Steve Thaemert Interview
By C.W. Ross
Steve Thaemert is the President/Artist Rep. for Indiedrive Inc. a company that offers a unique way for independent artist to sell their music using a USB flash-drive.
Indiedrive Inc. is not a record label but a music store. Artist sell their music through the site and control what they put on the flash-drives and set their own prices.
Customers can then browse through the music selections and buy the USB flash-drives that they want.
The drives are guaranteed to work and are double checked to make sure that they are virus free.
Below is an interview that I recently done with Steve.
Indiedrive Website- http://www.Indiedrive.com
1- Will you tell us a little bit about your company, how long has it been around, its start, what your drives are etc...?
Steve: The Indiedrive concept originated a couple years ago when I was at a show with my band and one of the other bands there was selling their music on flash drives. We thought, "Hey! What a great idea." It has taken two years to launch Indiedrive... but we finally got it going - making Indiedrive.com the first dedicated USB flash-drive album storefront in the world. With CD sales dropping steadily, we believe flash-drive albums will serve as a way to suppliment a bands income, and ultimately will replace CD's altogether. Besides, flash drives are a convenient way to transfer MP3's and other fun stuff. Bands get their music out there in a new and exciting way, and the consumer gets exclusive material on a high-quality reuseable drive. Everybody wins!
2- Since your drives are USB I'm guessing that they're compatible with both MAC and Windows based computers?
Steve: The flash drives we use are compatible with almost everything that has a USB port, and work in both MAC and PC systems. Our drives are among the smallest you can get, and are very high quality with fast transfer speeds. We decided to use the cooler, higher-quality drives as opposed to the cheapies, and offer something unique that we can guarantee will last. We also welcome bands who have their own flash drives to sell those at indiedrive.com too, but we can't guarantee anything that is not a genuine indiedrive.
3- Your site list the genres of Rock, Country, Blues, R&B and Hip-Hop. Are you open to other styles of music?
Steve: This is something that was very intentional. I've always hated going to music websites and having to browse through 300 genres, half of which I've never heard of... I mean, cmon. There are so many genres and sub-genres out there, I wanted to take a different approach. We put those general categories out there, but we also allow the bands to choose their own "keywords" to really describe themselves. I think it empowers the bands, and lets them decide exactly how they want to be labeled. If you want to label yourself as an experimental-funk-gospel-punk band, than go for it.
4- If a band/artist is interested in selling their music through your site what do they have to do to get things started?
Steve: The first step in selling your music through Indiedrive is to put together your album. A flash-drive album can be made up of MP3's, videos, lyric sheets, pictures, photos, artwork, buddy icons, ringtones - I mean, you name it. We only use 1gig drives, so there is plenty of room to be creative. A band can register right at indiedrive.com and set up their artist page and add their album(s). Once registered, one of our artist reps will contact them and arrange a file transfer. We have several options available to get the files into our database. When someone orders a drive, we fill the order and ship it out, and mail out checks to the bands every month. The cool thing about Indiedrive is the fact that we are in personal contact with every band on our site... we're here to help in any way we can.
5- What do see looking ahead for your company? Are their any specific new ideas that your working on now?
Steve: Well, we are in phase one right now - so we have a lot of new ideas on the table for phase two. We are trying to offer laser etching on our drives, as well as more choices in drive shapes and sizes. We are currently populating the site, which we expect to take a few months... in that time we would like to see a few hundred bands selling drives at indiedrive.com. We are also always networking and finding new ways to promote the bands selling drives through our site.
6- Anything I missed that you would like to share with our readers?
Steve: The main thing that I would like to express to anyone interested in trying the whole flash-drive album idea is that it is absolutely free. The idea behind Indiedrive is to create a marketplace where people can browse through flash-drive albums just like they would at any other music store website. We are creating this by empowering the indies, not taking their money. This company was started by independent musicians, and that's really where the heart of Indiedrive is.
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