Cardinal Music

Music has been part of the human civilization from its earliest times. The music industry has its roots in the ancient realms where bards were sponsored to recite poetry. With the advent of the Internet, the music business model has once again changed and we have seen the emergence of innovations ranging from the monthly fee/unlimited downloads model of eMusic.com to the pay-per-song paradigm of the iTunes Music Store.

Given that Stanford has a large and a talented base of musicians, it too has joined the Internet music scene as well. The most prominent of these efforts has been the music section of Stanford on iTunes U (http://itunes.stanford.edu/), which is the university’s own extension to the iTunes Music Store.

Unfortunately, however, Stanford on iTunes U does not fully utilize the potential that the Stanford artists offer and as a result, the artists and the users do not fully benefit from iTunes U. For instance, a quick search on the web for some of the artists listed on iTunes U will show you that they have websites that contain far more songs than on iTunes. In addition, from my personal experience, certain songs have disappeared from iTunes after some period of time. This inconsistency and the lack cohesiveness in Stanford music online wastes valuable opportunities to both entertain listeners and benefit the artists financially and in fame. Furthermore, iTunes does not offer sufficient social interaction features on it that could enhance the experience for music fans.

Thus, there is currently a vacant niche on the web for Stanford music fans and artists, and therefore I propose the creation of a website that would serve these needs by giving listeners unparalleled access to music all over the web created by Stanford artists as well as enabling interaction among themselves, and by giving the artists a chance to advertise their material and drive revenue to their online music businesses.

Background
I envision the following components for the website (hereon referred to as Cardinal Music):

• User-friendly interface and a powerful search engine that would allow listeners to browse and find songs of their choice. They would also have the option to tag music as well and other users will have the option to traverse music according to user-created tags (in addition to official tags that would be created by the artists themselves). The search and the browsing will be able to access the on-site archive of music, artist submitted links, and the listings from iTunes U (for those found on iTunes, the users will be able to click a “View in iTunes” link to access the song in iTunes).
• Artists will be able to create profiles and link to music on their own websites. In addition, they will be allowed to upload their music to be archived on the site itself for a small fee. This is to ensure that their music on third-party servers, such as iTunes U, do not disappear randomly. It will also give them an easy portal to share their music if they do not wish to operate their own sites. If the artist has his own site, then it will be linked to from Cardinal Music.
• When browsing a song, the user will be presented with a “Buy Music” link, should artist have a place online where he is selling his music (e.g. Amazon, iTunes, eMusic).
• The website will support its maintenance cost through context driven advertisements (such as Google Ads).
• There will be a forum where users can discuss about their experience and pieces of music. They will be able to establish groups or create friends lists based on their shared interests.

Future
The relevancy of the website in the future is essentially dependent on the continuation of the existence of Stanford music, which has an extremely high probability. While people will continue to produce and listen to music, the methods by which they transfer material, however, are bound to evolve. Thus, in order to remain worthwhile, it will be important for the website to stay up to date on the latest music distribution technologies and adapt as the online music business landscape changes. For example, more and more people are now obtaining handheld devices that are capable of high-speed wireless Internet as well audio playback. Thus, the music market will develop new technologies to streamline content delivery to these machines over the web and Cardinal Music will need to adopt these innovations to continue providing value to the users and the artists.