Loading...
Answers
MenuWhere are the big opportunities in music curation and why are companies like Google and Apple investing in it now?
I am thinking of building a curation product. I totally understand the value it holds for music fans, and curators, but where do the biggest opportunities lie that may not be obvious at first glance?
What should we keep in mind in order to scale a curation product later, even though early on we are focusing on a small and specific niche?
Answers
Music curation is something that greatly interests me as well, and one of my projects slated for 1-2 years out will be in that area.
Don't forget that -- apart from being united by musical taste -- fans usually have MUCH else in common as well. Musical taste is a great predictor of other demographic features such as age, nationality, race, gender, region, economic class, and a million much subtler social characteristics.
Fans of Steely Dan or Yo Yo Ma are different overall than fans of 50 Cent, Garth Brooks, or Lady Gaga.
That's obvious, and you know it already. But keep in mind that sites like Facebook are valuable for advertisers, yes, for the eyeballs but partly because they can CHARACTERIZE those eyeballs and predict their behavior as consumers.
You may be making a site that's laser-focused on music as such. But monetizing music has become notoriously difficult in the post-CD era. So you may want to look at non-musical ways to monetize music, based audience characteristics that various fan groups happen to share.
If you're wondering about a brand name or domains, call me.
The best music curation is done by people. Having worked in the music industry for a number of years including radio station, live sound, stage, concerts, and music production, potential customers love to find a good station that they can just hit play and enjoy. If you have a good DJ you will have a big company. There are lots of ways to go about doing it to from doing it entirely by yourself with developers to using services like Live 365. In my experience, customers always ranked music picked by a DJ higher than those picked by Pandora, Google, iTunes etc.
The downside to curation systems is they are designed to find things you enjoy which means your music is consistently going to be the same. DJ's are able to introduce you to music you might not have discovered otherwise.
As a side note I am not an old guy reminiscing about the good ol days. I'm in my 20's with active Pandora, Google Play All Access, and iTunes accounts. I love being able to discover a song through the radio or being occasionally surprised by Google (it's algorithm isn't as good as Pandora so it sometimes thinks I would enjoy some pretty strange songs) and then adding it to my Google Play account.
I currently run a SaaS in the music tech space (VL Group) and we are seeing an increased focus on curation. Existing curation services are owned/operated by either the labels or the streaming services. I believe the next wave will decouple curation from platform and content. This will allow tastemakers to monetize their value directly. This requires the existence of a playlist without the requirement of a platform that will allow creators to collect the data, drive new use cases and monetize. Spotify playlists are the key to driving their brand trust and I think that this tool will be sought out by other entities (brands, tastemakers, venues).
There is also a huge problem in new music discovery that needs to be addressed. Purely algorithmic and human solutions have been the two camps in this battle but I think the answer is somewhere in between. In addition to this blended approach I also think the we need to re-think what the basis of the recommendations are. Since there is a big problem with the meta data associated with tracks we will need to look at other sources for matching. A site like MusicBrainz is crowdsourcing a lot of data but that is just the first step. Songs can be matched based on any number of characteristics other then genre, artist, etc. In today’s music environment genre is increasingly meaningless and the reality is that I may have a match based on instrumentation, lyrics (all songs with the word rain in them on a day of downpours) with machine learning growing rapidly I think that understanding the listeners “intent” is a missing element.
Happy to talk more about what we are seeing in the industry or any of the thoughts above.
Related Questions
-
How can I become an idea person, as a professional title?
