music
How These Guys Went From Making Music For The Terminally-Ill To Launching An iTunes-Like Startup
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>
Please follow War Room on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
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
—
drag2share – drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)
Surprise! Senators with Huge Campaign Contributions from Media Support SOPA/PIPA [Sopa]
![medium 8da334bb062cda05830eba01dde3b047 Surprise! Senators with Huge Campaign Contributions from Media Support SOPA/PIPA [Sopa]](http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2012/01/8da334bb062cda05830eba01dde3b047.jpg "Surprise! Senators with Huge Campaign Contributions from Media Support SOPA/PIPA")
It’s an old cliché in politics to “follow the money.” Unfortunately, it’s almost always true when it comes to the support of controversial bills. In fact, all you need is $100k per senator to buy support for PIPA, the Senates version of SOPA.
It’s a small price to pay for controlling how the Internet works in the United States. If you’re still unsure what exactly SOPA is, check out our comprehensive article on the bill. Above are the senators that received in excess in $100,000 in campaign contributions from the Movie, Music, and TV industry. Oh hey, they all support PIPA. These numbers were compiled by ProPubilca.
If you live in the states governed by these public servants, be sure to give them a call and tell them that SOPA/PIPA will destroy the Internet. Mat’s right, we really do need an Internet Lobbyist. [ProPublica]
—
drag2share – drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)
27k projects, almost $100 million in funding
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/11/kickstarter-details-the-year-that-was-27k-projects-almost-100/
Kickstarter details the year that was: 27k projects, almost $100 million in funding originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | 
Kickstarter | Email this | Comments
—
drag2share – drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)
Digital music finally outsells physical media, books look on in alarm
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/05/digital-music-finally-outsells-physical-media/
That sharp sucking of air you heard at the end of 2010, well, that was the record industry wincing as sales of CDs continued to tumble while digital media sales remained flat. The relieved exhale that you just heard echoing through the atmosphere? That was the collective sigh of executives who just picked up the latest Nielsen report indicating that digital music sales are on the rise again and, for the first time ever, have finally surpassed physical media. Sales as a whole were up, but while CDs were down 5.7 percent, digital track sales were up 8.4 percent and digital albums a stunning 19.5 percent (perhaps most interestingly, though, vinyl was up over 36 percent). CDs still outsell virtual albums by a factor of two, but it’s clear the trend toward binary media is back on track. It may be a narrow victory but, with 50.3 percent of the market, audio files are new king of the hill. Check out the full report at the source.
Digital music finally outsells physical media, books look on in alarm originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink 
Gizmodo | Nielsen | Email this | Comments
—
drag2share – drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)
Digital music finally outsells physical media, books look on in alarm
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/05/digital-music-finally-outsells-physical-media/
That sharp sucking of air you heard at the end of 2010, well, that was the record industry wincing as sales of CDs continued to tumble while digital media sales remained flat. The relieved exhale that you just heard echoing through the atmosphere? That was the collective sigh of executives who just picked up the latest Nielsen report indicating that digital music sales are on the rise again and, for the first time ever, have finally surpassed physical media. Sales as a whole were up, but while CDs were down 5.7 percent, digital track sales were up 8.4 percent and digital albums a stunning 19.5 percent (perhaps most interestingly, though, vinyl was up over 36 percent). CDs still outsell virtual albums by a factor of two, but it’s clear the trend toward binary media is back on track. It may be a narrow victory but, with 50.3 percent of the market, audio files are new king of the hill. Check out the full report at the source.
Digital music finally outsells physical media, books look on in alarm originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink Gizmodo | Nielsen | Email this | Comments
—
drag2share – drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)
Google Gets Serious About Youtube Royalties with Rightsflow Purchase [Google]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5867476/google-gets-serious-about-youtube-royalties-with-rightsflow-purchase
![medium 35cab4bad8fda37c53cc550f2e7fb77e Google Gets Serious About Youtube Royalties with Rightsflow Purchase [Google]](http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2011/12/medium_35cab4bad8fda37c53cc550f2e7fb77e.jpg "Google Gets Serious About Youtube Royalties with Rightsflow Purchase")
Google announced on Friday that it has purchased the music licensing company RightsFlow for its detailed information about who should get paid when any of over 30 million songs get played.
