SoundCloud and Why It Is a Popular New Trend

Well readers, this is my final blog as a Master of Science in Entertainment Business student at Full Sail University. But it surely isn’t my final blog altogether. This is just the end of one journey into the next one, so wish me luck! For this blog, I wanted to delve a little more into one of the newest trends going on in the music industry online and that is the growing expansion of the website SoundCloud.com.

SoundCloud is an audio online distribution platform where anyone can create, record, promote, share, and distribute their original sounds across the Internet. It is very simple to use, accessible, and full of features. In February of this year they had already reached three million users. I love this because a musician can just record a sound on the spot and can send it to their Facebook fan page in an instant through their mobile application. Your inspiration doesn’t have to wait to be released to the world!

I wanted to check this site out more because it seems like almost everyday someone is posting on my Facebook page a SoundCloud recording of theirs to listen to and they would ask for feedback, another plus of SoundCloud. Their platform was actually created so “audio creators” could collaborate and receive feedback from other creators and listeners. One of my favorite aspects that the site provides is that a user can customize the shapes of their sounds waveforms, adding to the unique visualization of their sounds and friends and fans can leave timed comments throughout their sounds for valuable feedback. That is very cool!

They offer over 100 plus applications and you can even build your own application. If you sign up as a premium member, you can get more storage space for your songs, a Spotlight tab to showcase your best songs, Pro Support, and more depending on which account you sign up for.  The website itself is easy to navigate and one can quickly find groups to create and share music with and even the nearest Meetup locations.

(soundcloud.com)

Being a recent college graduate definitely has helped prepared me to excel in understanding online distribution because I was personally given lessons on digital distribution, brand development, and digital marketing. From my college education, I understand the power and influence that sites such as SoundCloud have because it is a great promotional website that will allow artists at my company to distribute and get their music out to fans quickly and easily. Entertainment and media college students are taught how to reach mass success in this new technology driven world. I am fully aware of how to use social media sites, blogs, and online distribution sites to increase my fan base as well as my artists’ fan bases through widgets, applications, podcasts, embedded videos and links, and more, which are allowed to be placed on those sites and even our own websites. As a recent college grad and because of all the industry research I have done recently, I will bring current knowledge of the newest distribution, promotional, and marketing models and techniques in the music industry to whatever company I am a part of.

I will stay up-to-date on future trends in the music industry and will be here as a canny resource to help all of you reading do the same. SoundCloud is a great website to visit and please support those who are creating and sharing their sounds with all of us!

Resource:

http://soundcloud.com

What Are Alternative Funding Sources?

Hello my followers! I have finally reached the end of my school journey as I slowly approach graduation day. For this post, I wanted to spiel about alternative funding sources and some websites that provide these types of sources.

The first website I selected for this post is ncif.org, or the National Community Investment Fund. It is a non-profit, private equity trust that invests in thrifts, banks and credit unions that generate financial and social returns.  According to ncif.org, a Community Development Banking Institution (CDBI) is a name used by NCIF to “describe a depository with a community development focus.” They increase access to financial services to undeserved communities that wouldn’t otherwise have it. They go out and purchase common stock to these CDBI’s, make seed fund loans, extend debt to banks, and they provide secondary capital to low-income credit unions.

(ncif.org)

Some of the requirements and qualifications to obtain the financing from NCIF include that the CDBI must focus an abundant amount of its business on low-to-moderate income people or communities. It must be located in a rural, urban, or Native American market to qualify and they have to show sound, financial performance.  The website also says that NCIF has what is called the CDBI Exchange Network which allows CEO’s and CFO’s in the industry to help give advice on such things as risk management and valuation.  They also offer news and updates on NCIF.

The second website I visited is eda.gov, which stands for the U.S. Economic Development Administration. Their mission statement is: "To lead the federal economic development agenda by promoting innovation and competitiveness, preparing American regions for growth and success in the worldwide economy." Some of their financing opportunities include their Public Works and Economic Development Program and their Economic Adjustment Assistance Program (EAA). These give infrastructure assistance and help support construction and expansion of infrastructure in areas that have experienced adverse economic changes. EDA also offers technical assistance, a Community Trade Adjustment Assistance Program and more on the site.

