Running a popular music webzine outside of Haulix, I get emails almost daily from record labels and artists that go like this:

"Hello, this is ____________ with _______________.  We mailed you an album two weeks ago and we were wondering if you got it, and if so, are you planning on reviewing it?  Any time frame on when the review will go up?"

I'm not exaggerating when I say I get these daily. I then have to contact our site administrator and/or login to the site and check our review queue to see if indeed we did get the album and if any of the writers have reserved it to review. Then I have to send a reply back to the original emailer explaining the situation, and frankly, most of the time, we don't know where the album is - could still be in the mailbox or be enroute to the site administrator. Most of the time, it's lost in snail mail heaven or the site administrator has it, but hasn't processed it into our system yet. Point being, there's such a huge gray area where 1001 things can happen, with mixed results. It's such an unpredictable process.

When designing Haulix, we put a lot of thought into the psychology behind the publicist and media contact roles.  Sending out promotional material to media contacts is a full blown process.  And in our case, as a large scale media contact, we spend a lot of time, resources and money on processing physical promos.

With digital promos, you can tighten up that gray area of unpredictability. An analogy for this is like setting a cased CD with a new release in a white-boxed room on a table in the middle. There are video cameras on all four walls. They run 24/7 and never blink. And let's say there is a slight chance that the power goes off and a ninja sneaks in and steals the CD.  Watermarking technology is like owning a custom finger print of everyone who has come into contact with that album. With those video cameras, you know who, what, where and when everything happens. Same concept goes for Haulix. In your dashboard, you see all actions performed throughout the system; even your own!

Why mail promos to media contacts and then have to suffer and wait - wondering if the material made it to its destination and even more, if that destination opened it and intends on consuming it for their publication?

Logically, wouldn't it make more sense to provide a digital copy of a promo and invite contacts to login and consume it? Let them come to you, they get their music, you know exactly when they downloaded it and now you can better gauge when to expect a publication. The turn-around for this process versus the older way happens to be much faster too!

With about four large tubs of CD's in my closet, I have decided to go digital for the remainder of my music purchases from now on. Plus, my car has two SD card slots for MP3's, so this makes even more sense. I've been a long time customer of Amazon.com and a week ago I decided to buy some digital music from them. They couldn't make it any more easier. Simply download a light-weight Amazon Downloader application that sits in your taskbar. Find the songs you want, make a quick purchase with your credit card and the Amazon Downloader kicks in - downloading your music right into your favorite music player's library. This is totally the way to go and it feels good knowing the artists are getting paid for their hard work.

**This list's "secure distribution system" verbiage references HAULIX**

1. Save costs of having an in-house programmer or contracted consultant build a secure distribution system

2. No software to install and updates are automatically applied with no extra cost

3. Greatly decrease physical promotional media costs

4. Faster publication turn around - if media contacts can get media faster, logically their publications should go up faster

5. It's an easy way to take part in the "Going Green" movement

6. Enforce strict anti-leaking tactics that can't be done with physical promos alone

7. Create promos, monitor activity and invite media contacts to consume from anywhere in the world with an internet connection

8. You'll have a much better awareness of who actually consumes your media versus wondering if it made it via the mail

9. If some part of a promo has to change, do it in one spot, at any time, and all media contacts will benefit from the change immediately

10. Easy exit strategy - if you want to discontinue the service for whatever reason, pulling the plug costs nothing and is only a couple clicks away