Cannes, France – 31 January, 2012 – Today NextWidgets, a pioneer in transactional advertising solutions, announced that FUGA, the digital music business management platform of Independent IP (IIP), Netherlands, has launched NextWidgets Music E-Commerce widgets, named NextMusic, at MIDEM, the largest annual meet up of music industry professionals. FUGA is making the widgets available to its numerous music label clients already using the FUGA platform to distribute their music. The launch enables FUGA clients to sell music directly over their artists Facebook Fanpages News Feeds and utilizing a simple one step SMS payment system.

Musicians and their labels have for some time been interested in technologies that allow them to establish a closer and more direct communication with their fans. The possibility to leverage the Facebook Fanpage and its News Feed to directly offer music to fans for purchase is simply the next step in this evolution. Fans no longer need to look for the music, instead it comes directly to them via their favourite website; Facebook.

“It is important to stay ahead of the curve and offer the best technology to our clients,” said Martijn Tjho, CEO of IIP, the company behind FUGA. “We selected NextWidgets because of their experience and capability to deliver a robust system deployable across the many countries and languages we operate in. NextWidgets allow us to deliver the best consumer experience and an effective new sales channel to our clients.”

NextWidgets allows retailers to automate the process of promoting products through Fanpage News Feeds through its NextPromote product. NextMusic is the music selling iteration of this product and is being deployed today for the first time. The widgets can be customized to match the look and feel of the Label brand and they can be placed for distribution onto numerous Fanpages. The labels can track the entire shopping experience, from purchase intent to purchase conversions, for all activated widgets. NextWidgets integrates directly into the FUGA system to labels using the FUGA platform to distribute their music can be up and running without any change or duplication of any part of the existing workflow.

“Over the last decade, there has been a constant evolution in how music is distributed. Reaching fans directly through the most popular social network is simply the next logical step in simple and effective music retail. We’re proud that NextWidgets is at the forefront of where this movement is headed and we believe that today we’ve launched a product that provides a great service for music fans” said Alex Savic, CEO of NextWidgets. “The Facebook News Feed is similar to the e-mail marketing model, where you sign up to receive a newsletter. The only difference is that this medium allows the merchant to post very rich functionality and easily collect payment through SMS based processing. Overall we’re hoping this will become the standard in promoting new music directly to fans because of the simple but effective user experience.”

About NextWidgets

NextWidgets develops the leading marketing toolset for online merchants that enables advanced Display and Facebook promotions, affiliation and e-commerce. NextWidgets is the world’s first Facebook affiliate network and trusted source for e-commerce extension technology by numerous global brands.

About FUGA

FUGA is a all in one platform for asset management, product management, delivery and reporting for content owners, which enables them to manage their digital music business with unprecedented control over their music on the internet.

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NextWidgets Media Contact:
Kai Meier
+41 (0)44 363 1314
press@nextwidgets.com

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IIP

Eleonora Larionenko
+31206204785
eleonora@independentip.com

The campaign was launched last week and will feature our NextTab on over a dozen fashion related blogs over the next month.

To show our own support, the tab will be featured also here on our blog for the duration of the campaign.

Update : Here’s Ognjen very happy that the site is looking good on mobile too