The LicenseQuote business model started and evolved from a focus on the ability for music publishers and their clients to easily calculate licensing costs and negotiate various licensing deals. This article explores some of the history and current trends that have shaped our music licensing solutions business model and service platform.

Free calculator widget launched first phase

Our first LicenseQuote calculator was a Free widget we used for about 2 years (until Dec. 2010) for testing, promotion and as a proof-of-concept for our plans to develop a more powerful, dynamic music licensing platform. The calculator included most of the current standard license type calculations along with the Place bid and Request quote options. During this time we got some great feedback, one of the most important being the request for the ability for publishers to set and control their pricing. This led to the development of the complete music licensing solution subscription service and business model which we’ll review further below.

Meanwhile we still give free public access to music creators, publishers and interested licensing buyers to use our standard licensing calculator which is also used for the standard “default” setting for all new LicenseQuote subscription clients. This blog article explains how to use the standard licensing calculator for those interested in comparing various pricing scenarios and doing their own research.

Development of full-featured licensing calculator

In the next phase, our LQ subscription clients (the publishers) had the ability not only use the standard pricing calculator, but also enable/disable any of its license types, create new ones, adjust the price by percentage, manage the base pricing, property values, multipliers, edit the license type descriptions, add new licensing profiles and even create their own custom rate cards from “scratch” as needed.

The other requests from the Free Widget users were the ability to have a private label widget, list of tracks and the ability to collect sales directly from their own store widget. They said they’d be willing to pay for these additional “professional” features, which led to the development of our current full-featured platform and subscription service model.

Eleven unique aspects of the LicenseQuote business model

Next we’ll highlight some of the unique aspects of the LicenseQuote business model.
1. Primary emphasis is to serve the music publishers and libary owners who need a robust, private label licensing and e-commerce solution. This includes full control of their branding, rate cards, pricing, contract terms, store colors, fonts theme along with ability to embed their store for promotion on their own website.

2. LicenseQuote is not a publisher or music library, hence our clients keep 100% of all their licensing sales revenues.

3. There are no Google or other sponsored ads on the site, so all visitors, including publishers and prospective licensing buyers are assured of an ad and spam-free environment.

4. Our site’s Terms of Service and Privacy policy further assures the scope & spirit of a private and spam-free music business enviroment.

5. The subscription plans and pricing are posted in a transparent way that makes it easy for music publishers and content providers to plan according to their needs and budget.

6. Pricing is very reasonable and competitive for all standard a custom plans which also allows ability to switch or upgrade as needed. Custom plans and pricing are discussed and agreed in advance with LicenseQuote support to ensure smooth transistions for plan switches and upgrades.

7. Plans include integrated files hosting or use of own storage which allows publishers to link to existing audio files on their server or any reliable hosting service that support audio files storage, downloading and streaming for the MP3 preview files.

8. LicenseQuote does not distinguish between independent and major label artists, catalogs or publishers, hence creating a truly level playing field based only on merit of content quality and service.

9. Publishers can opt to list their catalogs for public search on the Find Music page which is available to music supervisors and other commercial  and end-user music licensing buyers.

10. Publishers can also opt-in to a profiles directory of subscribed publishers with active licensing stores which appears on the Find Publishers page. Publishers can list their publishing name, contact information, business summary and licensing profile along with an automated copy of their entire licensing store (including tracks and descriptions) which are SEO optimized for major search engines and humans.

11. The business model is sustainable in that each publisher is responsible for their own catalog quality; and since each are paying the same flat monthly or yearly subscription plan fees, it attracts high content and service quality, while discouraging the lower-end content providers who are not likely to be supported with ongoing sales success. This means each publisher and library owner is paying their own way and are depending on the quality of their content, service and competitive pricing to help their music business sustain and succeed.

Thank you for your interest as a music publisher, or end-user licensing buyer, in the unique LicenseQuote business model and platform. If you have any comments or would like to share about your own experience with LicenseQuote, please use our Contact form to get in touch, thanks!