- Business model and go-to-market strategy for developing a trading platform with multiple parties
- Funding Strategy (How to find the right seed investors and strategic partnerships)
The Company is a Copenhagen based music tech company that is building a platform to solve the problem that
1) Music composers today have no easy way to showcase and monetize their back-catalogue of already produced music and
2) Marketing agencies, movie producers, filmmakers etc. have no ability today to search for already composed music that fit their requirements.
The lack of technology platform means that any given agency today often ends up contacting producer houses for new bespoke music each time they have a project, or searches on an online stock library with no possibility of customization of the music – which increases prices and time of production.
This platform will enable any composer to dynamically create a website where they can publish their music and make it available for the agencies to search through the music and buy a license for using it.
We have a strong commercial and technical team in place and have bootstrapped the development for the last 2 years and are currently testing the alpha version of the platform with a select group of composers.
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Status: Product/Prototype/MPV
A Digital Survey launched in 4Q2018 helped to evaluate the need and market.
The company is about to launch alpha testing with selected users. MVP launch planned for March 2019. Beta testing 1H2019.
Problem
It is difficult for music makers to monetize their catalogue of already composed and produced music. There are no "off-the-shelf" solutions for writers and composers to showcase their productions, combined with search and payment capabilities.
Using stock libraries, for a music maker to be represented, is often prohibitively expensive in fees, plus that individual composers tends to appear as single droplets in the ocean, amongst thousands of composers and a million other songs, melodies and tunes.
Furthermore, music makers and composers have little to no control over the sales process and have no communication with end customers, such as movie / documentary / tv producers.
Solution
The company wants to provide the music makers with a prebuilt webshop specifically aimed at selling / licensing music, primarily aimed at marketing and brand agencies. Hosted on the music makers own domain and filled with tools to ease the sales, communication and licensing process with brand agencies.
Business Model
To secure a fast, scalable product roll out and market penetration, the product's basic version will be free to use. The company is then planning on a two-sided revenue model:
1) Software license subscriptions.
Premium users are charged a monthly subscription to use premium marketplace features, such as white-labelling and enhanced visibility to customers.
2) Service and transaction fees.
Buyers of music licenses are charged a transaction fee on license purchases, and sellers are charged additional fees on services such as track mastering, and extra storage space on the platform.
Market
The revenue from the use of music in advertising, film, games and television programs increased by 9.6% in 2017.
The US is the world’s largest sync market, accounting for 57% of the market.
Music Industry Revenue: 25 billion Euros
Licensed/Sync Music: 400 million Euros
Potential Market share (15%): 60 million Euros
We estimate market size to be around 1.000 Music Composers in Scandinavia, 20.000 in Europe and 100.000 globally with potential revenue per composer of circa 375 €/year. We expect to onboard 200 professional composers the first year and reach around 16.000 professional composers after 5 years,
Team
CEO
INSEAD EMBA with 10+ years’ experience, mostly gained in an in-house strategy/business development role supporting CEO’s working side by side with top tier consulting firms (Implement Consulting Group, Bain & Company, BCG) on several projects leading end-to-end corporate strategy processes in different large organizations.
Co-founded 1 startup in the Digital Marketing domain and invested developed 1 startup in Saas
CTO
A background in both tech and music. As former CEO of a music studio, he has a deep knowledge of the music industry and the processes within. The CTO has been working the past 7 years as a senior backend developer while founding this company in the spare time.
The CTO has a deep knowledge of building robust APIs, having worked on various projects for companies such as Unity technologies, Mærsk, Aon, Autobutler and more.
Started edutainment concept company in 2006 which since was bought by Egmont A/S.
Produced music for Danish Radio, The Royal Danish Ballet, various artists in Denmark and top commercial brands around the world.
CPO
Experienced in design and front-end development for startups and companies such as UnitedHealth Group (Fortune 500), NOS, Showtime Analytics.
Board
We have decided to strengthen the team by building a board with very specific competences, specifically we are looking for:
-a board member with deep knowledge within Music Industry/TV Production;
- a board member with network and experience with international Marketing Agencies
COMPETITORS ANALYSIS
Features/Competitors
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Our solution
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Synchtank
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Songtradr
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Soundcloud
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Upright
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Webshop
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Freemium
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Personal domain
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Project Space
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AI
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Design and usability
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Search
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Payment
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Licensing
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Briefs
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CRM
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Network
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Catalogue
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Metadata services
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Sales and pitching
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API Integration
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Public API
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Reporting
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Financial projections:
With a total addressable market of 60 MEuros and an average transaction fee of 12% we project
7,2MEuros Revenues by year 5
FUNDING:
Soft funding: the company is currently applying for public grants in DK and EU.
Pre-seed Round: 500.000 DKK round will kick on in Q42019 after beta testing is completed and MVP is finalized
Questions for the panel
- Business model and strategy: how to gain quick wins and initial traction to prove scalability and access funding?
- Business Development and Partnership: what is the right value proposition for the right partner?
- Branding: how to communicate to users the different concept/features vs competition/alternative?
- Funding Strategy: how to find and approach potential investors/funding?