INDIE DISTRIBBERY FRESHTUNES JOINS THE FRAY

FreshTunes, a digital-music start-up that enables indie artists to distribute their music to all the major retail and streaming platforms for free, has just announced its existence, doing so with a distinct Russian accent.

According to the 10/12 announcement, FreshTunes offers free registration and 24-hour content upload to all major digital stores, allowing artists to manage their releases, artwork and track descriptions; there’s also a dashboard showing sales and streaming stats.

The new service also provides such “value-added” tools as artwork production, lyric-video production, ringtone production, promotion of videos on the FreshTunes YouTube channel, LANDR automated music mastering and MFiT to fit music to iTunes-quality standards.

Fresh Tunes makes money from the value-added services and draws interest on the money that's left in users' accounts, from which users can make withdrawals in multiples of £25. The standard service is free, and artists get 100% of revenue.

The company entered the market six months ago and now has users in 84 countries, including the U.S. and the U.K., as well as Russian, India and Brazil. FreshTunes presently has just south of 50k tracks.

FreshTunes is based in Dubai, with the tech and operational hub in Moscow, which, the release notes, is fast becoming a global hub for tech—as the Democratic National Committee and other hacked entities know full well. The start-up has also set up offices in Brazil and the U.K.

Co-founder Nikolay Okorokov believes his company “will create a new shift in digital-music distribution. So many artists now are choosing to stay independent, even after achieving global success… FreshTunes is all about empowering and supporting the independent community of musicians around the world to truly run their careers on their terms.”