Smithsonian Folkways Chooses Peppercoin for Online Music Payments

Smithsonian will make its entire collection of 33,000 American folk and world songs from artists such as Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Brownie McGhee, Pete Seeger and Ella Jenkins available online to consumers for 99 cents. Peppercoins micropayment system is the first that allows merchants to offer new content profitably with a consumer-friendly, pay-as-you-go approach that eliminates prepayments. In CY2002, Smithsonian Folkways grew 36 percent selling 300,000 units and generating more than $4 million in sales. Smithsonian Folkways began digitizing its music library, which spans more than 50 years, in January and will launch the new service on April 1, 2004. The non-profit record label also plans to offer music online from Africa, India and other world regions by the end of 2004. Peppercoin integrates easily with transaction systems and complements existing business models to accelerate merchant revenues and increase profits while reducing transaction costs dramatically. Peppercoins service makes it easy for consumers to buy only the content they want, when they want it, while dramatically reducing merchant transaction fees. The consumer demand for low-cost content is significant. A recent survey conducted by Ipsos-Insight found that more than four million Americans have purchased digital content for less than $2 in the past year. Additionally, a projected 30 million Americans are at least somewhat likely to purchase content online for less than $2 in the next twelve months. One of the main factors needed to drive that growth is the rise in pay-as-you-go purchasing like Peppercoin is providing for Smithsonian.