Ian Rogers has unveiled Topspin, a new digital music marketing platform. The unveiling is more or less a well-done press release, meaning it says a lot without saying anything at all. However, Rogers did link to three of the ten artists they are working with: Josh Rouse, Jubilee, and The Dandy Warhols.

Since much of the value Topspin adds is in the artist control panel which is behind the scenes, these three examples show only the very tip of the proverbial Topspin iceberg. The visual design for each of these is done by the artist, Topspin is the enabling platform underneath. And what you can’t see, the back office where the artist manages pricing, catalog, metadata, fans, and most importantly marketing campaigns and analytics, is our bread and butter.

What struck me was the “The visual design for each of these is done by the artist” line. Really? I suppose this is a matter of technicalities; changing some colors in your MySpace or Virb profile is technically visual design, I guess. The Dandy Warhols site eschews the cookie-cutter template design a bit, but only to replace it with something really sparse.

Based entirely on these three examples (which are all we have to go on, but see below), Topspin seems perfectly primed to do….nothing great. The hidden “back office” is definitely a huge boon to artists and labels alike, but it is nothing that could not be achieved with good web statistics software (like AWStats or even Google Analytics) and a listserv manager. This is not to say that such a product will not be successful. Even if cheaper alternatives exist, bands/labels are likely to look to the company that combines all the services into a single, easy to use package. Maybe not so special, but admittedly pretty useful.

Outsourcing a significant portion of band management might not be especially tempting to big labels with enough money for a personalized solution (or a general disdain for digital music in general), but it’s perfect for independents. And not having to rely on big money for this sort of thing is going to allow a lot more bands to remain independent and a lot more indie labels to remain competitive.

My biggest complaint with Topspin is that they seem to be creating a system in which every band website is the same. Examples may be released in the near future that display a greater ability to produce original design, but I am skeptical until then. However, I am also open-minded, since the cheap design is almost positively a result of the bands being independent (probably no dedicated web team).

Another factor (and consequence of the bands’ independence) is that Topspin might not be utilized in exactly the intended way:

We are about demand creation, not demand fulfillment. I call this out because the line is admittedly blurry in our above examples, since our first product is very much about direct-to-fan marketing, which in many ways resembles demand fulfillment from the consumer perspective.

This begs the question of why unveil a product using examples that poorly display the product, but we’ll see.

No matter what, please take all of the above with a big grain of salt. Why? Because as I mentioned, Topspin is a brainchild of Ian Rogers, who knows exactly what he is talking about when it comes to digital music. His line Convenience wins, Hubris loses assures me that this whole endeavor is in good hands, regardless of any startup bumps along the way.

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