One word: Royalties This means you generate the idea and develop it enough to look interesting to a larger company who would be willing to pay you a royalty for your idea. This happens all the time. Rock stars, authors and scientists routinely license their creative ideas to other companies who pay them a royalty. Anyone can do it. Your business, therefore, would be a think tank. You (and your team, if you have one) would consider the world's problems, see what kinds of companies are trying to solve those problems, and then develop compelling solutions that they can license from you. You have to be able to sell your idea and develop a nice presentation, a little market research and an understanding of basic trademark and patent law. The nice thing about doing this is that if you develop enough cool ideas you will have royalties coming in from a lot of different sources, this creates a stable, passive revenue stream that requires little or no work to maintain. Start in your spare time and plan on the process taking 3-5 years. Set a goal to have a few products in the market that provide enough revenue (royalties) to cover your basic living expenses. Then you can quit your day job and dedicate more time and increase the momentum. A good idea business should have dozens, if not hundreds of license contracts generating royalties. It's possible to pull this off. And it is a fun job (I'm speaking from experience).MM
-
For every success story in Silicon Valley, how many are there that fail?
It all depends on what one decides to be a definition of a "success story." For some entrepreneurs, it might be getting acqui-hired, for some -- a $10M exit, for some -- a $200M exit, and for others -- an IPO. Based on the numbers I have anecdotally heard in conversations over the last decade or so, VCs fund about 1 in 350 ventures they see, and of all of these funded ventures, only about 1 in 10 become really successful (i.e. have a big exit or a successful IPO.) So you are looking at a 1 in 3500 chance of eventual venture success among all of the companies that try to get VC funding. (To put this number in perspective, US VCs invest in about 3000-3500 companies every year.) In addition, there might be a few others (say, maybe another 1-2 in every 10 companies that get VC investments) that get "decent" exits along the way, and hence could be categorized as somewhat successful depending on, again, how one chooses to define what qualifies as a "success story." Finally, there might also be companies that may never need or get around to seeking VC funding. One can, of course, find holes in the simplifying assumptions I have made here, but it doesn't really matter if that number instead is 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10000. The basic point being made here is just that the odds are heavily stacked against new ventures being successful. But that's also one of the distinguishing characteristics of entrepreneurs -- to go ahead and try to bring their idea to life despite the heavy odds. Sources of some of the numbers: http://www.nvca.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ven... https://www.pwcmoneytree.com/MTP... http://paulgraham.com/future.html Here are others' calculations of the odds that lead to a similar conclusion: 1.Dear Entrepreneurs: Here's How Bad Your Odds Of Success Are http://www.businessinsider.com/startup-odds-of-success-2013-5 2.Why 99.997% Of Entrepreneurs May Want To Postpone Or Avoid VC -- Even If You Can Get It http://www.forbes.com/sites/dileeprao/2013/07/29/why-99-997-of-entrepreneurs-may-want-to-postpone-or-avoid-vc-even-if-you-can-get-it/MB
-
What is a normal churn rate for b2b saas company with an average monthly revenue of $850 per customer? Is 10% of the total monthly sales high or low?
10% of the total monthly sales churning on an absolute basis is near fatal. That means that within 5 months, you have 50% absolute churn per year, which reveals fundamental flaws with the service itself. Anything above small single digit churn is telling you and your team that customers are not seeing enough value in your product. I'd start by doing as many exit interviews as you can with those that have churned out, including, offers to reengage at a lower price-point while you fix the issues that matter to them. Happy to talk through this in more detail in a call.TW
-
What tools to use for mobile Prototyping ?
My 2 favourite are: - www.uxpin.com - www.flinto.com Flinto is by far my favorite for mobile. I also us www.balsamiq.com for anything wireframe. Sometimes I jump into Sketch http://www.bohemiancoding.com/sketch/ for more high fidelity mockups using their Mirror feature http://www.bohemiancoding.com/sketch/mirror/ Hope that helps. P.S. There's a tonne of Mobile UX experts on Clarity, many $1/min - call them, you'll learn so much. my2cents.DM
-
how to start earning on clarity.fm
Most of the earnings come from the people you are in contact with. The platform is not that big at the moment but it can be earned. My recommendation is to create content on your private page web, facebook, instagram ... and leave a clarity link through your work. If you need extra help call me for 15 minutes.DB
the startups.com platform
Copyright © 2025 Startups.com. All rights reserved.