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Business Plan

What is Cardinal Music?

There is currently a vacant niche on the web for Stanford music fans and artists, and therefore I propose the creation of a website - called Cardinal Music - 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.

In order for Cardinal Music to serve as a nexus for Stanford music artists and their enthusiast audience, it will offer the the following features to artists and the enthusiasts:

For Artists

For Enthusiasts
Create a profile with a description of the music they produce in addtion to personal information. Create a profile with musical interests and favorite artists in addition to personal information.
List links to or upload their music. Rate songs/artists using a 1-5 star system and critique using text.
Ability to create a custom web page for bands. Create friends list and groups based on shared interest.
Create musical tags that will become of the official categorization hierarchy. Create custom tags that other users can choose to see based on their preferences.
Participate in a
forum open to both artists and enthusiasts.

Costs and Maintenance

Costs

The costs to maintain Cardinal Music will involve the following components:

  • Domain Name/Web Hosting: $200.00 per 2 years
  • Time on part of the webmaster.

The domain/hosts costs are self-explanatory, so we will focus on the time aspect.

Time

For the most part, the webmaster can let the site function by itself. Since the content will be almost completely user (i.e. both artist and enthusiast) generated, the webmaster would not have to focus on this facet of the site. The webmaster, however, will have to handle any technical issues, resulting either in the form of problems or user queries. The webmaster will also have to deal with any abuse of the site. Thus, the involvement of the webmaster will be
intermittent unless the site becomes so large that it requires a person to serve as a part-time webmaster regularly.

Should a part-time webmaster be necessitated due to a high volume of user activity, then hiring such an individual should be affordable. This is because the site revenue,which is approximately directly proportional to the volume of users, would be able to support such a hiring.

Maintenance

The maintenance would involve the following:

  • Ensuring that the site is functional.
  • Ensuring that all the costs are handled.
  • Ensuring that all user support requests are answered.

Revenue

The site will be free for enthusiasts.  Artists will also be able to use the site freely for the most part. In order to support the maintenance cost of the site, there will be several sources of revenue. They are advertising and a fee for enhanced artist services.

Advertising

There will be two forms of advertising:

  • Contextual ads - These will be provided by Google and Amazon.
  • Links to artists' paid content - If artists have their material for sale on other sites such as Amazon, which have pay-per-click programs, then Cardinal Music will utilize them.

Enhanced Artist Services

In order to use the followings features, the artists will have to pay an yearly fee:

  • File upload service - Allows the artists to upload their music directly onto the site. The upload service will release the artists from the burden of maintaining their own file server. The service will also provide the artists with a stable archive of their own music on the Net.
  • Personal subdomain redirection - Artists will be able to have <subdomain>.cardinalmusic.com redirect to their own artist or band page.
  • No advertisements - Paying users will not see any sponsored advertising as they browse the site.

Go-To Market Strategy

In order to find an initial user base for the website, several offline marketing campaigns would need to be executed:

  • Flyers at Stanford Musical Events - If allowed, it would be useful to pass out flyers outside of Stanford-affiliated musical events such as orchestras and band concerts to promote awareness of the website.
  • Contact Official Stanford Music Groups - Either via e-mail or in person, contact officially established musical groups around Stanford to see if they would like their online web presence to take place on Cardinal Music. Upon explaining the benefits of Cardinal Music to them they may agree to sign-up. Also, I might offer these groups free premium artist accounts so that they would not have to pay for upload services.
  • Mass Advertising Campaign - In a manner similar to ULoop, flyer all around campus and post messages on the sidewalk/pathways. Offer free premium service to the first 25 artists that sign up. These initial free offerings will allow the site to gain a decent amount of useful content and essentially jump-start usage of Cardinal Music.

Competitors/Differentiators

Following are some potential competitors to Cardinal Music:

Risks/Problems

Following are some potential issues that may affect Cardinal Music:

  • Lack of Artist Participation - Without artists, the site will not have enough meaningful content to draw in users. The artists may opt to go for some of the other competitors listed above such as last.fm as they would feel that they have a better chance of reaching a larger audience on those sites. The artists may also be detracted by the fees charged for the Cardinal Music upload service as some of the competitors offer free upload services. If a such a scenario were to arise, I would respond to it by changing Cardinal Music from a self-sustained and potentially for-profit website to a university sponsored website with free upload service. I would attempt to obtain university grants to cover maintenance costs incurred by the site and seek to make Cardinal Music an official university club/group that freely serves the student populace, which here would be Stanford musical artists.
  • Lack of Enthusiast Participation - A shortage of enthusiast participation is a problem that would be easier to handle than a shortage of artist participation. If Cardinal Music were to gain sufficient amount of content, but not enough enthusiasts, I would push forward with an aggressive advertising campaign both online and offline. I would intensify the above offline advertising methods and would start an online advertising program that will seek to leverage off of existing social networking platforms, which in this case will primarily be Facebook. I can recommend the site to several of my colleagues and have them sign up, and should they like it, ask them to temporarily link to Cardinal Music from their profile page as a referral. I can also use the campus' numerous public mailing lists to publicize Cardinal Music as well (while keeping the spamming to a minimum of course!)

Last Updated: 05 June 2008