IODA

IODA (Independent Online Distribution Alliance) is a music aggregator bent on tapping the indie music niche which accounts for 20% of the music industry's yearly revenue. Founded on the long tail principle by a few music geeks, IODA collects music from independent music labels all over the globe and licenses their music to retailers such as iTunes, Rhapsody and Napster (an entire list of its partners is [here](http://www.iodalliance.com/partners.php)). With infinite shelf space and zero shippi... ng costs, IODA's full business model entails little more than promotion and digitally transferring its music to retailers. IODA collects music from Indie labels, digitally encodes it into up to 15 file formats (most with DRM) and then bulk uploads it to retailers' servers. IODA takes a 10-15% cut of all sales.The promotion side of IODA's business model is headed by Promonet. Promonet is a database of music that can be accessed by bloggers and podcasters. It offers sample songs from all of its contracted artists that can be used for free by anyone. Promonet is the intersection between the long tail of music and the long tail of the web. It helps expose indie music deep into the online music community.IODA is not venture funded and has grown steadily since 2003. It has over 2,700 indie labels' licensed music which consists of over 2 million tracks. IODA was acquired by Sony Music in 2009 and merged with The Orchard in 2012.More