Applicants must meet certain technical competitive merits and/or lack thereof to qualify for grants, meet quarterly funding deadlines and EDA’s priorities. Some of the requirements that an EDA-funded Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CED) includes having a planning organization, a strategy committee, performance measures, a list of goals and objectives, a plan of action, and beyond. The site also shows plenty of other federal funding links, tools of the trade, and research reports.

(eda.gov)

A few disadvantages of using alternative funding are high interest rates, having to offer collateral, factoring companies’ fees, and possibly giving up a substantial amount of ownership equity. One advantage is that they provide a boost in investments for women and minority-owned businesses. It can include peer-to-peer networking and asset-based lending along with government-backed loans. Microlending is beneficial for owners with little to no credit and who have no track record and provides a small amount of cash needed for them to start their small business. Community banks and credits unions are now issuing and taking on smaller business loans and these are all helping to relieve the strain on the economy. 

References:

(2011). Retrieved Sept 8 2011 from, http://www.ncif.org/index.php/about/

(2011). Retrieved Sept 8 2011 from, http://www.eda.gov/

(2011). Retrieved Sept 8 2011 from, http://smallbusiness.intuit.com/news/Expansion/growth-of-business/18887918/Alternative-Funding-Sources-for-Small-Businesses.jsp

(2011). Retrieved Sept 8 2011 from, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124827141870672175.html

Expert Views on the Value of Business Plans Part 2

For part two in my discussion on the value of business plans, I will like to share what it is that I have learned from my own research on the two experts that I first profiled in the posting right below.  The two experts that I researched earlier this month was investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban, and business owner and writer of the book “The-Plan-As-You-Go-Business-Plan”, Tim Berry. After reading up on Mark Cuban, I intend to make sure I come up with an idea that is not boring nor follows the same trends as everyone else’s business plans. I have to have a clear development and exit plan to show investors so we can all see where the company may be going in the future and they can see what they will be getting in return for investing into my company. Tim Berry proved to me how valuable visuals could be to have present throughout your business plan.  He also pushed having a strong strategic position and differentiation from your competitors so I will continue to analyze my company’s goals and objectives and strategies as I am finalizing my business plan to make sure they stand out and are on point with my vision.

Based on the information provided by these experts, for my own business plan I decided to make it geared more towards digital distribution and I was very detailed in my sections on the industry analysis and target market. I had to show that my target audience was large enough for my products and services and that my company has room for “potential growth”. For my plan, I paid more attention to my assumptions and costs and tried to be more realistic with the numbers.  I also did a thorough risk assessment.  I eliminated what I thought I would not use and stuck with what I knew for sure I would need in my business as it starts.

The sections of my business plan that I consider the most important to the investor reading my plan is my technology section, industry analysis section, and my financials section. The finance section is the most important of all because investors need to see I have researched the industry enough to know how much money it may actually take for me to start and run this company and how long to make a substantial profit. 

Abrams, R. (2010). The Successful Business Plan. Palo Alto, CA: The Planning Shop

(2011). Mark Cuban quotes. Retrieved August 2 2011 from, http://www.inspiringlifethoughts.com/?tag=mark-cuban-business-plan

Altucher, J. (2011). How I helped make mark cuban a billion dollars, and five things I learned from him. Retrieved August 2 2011 from,

http://blogs.wsj.com/financial-adviser/2011/04/18/how-i-helped-make-mark-cuban-a-billion-dollars-and-five-things-i-learned-from-him/

Kafka, P. (2009). Mark cuban’s start-up investing tips: buy now! bonus advice: how to manage 5,000 emails a day. Retrieved August 2 2011 from,

http://allthingsd.com/20090115/mark-cubans-startup-investing-tips-buy-now-bonus-advice-how-to-manage-5000-emails-a-day/

