Picking The Right ECommerce Solution For Your Music Software Company

This is a sponsored post written on behalf of FastSpring. All opinions are 100% ours.

Here at ANR, we work with a huge number of software companies and developers, varying from big names to lesser known brands. Their business is essentially selling digital products (plugins, sample libraries, sample packs, etc). Sounds easy, right? Not really. The fact is, selling digital goods is not a trivial task.
One of the main problems that many of these companies face is finding a versatile e-commerce solution that really works, and doesn’t hold them back from their revenue potential.

The Problem

Let’s say your company offers fantastic, innovative products and your customer base is growing. Awesome, but can your e-commerce really adapt to your growing business needs? Does your current e-commerce platform make it easy for your users to get their software delivered to their computer? Last but not least, selling globally means having to take care of tricky finance administration issues (chargebacks, tax compliance, etc.). Not fun.

Picking an e-commerce platform that helps your company increase conversions and streamline the shopping experience is probably the single, most important step you’ll have to take – after making sure your products kick a**!

The inMusic Case – An Easy Solution

inMusic, the group behind popular brands such as Akai, M-Audio, Sonivox, Air, etc. was facing similar issues (inefficient e-commerce platform, poor customization features, high operating costs).
After considering a number of options, inMusic chose FastSpring, a leading US company that provides a global digital commerce, subscription billing and management platform.

The results? inMusic reduced cart abandonment by 30% and increased conversions by an additional 30%.
According to Simon Bangs, Brand Manager at inMusic, “Thanks to FastSpring’s ability to localize payments, customers are now seeing the price presented in their own currency, with clear information about the prevailing rate of Taxation. This has inspired buyer confidence, significantly reducing our cart abandonment rate by 30%.” It’s also worth mentioning that these improvements have been almost immediate, within the first month of use!

Going Subscription?

In the last few years, following the success of companies such as Netflix and Spotify, the music tech industry has also embraced the subscription-based model – see EastWest, Splice, Slate, etc.
This business model has relevant benefits for software companies (predictable cash flow vs. one-time sales, long-term relationship with customers, etc.).

Needless to say, it’s also more challenging to implement and manage. How many times in these years have we seen complaints and negative comments from upset customers struggling with their subscriptions (missing products, wrong charges, etc.)?
Well-known software companies like Adobe chose FastSpring’s subscription management software, which allows for easy management of recurring billing. Companies can now monetize the complete customer lifecycle and boost subscription revenue, using powerful automatic tools (billing, reminder notifications, upgrades/downgrades/trial, coupons, etc.).

(Don’t) Fix It In The Mix

In music production, one of the most common lines you’ll hear in a studio is “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it in the mix”. Unfortunately, this is also a common mistake – if your performance is flawed, no magic trick will be able to save it during the mix.
We can apply this logic to many different things, music software companies included. If your performance is below optimal levels, maybe it’s time to look for an experienced partner – rather than waste energy with something that distracts you from your goal, which is making outstanding products.
As someone once said, life’s too short to do the things you don’t love doing…

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