Features (Highlights)

Features for Your Media and Business Partners

Rapid Download of Media Files

Give your media and business partners online access to your music titles, print-quality cover images, broadcast-ready video clips, booklets, press photos, biographies, PDF documents, DJ software files, and much more.

Your recipients can download single media files, or all the tracks of a release as a ZIP file with only one mouse click. The really clever part of this is how iPool generates the ZIP file “on the fly” during the transmission, which means it consumes no additional storage space.

In addition to current titles which you want to promote intensively, you can also make your entire back catalog available to licensees and download shops. Our server's multiply redundant, high-speed connection of 62 GBit/s to all of the major internet backbones ensures rapid transmission of your data to any location in the world.

Instant Preview of Your Music Titles

Provide your media and business partners with a first fast access to your music titles. Based upon streaming technology, the preview function enables the recipients to listen to your music titles instantly, and they can even jump within the tracks. This saves time and bandwidth on your and also on the recipients' side.

View of Your Releases

Supply your media and business partners with important information. Besides digital media files, your recipients will obtain additional information about each release, such as descriptions, track listings, or catalog and article numbers. The track listings include for each track extensive information, such as title, index, length, file format, ISRC and tempo. iPool automatically extracts a lot of this information from your audio files, saving you time and effort.

PDF Info Sheet for Every Release

Your media and business partners can download an info sheet in PDF format for every release. And the best part: You don't have to lift a finger, because iPool creates the PDF file for each release without any input from you necessary!

Watermark Protection for MP3 Files

Protect your music titles against illegal spreading. Via our groundbreaking watermarking technology, iPool can embed an individual watermark into each downloaded MP3 file¹. If you find one of your music titles in a sharing network, you can now trace back the originator.

Our watermark protection is inaudible for human ears, very robust and endures even conversions. It is based on an algorithm of the renowned Fraunhofer Institute, developer of the MP3 audio format.

Fraunhofer Logo

Automatic Download via Podcast

Provide your recipients with an even more comfortable access to your music titles. In addition to download via the browser, your media and business partners can also access your music titles directly out of iTunes, Winamp and any other Podcast compatible software. The download can even take place automatically every hour – your music titles will quickly find their way to all your media partners.

Protected Member Area

Protect your data from unauthorized access. All your releases, media files and information are only available to your media and business partners in a protected area, whereas each recipient will obtain an individual, unique login.

Release Meta Data in XML Format

Make the meta data of your releases available in the iPool XML format. This enables your recipients, such as music download shops, to process the meta data of your releases easily and automatically.

Features for You As The Administrator

User Management

Decide who has access to your music titles.

With user management, you can record and administrate all your media and business partners who are to have access to your music. The user management is also an excellent web-based contact database, which is available to you and your colleagues from any computer with access to the Internet.

Save and edit addresses, phone and fax numbers, e-mail addresses, websites and a lot more
Record the type of media contact
Easily import existing contact data into your iPool and also export the user data from your iPool in order to work with these in other software. iPool can export your user data as an Excel or CSV file and import user data as a CSV file.
Delete users or temporarily block user accounts

Extensive Track Listings

Create and edit track listings within minutes. Upload your music titles via the browser or conveniently via FTP. After this, you can use track listings to store for each track extensive information, such as title, length, file format, ISRC or tempo. iPool extracts a lot of this information from your audio files automatically.

Automated Delivery via FTP

Deliver to your media and business partners automatically and securely via FTP (File Transfer Protocol), the open standard for file transfers.

This feature turns iPool into a valuable tool for delivering directly to music download shops online - without transferring rights or expensive licensing fees to an aggregator. Simply conclude a direct sales agreement with music download shops and you can deliver to them via FTP in a flash. You can even supply radio stations via FTP in an uncomplicated manner. In addition to pure audio files, you can also transmit many other files such as cover images, video clips, and meta data.

Download Log and Statistical Analysis

Monitor which user has downloaded which music titles and when. From now on, you will always know who has already received your music titles. We've also integrated a statistical analysis of the downloads into iPool so that you can quickly get an idea of your recipients' downloading behavior for each release.

Contact Data with Update Verification

From now on, your contact database will always be up-to-date. Your media and business partners can edit their contact data themselves at any time. After verifying the updated information, all you need to do is to approve or reject the changes. Thus, you dispense with the painstaking task of entering changed contact data.

Pools Management

Define your own user categories , such as ”download shops”, ”V.I.P.”, ”A-list”, ”B-list”, ”C-list” etc., which are called ”pools” in iPool. Specify which users belong to which pools. Thereafter, you can activate releases exclusively for specific user pools or quickly locate pool members.

Management of Releases and Media Files

Create and manage your releases, music titles, release covers, video clips, booklets, press photos, biographies, PDF documents, and much more. Store additional information about all your releases, including descriptions, label information, catalog and article numbers, licensed territories or release dates.

Sophisticated Newsletter Functions

Send out thousands of personalised e-mails, quickly and easily. In iPool your newsletters can be addressed personally to your media and business partners. Use place holders, which will be replaced by the corresponding first name of the recipient, for example. Create e-mail templates and reuse these for future mailings. Always retain an overview of sent e-mails via the mail outbox. A progressive mailing algorithm ensures that your e-mails are rarely filtered out by the recipients' spam filters.

Access Lists and Access Rights

Determine precisely who will have access to your releases and with what kind of rights. The access list is an extremely useful tool that allows you to very precisely target your promotional distribution efforts. For each release, you can specify who is to have access to it. iPool allows you to limit the access to user groups, territories, self-defined pools, users with certain genre preferences, or chart voters. In addition, iPool allows you to set which access rights each recipient will have: viewing, previewing, and downloading. For example, you can adjust the settings so that journalists have all access rights but that DJs can only preview releases.

Extensive Feedback Functions

Receive direct feedback from your media partners. All your media partners can give their opinions using feedback forms. The information collected is analysed by iPool on a continuous basis and presented to you in a graphic form. Moreover, you can look at each individual response so that you always know who has reviewed which music title and how they liked it.
Find out quickly which recipients like your music best. iPool's user view allows you to see the average opinion of each single recipient. You can also view which users are particularly active in submitting feedback.
Enable downloads of your music only for recipients who submit feedback. If you would like, you can configure iPool so that specific users can only download tracks after the release has been rated. If this setting is a bit extreme for your tastes, you can also configure iPool so that every media and business partner that hasn't provided feedback is blocked from being able to download your audio tracks after some time.
Export the feedback forms into a CSV file for further processing, for example in spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Office or OpenOffice,

Application Form

Easily expand your contact database. The application form enables prospective media and business partners to apply to be accepted into your iPool. Thus, you completely dispense with the time-consuming task of entering contact data. Upon receipt of an application, iPool will automatically notify you by e-mail. After reviewing the application, all you need to do is to approve or reject it. Again, iPool will automatically send out e-mails to keep your amount of work at a very manageable level.

¹ For technical reasons, the bitrate of watermark protected MP3 files is limited to 256 kBit/s.