(2011). Retrieved August 2 2011 from, http://bpexpertviews.blogspot.com/

(n.d.) Retrieved August 3 2011 from, http://deadspin.com/5090903/the-mark-cuban-scandal-for-dummies-like-us

(n.d.). Retrieved August 2 from, http://timberry.bplans.com/introducing-myself

(2009). Ask tim berry-what sort of business plan do you need? Retrieved August 2 2011 from, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdS0qInvC4k

Expert Views on the Value of Business Plans

This week I began a new course at Full Sail University called Business Plan Development and one of our first requirements were to seek two experts in the field of writing or reviewing business plans and find out their opinions on what are the most important pieces that investors look for in a business plan. After some researching and looking over their backgrounds and history, I decided on the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, 2011 NBA Champions owner and entrepreneur Mark Cuban, and founder of bplans.com, Tim Berry, as my business plans experts.

(deadspin.com)

“Wherever I see people doing something the way it’s always been done, the way it’s “supposed” to be done, following the same old trends, well, that’s just a big red flag to me to go look somewhere else.”-Mark Cuban quote from inspiringlifethoughts (2011).

Besides what I mentioned above, Mark Cuban is also chairman of the HDTV cable network HDNet. Originally from Pittsburgh, PA, he is a billionaire with a net worth of over 2.5 billion. Since he was a young man, Mark Cuban has been hustling (including working as a bartender and club promoter in college), investing, and selling businesses…technological and Internet businesses in particular.  (inspiringlifethoughts, 2011). He is and has been successful in the dot com boom ahead of his time (Altucher, 2011) and is a guest on the hit business-related reality show Shark Tank.

According to Altucher, one of Cuban’s rules in investing seems to be to go and find something that you find exciting and then go out and find another few hundred million people are who are just excited about it too! He is looking for something that has digital distribution and content and will not be interested if you mention your exit strategy is to sell (Kafka, 2009). Based on the bpexpertsview blog (2011), some of the key components Cuban wants to see in your business plan are that it is an actual need for your product or service and a market for your product or service. This is important because your market has to be large enough or your business will fail and you have to know that people really are interested in your product or services. Your company has to have room for “potential growth” and you have to have financial projections for your business ready and be prepared overall before you pitch your plan to an investor.

These are also key factors because an investor wants to know will he or she be able to make a profit from this investment, they need to see that your financial assumptions are realistic and accurate, that you did your research, and the finance section of your plan is one of the first things they look at in your business plan.

Tim Berry has also written “The-Plan-As-You-Go-Business-Plan” book for entrepreneurs interested in doing a business plan. He is also president and founder of Palo Alto Software and co-founder of Borland International. Berry was named one of Twitters top 20 entrepreneurs to follow, was also a former journalist, and in 2007, won the USASBE (United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship) Corporate Entrepreneur of the Year award. He has several blogs, posts, and books for helping start up and small business companies find venture capitalists, angel investors and how to obtain business loans (timberry, n.d.).

Here is a YouTube video with Tim about what type of business plan someone will need when writing one’s business plan:

(youtube.com)

One of the key components he suggests a business planner should see is that there is no standard format for a business plan that you specifically might need. Think about your goals and objectives and strategy, who are you selling to, how are you different, what are you not doing as a business. He says keep track of the progress of your plan, look at your costs, think about what might you actually use in your business. He emphasizes the use of numbers and knowing who is supposed to do what job all the time and the value of bullet points. Berry talks about outputs of the plan i.e. an elevator speech, but says the plan is based on what you use to “steer your business” and that milestones, assumptions, strategic positioning, and more, should be included in your plan only if you’re using them in your specific business (youtube, 2009).

These components are key because I can see his perspective on making your business plan fit you and your business and why visuals are so helpful in getting your point across to an investor. Strategic position will reveal the focus of your company and how different you are from the competition.

