Haulix Review: Is It The Best Tool for Navigating the Music Industry

In the evolving landscape of the music industry, it’s no longer just about creating excellent music. Promotion, distribution, and piracy prevention have become equally critical. Here’s where Haulix enters the scene – a platform designed to streamline these tasks for music professionals. So, what makes Haulix stand out in a crowded market of music promotion platforms?

Haulix is a music promotion and digital distribution platform. It offers a suite of features that allows music professionals to send pre-release music to industry influencers securely. The primary goal of Haulix is to simplify music promotion while protecting against digital piracy.

In the following sections, we’ll look closely at Haulix, breaking down its features, benefits, and potential drawbacks. We’ll also compare it with similar platforms, to provide a comprehensive view of what Haulix offers.

What is Haulix?

Haulix is a company created in 2009 that facilitates the creation, invitation, and promotion of music. If you are the artist, the label producing the music, or another professional entity, Haulix may have what you need.

Getting good coverage as a musician can be difficult, and getting your music out there for professionals to hear is essential to this process. Haulix tries to make sharing your music easy by sending email campaigns out to all your contacts simultaneously contacts and giving you the chance to track engagement with those same tracks through Haulix’s website.

Getting Started With Haulix

The first step to using Haulix is to create a promo, which can be done using a combination of MP3 tracks, WAV tracks, PDF attachments, and YouTube videos. Haulix generates a web page for this promo automatically, which can then be customized afterward.

Your industry contacts can then be imported into Haulifax, at which point you can give people direct access to your promo or invite them to view it with an email invitation. Each email includes a unique link to your promo.

Haulix allows you to see how many people have downloaded your promo track or tracks, and how many people have opened your email invitations, as well as a few other metrics. Users can also submit feedback, and Haulix will allow you to sort through this feedback.

Haulix: Core Features and Their Benefits

Haulix has numerous features to make the lives of artists, record labels, and PR agencies easier. Here are some of the most significant ones:

Secure Music Distribution

One of the primary features of Haulix is its secure music distribution system. It allows music professionals to send pre-release music to reviewers, radio stations, and other influencers securely.

• Watermarking: Each audio file is subtly watermarked, tracing it back to its original recipient. This deters illegal distribution and allows for tracking in case of a leak.
• Customizable access: Users can control who can access their music, for how long, and even which songs they can listen to.

Streamlined Promotion

Haulix also excels in helping users streamline their promotion activities.

• Promo campaigns: Users can create custom promotional campaigns, complete with personalized email invitations, press releases, and album artwork.
• Contact management: Haulix provides tools to manage your media contacts. It can import contacts from various sources, and users can create custom groups for targeted promotion.

Analytics and Reporting

Understanding how your music is performing is key to a successful promotional strategy. Haulix offers a set of analytic tools for this purpose.

• Real-time statistics: Haulix provides instant feedback on how promos are performing, including how many recipients opened the email, clicked the promo, and listened to the tracks.
• Detailed reports: Detailed campaign reports can be exported for further analysis or for sharing with clients or team members.

Haulix’s Features – Pros and Cons for Music Publishers

Haulix seems to be relatively user-friendly. The process for sending out promos to journalists and others is very simple and seems to be quite intuitive. The upper payment tiers allow you to submit music as an MP3 or a .wav file, although the lowest couple only allows you to submit songs as MP3 files.

Pros

Automated Features

Most of the work done using Haulix is either automated or semi-automated. Of course, the promoted artists must provide the music being distributed. But the creation of a promo using the platform is relatively easy.

Creating a website for your promo using Haulix requires using some relatively simple website design U.I., but only if you want to modify the website beyond the auto-generated one that Haulix will produce.

Built-in Digital Watermarks

Yet another aspect of the promo process that is most simple, and has made Haulix so successful, is the generation of digital watermarks on the tracks being released as part of a promo. They can’t be heard in the track, of course, but if someone shares a song illegally, you can see which user it was that shared it.

In other words, because the download and streaming links Haulix generates are unique to every recipient, you can see who leaked an album or song, and where, and send takedown notices to the sites hosting said music.

Cons

You Don’t Need It To Build a Website

Now, one of the biggest things about Haulix is that it doesn’t do anything that a publicist couldn’t do themselves with some effort. Making a website is relatively easy even for those with no experience in doing so, thanks to some websites such as Squarespace, google sites, and others.

Creating an email and sending it to thousands of recipients at once is quite easy once you know how, and managing spreadsheets with contacts might be boring, but it gets the job done just fine. There are even plugins for email services such as Gmail and Outlook that allow you to see who has and hasn’t opened your emails.

