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How These Guys Went From Making Music For The Terminally-Ill To Launching An iTunes-Like Startup

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-these-guys-went-from-making-music-for-the-terminally-ill-to-launching-an-itunes-like-startup-2012-1

It’s the perfect example that doing what you love — and knowing what the market lacks — will eventually pay off.

Alex King-Harris, Craig Kohland and Amani Friend met through the yoga community, but what’s unique about the trio is that they were all musicians making music for those who were terminally-ill or facing chronic illness. King-Harris had been involved in a bad car accident years ago which introduced him to yoga.

As yoga increased in popularity, the co-founders realized there wasn’t a platform for instructors to get recommended healing music or share their playlists with one another or with their students. All three guys immensely believe that the right music is essential for various sequences in a yoga routine.

After initially raising $150,000, YogiTunes, which works a lot like iTunes, but is catered specifically to the yoga community, launched in July 2011. The site currently has around 6,000 artists to choose from and the downloaded music can be played through any medium — unlike iTunes, which requires Apple products.

But people are used to getting their music through iTunes and other popular sources:

“You’re up against people who have really strong habits of consuming through iTunes, or consuming through Pandora,” King-Harris told us. “It takes a little while to shift people’s habitual ways of consuming.”

Eventually, the company wants to grow beyond music and become a community for health and wellness enthusiasts.

“We definitely want to draw people in with the music and then extend to other products, other services, other things that we feel are valuable for people’s lifestyles. It’s kind of taking the Amazon model. They were really good at selling books and now they do everything.”

“We can also scale quite quickly beyond yoga to the health and wellness market. A lot of massage therapists, fitness teachers, tai chi people use our music. I think the yoga market is particularly interesting because, in general, the median income is high so we know we have an broad enough audience.”

For inspiration, the company looks at Beatport, a private company that offers music for the DJ community.

“It’s a similar way that we see ourselves servicing the yoga community. They’re a very successful enterprise, very well-known and well established in what they do. They really know their niche. And that’s what we want to do.”

NOW SEE: A complete guide to what not to do when launching a startup>

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See Also:

• These Guys Launched A Startup For Entrepreneurs And Then Got Turned Away By Entrepreneurs
• INSTANT MBA: Know Your Competitors Broadly And Your Users Narrowly
• How Gossiping At The Workplace Can Improve Your Health

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