I hope this advice helps you if and when it comes times for any of you to write your business plan for your respective businesses. Follow Mark Cuban’s blog at: blogmaverick.com

And visit Tim Berry’s website at: http://www.bplans.com/

Resources:

(2011). Mark Cuban quotes. Retrieved August 2 2011 from, http://www.inspiringlifethoughts.com/?tag=mark-cuban-business-plan

Altucher, J. (2011). How I helped make mark cuban a billion dollars, and five things I learned from him. Retrieved August 2 2011 from,

http://blogs.wsj.com/financial-adviser/2011/04/18/how-i-helped-make-mark-cuban-a-billion-dollars-and-five-things-i-learned-from-him/

Kafka, P. (2009). Mark cuban’s start-up investing tips: buy now! bonus advice: how to manage 5,000 emails a day. Retrieved August 2 2011 from, http://allthingsd.com/20090115/mark-cubans-startup-investing-tips-buy-now-bonus-advice-how-to-manage-5000-emails-a-day/

(2011). Retrieved August 2 2011 from, http://bpexpertviews.blogspot.com/

(n.d.) Retrieved August 3 2011 from, http://deadspin.com/5090903/the-mark-cuban-scandal-for-dummies-like-us

(n.d.). Retrieved August 2 from, http://timberry.bplans.com/introducing-myself

TalkMusicBiz, Music Promotions & Using Social Media Site YouTube

I know my readers yearn for tips on getting there music heard, so I went to one of my favorite social media sites and video-sharing sites, YouTube, and subscribed to TalkMusicBiz because they always upload videos geared towards the music business and give proven to be successful ideas on how to market your business or just some new twists on music promotions.  In this new video that I’m going to talk about today, the speaker George discusses social media skills along with music marketing and other “geo-tagged methods” one can adapt to on YouTube. I wanted to share these tips he used for a band with you, my readers, because they will beneficial and advantageous to you and your music exposure. 

It was nice that he brought up keyword threading and how important that is for promoting music on social media networks and indeed, your choice of keywords are of the upmost importance in any social media campaign and for social media optimization, but that I will save for another blog post. He began to talk about this local Hawaiian band called Kapala that he only did a slideshow for because at the time they could not afford a video. They were a brand new band and he promoted their song on YouTube by using demo description type keywords that were Hawaiian related. For example, in the subject title for the slideshow, he included the title of their song, their name, and Hawaiian music, all in the same title. And then in the description box, he put Hawaiian music, their location and zip code, and clubs they had played at, both recently and awhile back.

(youtube.com)

George even created tags with Hawaiian keywords and that helped boost their views up to 1,200 on the first two days of the upload! He made a good point in that the title of your YouTube video should have included in it the style of your music and perhaps the sub culture group within that style because that will help people find you. I agree that you should always take time and put information in the description box because I do notice that people forget to fill that out and it is a decisive move that can help get your video placed well in a search engine query. Another tip he suggested was to put your performance list and what town you are from in your description box. All of these YouTube promotional tips can bring in large audiences that may otherwise skip over your video while searching for music without these extra keywords or added descriptions.

Adding your url with the whole protocol, and the http, is always smart to have completed for any online promotion when using social media. You must also have an active url so people can actually see and hear your music or videos when they click on the link! Thank you George and TalkMusicBiz for these great music promotions tips and I will be giving more disserts about this channel and their tips very soon for you guys so join my mailing list so you don’t ever miss out!

Source: http://youtu.be/xLkh-JCYqNE

Are Digital Downloads Making the Cut or Are They Steadily Dropping the Ball?

I just started a new Digital Marketing course at Full Sail University and I wanted to write a blog post this week based on some fresh ideas on songwriting and the digital evolution. I can tell this will only be the beginning of my quest of connecting the industry and the digital  download world because the two will only continue to coincide with one another as time goes on. As I am always searching online for both new and experienced bloggers in the industry, I stumbled upon music strategist Jay Frank’s blog titled “FutureHit.DNA”, and I thought the name of the blog was super catchy to the eyes of a songwriter. Browsing though his row of informative posts, I found one that seemed to really have some solid truth to it and I wanted to share my thoughts on his opinion about the future and power of digital downloads.

