribution

FanCheck.in

Introduced in 2014, FanCheck.in is an online service which allows fans to 'check-in' to a specific event which a user is hosting, using a personalized URL. The service can be configured to automatically send follow-up emails to those who check-in, including links to free or discounted items from the user's Nimbit store. These check-ins also gather data for users about their customers, which they can access in their fan management features.

Fan management

Users can access a detailed list of fans for tracking and data mining purposes, including their contact information, spending habits, and event check-ins via the FanCheck.in service. Options are provided for filtering and grouping fans, and saving custom searches for later re-use.

Physical products

Nimbit provides services for CD and

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

replication, and for

short-run In economics, the long-run is a theoretical concept in which all markets are in equilibrium, and all prices and quantities have fully adjusted and are in equilibrium. The long-run contrasts with the short-run, in which there are some constraints an ...

CD-R CD-R (Compact disc-recordable) is a digital optical disc storage format. A CD-R disc is a compact disc that can be written once and read arbitrarily many times. CD-R discs (CD-Rs) are readable by most CD readers manufactured prior to the in ...

and

DVD-R DVD recordable and DVD rewritable are optical disc recording technologies. Both terms describe DVD optical discs that can be written to by a DVD recorder, whereas only 'rewritable' discs are able to erase and rewrite data. Data is written ('burne ...

duplication. The service includes packaging (including options for jewel cases, digipacks, and other packaging types), artwork (including inserts of various page counts), UPC generation (or use of an existing UPC, if available), electronic

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

graphic proof, assembly, and wrapping. The same service channel also provides printing options for posters and other promotional materials.

E-tickets

In addition to music and merchandise, users can also sell e-tickets to events from the Nimbit virtual storefront. Tickets can be added to the storefront once the corresponding event has been added to the user's event calendar.

Account options

Nimbit offers two account options: a free Nimbit account (formerly known as NimbitFree) and Nimbit Premium (formerly known as NimbitPlus). Nimbit Premium is a subscription plan which offers extended capabilities compared to the free account model, such as the following: * Email marketing functionality * HD audio options * Reduced sales commission fee * The ability to sell physical

and merchandise * Additional store customization options * FanCheck.in services * The ability to manage multiple artists from a single account * The ability to set automatic royalty splits * Creation of UPCs for products * Submission of sales tracking data to

Nielsen Soundscan Luminate (formerly Nielsen SoundScan, Nielsen Music Products, and MRC Data) is a provider of music sales data. Established by Mike Fine and Mike Shalett in 1991, data is collected weekly and made available every Sunday (for albums sales) and eve ...

Many of the additional features from Nimbit Premium can also be added onto a regular Nimbit account via separate monthly costs.

Partnerships

ASCAP The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...

and Nimbit have partnered since 2004 to offer "ASCAP Web Tools" for ASCAP members.

and Nimbit partnered in October 2011 to create "PledgeStore", so that users can have a Nimbit virtual store appear on their PledgeMusic page once their pledge goal has been met, providing ways for customers to continue contributing to the campaign and access additional content. This included functionality for users to sign up for the service directly from their

dashboard. Jango and Nimbit partnered in June 2012 to offer the "Nimbit Store for Jango", allowing users to have a Nimbit store page visible on their Jango profile, and providing the functionality for them to sign up for the service from directly within Jango.

References

{{reflist Talent managers Privately held companies based in Massachusetts Record label distributors 2020 disestablishments in Massachusetts