Inconsistent DMCA Results

Additionally, some bots can go around and submit DMCA takedown requests, although the use of these can vary in results. There is, of course, the risk that the bot will get it wrong and take down somebody else’s music. Haulix has its own employees who take the time to send this kind of request to websites after their web crawler finds them.

Website and Email Features are a Bit Weak

One drawback to this service is that the website it generates for your band will likely look like pretty much every artist’s website in existence. This won’t be a problem for most.

Still, suppose you want a particularly stunning website for your promo. In that case, you may want to contract out the web development to another company that can add more interactivity and help you to create a more distinctive website. Additionally, email campaigns are inherently limited, and emails can be easily ignored in a way that physical tracks sent to someone’s office can’t be.

Haulix Plus

Something else that may make Haulix worth it is Haulix+. Haulix+ essentially allows publicists to just sit back and let Haulix do the work of promoting a new album.

Haluix uses its own contact lists to help generate coverage for your album, and Haulix has been around for long enough (over a decade by now) that they must have quite a lot of those by now.

All it takes on the user’s end is to supply the music and album cover, schedule when you want to start sending out the promos, and how long you want the campaign to last, as well as decide on various settings (such as whether or not you want to allow downloads).

How Haulix+ Works for Publicists

Haulix+’s other benefits include the fact that you as a publicist still get the credit for promoting the album, the promos are color-coded on the journalist/listener end which might potentially give them a small boost in attention, and the ability to monitor the performance of the + campaign from your own account dashboard. Now, most of these things seem pretty no-nonsense, with the biggest benefit being the contacts that Haulix has that you may not have.

Drawbacks of Haulix+ for Music Publishers

Suppose you already have a great list of carefully curated industry contacts. In that case, this service may not be necessary for you, but it is easy to see how it might benefit a greener publicist. The biggest drawback is that you have to pay additional money for every day of the campaign, separate from your normal subscription.

Haulix for Promo Listeners

The U.I. for promo listeners seems pretty simple, if not limited. The big draw here is the ability to see all the promo tracks you need to listen to all at once, and then hide those you have already listened to.

However, the organization aspect seems to be a bit limited. If there were a better way to sort and organize the tracks you’re currently listening to, which ones you have downloaded, and which ones you want to listen to again, this already convenient service would become even more so.

One drawback that you may run into with this service is that some journalists prefer physical promos. For these people, sending just digital promos may be a bit of a letdown. Of course, it is easy enough to just send a physical promo to those that prefer them and leave Haulix for the rest that is fine listening to tracks digitally.

Comparing Pricing & Plans of Haulix

Haulix has 7 different pricing plans, starting at $22 a month and capping out at $1,149 monthly. The different pricing tiers vary greatly depending on which tier you are paying for. You can try these plans out with a 30-day free trial.

The 4th tier itself does seem to carry the best value. The first three tiers don’t contain all of the features that make Haulix a worthwhile service in the first place.

Creating a simple website and sending out emails to your contacts list is something you can do relatively easily for free, and $0 is a lot less than $264 a year. The 4th tier brings the number of possible email recipients up from 3,000 to 25,000, the maximum number for any tier available.

Haulix costs a lot for most entry-level musicians. So, unless you have a large budget, you might want to look elsewhere.

Positive Feedback

Most users appreciate Haulix’s simplicity and effectiveness.

• “Efficient and Easy to Use“: Users frequently comment on Haulix’s user-friendly interface and the ease with which they can create and distribute promo campaigns.
• “Security Measures are Top-Notch“: The watermarking feature has been especially well-received. Users feel confident in Haulix’s ability to protect their music from unauthorized sharing.
• “Outstanding Customer Support“: Haulix’s customer service is often praised. Users appreciate the prompt and helpful responses to their queries and issues.

Areas for Improvement

Despite the positive feedback, users have pointed out a few areas where Haulix could improve.

• “A Bit Expensive“: Some users find Haulix’s subscription plans a bit steep, especially those just starting or on a tight budget.
• “Needs More Customization Options“: While Haulix offers customization options for promo campaigns, users desire more variety and flexibility.

The Bottom Line: Is Haulix Worth It?

Considering its comprehensive feature set, exceptional security measures, and positive user feedback, Haulix seems like a worthy investment for music professionals aiming to streamline their promotional efforts and protect their music.

However, it’s essential to remember that Haulix, like any other platform, might not suit everyone’s needs or budget. Therefore, it’s recommended to use the free trial to evaluate whether Haulix aligns with your specific requirements before committing to a subscription.

Haulix has made a significant impact on the music promotion and distribution landscape. Its dedicated focus on security and user-friendly interface has earned it the trust and loyalty of numerous music professionals. Despite minor shortcomings, Haulix is a powerful ally in navigating the complex world of music promotion and distribution.