The post is titled “Digital Downloads Still Key For Future Hits” and he starts off asking the question if one has ever moved 12. 5 million units of anything, and my first reaction was no, but I sure would love to! I was a little mystified myself when he started to talk about how global tech and business research companies such as Forrester Research felt about what that 12. 5 million units in digital downloads may mean for the music business. Music insiders probably strongly feel that because the increase only represented a 1 % increase from 2009 to 2010 compared to the 13 and 28 % increases they saw from the year before, that that automatically means the digital downloads format is failing the music business and is dropping dead. I do not believe that to be true because all I hear from other music lovers is whose album they just recently downloaded from iTunes or Rhapsody or their favorite artists’ websites.

I agree with Jay Frank that digital downloads is actually growing, and that it will be big business for the future songwriter. As he mentioned, digital downloads have grown 10 % and added almost 44 million downloads to last year’s total downloads and that is an industry that is not faltering by any means. I was amazed when he said that digital downloads have had three times more growth this year than it did all of last year! Songwriters and artists are readily catching onto the digital landscape more and more each day and are starting to think more about how to utilize the digital concept for increased sales purposes.

The author went on talking about “ the wider breadth of songs being sold in decent numbers” and the rise of on-demand video streaming for example, and I have to agree again. There are so many artists and songs out now in digital format, everyone can now get a comfortable piece of the digital market pie, not just the top 5 selling artists. Well, they are always going to have a more ample share but at least a less known or popular artist can strive to reach those same formerly only traditional means of selling millions of units through the indie digital route. Consumers download from so many sites and purchase downloads from both known and unknown artists and will download whatever they can from songs to videos to podcasts. 

(futurehit.dna.com)

 I have also noticed how platinum selling artists have lately begun to stick with promoting just singles and not albums and in many ways, that is a very smart move, because people aren’t seeking to buy entire albums anymore and give a thousand reasons why they don’t any longer, from bad contemporary music being produced to the economy. Artists are making money from leaking singles even before the album is complete and heavily promote them for more massive results. Selling huge numbers of units based solely on singles seems to be the path the digital music world is taking and is based on the current mindset of the new digital consumer.

I encourage you all to visit Jay Frank’s blog when you get a chance.

References:

Here is a link to Jay Frank’s blog on the Internet: http://blog.futurehitdna.com/

Are e-Readers Wiping out Paper Books For Good?

Kindle. Nook. iPad. These are all examples of what is called an e-reader. An e-reader is a portable electronic device that people use primarily for the purpose of reading digital periodicals and books. I was actually thinking of purchasing one myself since it is one of the most booming technology buzzes around. One can even turn his or her iPod Touch into an e-reader just by acquiring e-reader applications. As I was contemplating that, I came across a YouTube video titled “What e-Reader Means for Books”, since I am also of thinking of self-publishing my own urban fiction novel in the future. That is a project in the making.

The video itself is a clip from CBSnews.com and is a matter-of-fact discussion with journalist and author of “What Would Google Do?” Jeff Jarvis. It starts off with the gentlemen talking about the soaring sales of the Kindle e-reader from Amazon and whether or not paper books are heading to extinction. I did not realize that back in Christmas of 2009 that Amazon actually sold more electronic books than real physical books. I agree with Jeff that everything that can become digital, will become digital. You can store so much on these e-readers and they are portable and convenient; info comes to you right at the speed of light practically.

The publishing business has to be able to keep up with the changes of authors not needing a middleman much longer because the format of the book is changing. An author can just put his or her book on Kindle on their own time in a quick second, and really may not need the publisher or retail chain to get their books out to the public. I agree with the author that the decline in popularity that has been happening with newspapers will happen with physical books as well. However, I am enjoying the idea that once a digital book is published, an author can still go back and edit and correct things and that that book becomes searchable online, unlike the traditional solid book. I am praying that printed books will still be around in the next decade because there will never be anything close to the joy that comes with the pleasure of opening up a physical book, holding it in your hands and turning the pages as you get more and more into the story. 

Reference: http://youtu.be/6JzjN7MvbRo