Neither Google nor Rightsflow would comment on the deal beyond their official statements, but we have pieced together some of the reasons Google would purchase a music licensing company like RightsFlow, which deals with “mechanical” royalties owed to songwriters, publishers, and other copyright holders. They whenever a non-human thing – like a compact disc, website, or music app –plays music.
RightsFlow, pictured here, now belongs to Google, which will use it to simplify royalty accounting on YouTube and possibly other music services.
The big reason Google would do this is that YouTube continues to be such a massive free music destination. It simply made more sense to buy RightsFlow outright to help keep its administrative and legal costs down, than to continue to rely on its services alongside other RightsFlow clients such as Rhapsody.
To be clear, this doesn’t give Google any rights to this music; it just makes those rights easier to deal with.
The acquisition, announced on Friday (when companies typically announce stuff they don’t want people paying attention to) is more evidence that Google is serious about YouTube as a free music destination. It should now be able to add even more music without worrying as much about lawsuits or expensive accounting.
Once Google has identified songs uploaded to YouTube using its Content ID fingerprinting technology, it should be able to figure out more easily which publishers and songwriters to pay. This could also help Google deal with its Google music store or other Google stuff in the future, although for now, Google’s focus for this deal is squarely on YouTube.
RightsFlow, recently named the #8 most desirable place to work in New York by Crain’s New York Business, owns information that is mostly publicly available. What makes it valuable is its ability to search all that data, making it easier to license lots of songs at once.
So, basically, Google just acquired a search engine, sort of like Google itself – except now, it could just have just one (admittedly very busy) user.
![screen shot 2011 04 11 at 9.47.02 am Google Gets Serious About Youtube Royalties with Rightsflow Purchase [Google]](http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2011/04/screen_shot_2011-04-11_at_9.47.02_am.png "Google Gets Serious About Youtube Royalties with Rightsflow Purchase")
Evolver.fm observes, tracks and analyzes the music apps scene, with the belief that it’s crucial to how humans experience music, and how that experience is evolving.—
drag2share – drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)
You Won’t Believe How Big This Profitable 5-Person Startup Is
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/you-wont-believe-how-big-this-profitable-5-person-startup-is-2011-11
We recently met with Adrian Constantin, the founder of video startup TV Links.
TV Links is a video aggregator and search engine, serving up videos from hundreds of sites, similar to US startup Clicker.
It’s not the most innovative business in the world, but here’s what you should know about it: it’s bootstrapped, profitable, it claims 37 million monthly unique visitors, and it has only 5 employees.
TV Links is not just impressive, it’s interesting because it’s a combination of two important trends: globalization, and the extreme capital efficiency of online businesses.
Globalization: the company has developers in Romania, servers in Spain and in the US through Amazon, and most of its users coming from the US, UK and Canada.
Extreme capital efficiency: the company basically outsources everything: hosting, advertising and even some development.
TV Links’ one weak spot is that it gets the vast majority of its traffic from Google and so will live and die by SEO. But the company has ambitious plans; it’s even starting to produce its own original video.
We once wrote that Instagram is the future of startups in part because of its extreme capital efficiency: it has over 10 million users and half a dozen staff (the other reason is distribution via app stores and social media). TV Links is another example of this extreme capital efficiency; unlike Instagram, it gets distribution through the more “traditional” medium of search engines, but unlike Instagram it’s also profitable.
This new reality has broad implications beyond startups. If you’re wondering about the sky-high valuations of companies like LinkedIn or Twitter, part of your calculus should also take into account the fact that it’s now possible to build these very efficient businesses with huge global markets, something which wasn’t possible 10 years ago when “clouds” were still things in the sky and the internet population was counted in millions, not billions.
We will see many more of these ultra capital-efficient, globally-distributed online businesses in the future.
MORE: Why Instagram Is The Future Of Startups →
Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
See Also:
- VEVO Will Expand Beyond Music Videos — Just Like MTV Did 20 Years Ago
- Watch Sheryl Sandberg Dance Around The Facebook Phone Question
- Here’s What Facebook’s Management Is Constantly Thinking About
—
drag2share – drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)
Sean Parker Invests In Music Startup StageIt
We’ve learned that billionaire Sean Parker of Napster and Facebook fame has invested in StageIt, an online platform for live concerts.
The investment makes sense, as Parker has been focused on shaking up the music industry.
While Parker disrupted the music industry in the late 1990′s when he created Napster, he may soon do the same with his latest involvement in Spotify. We reported earlier that Parker said Spotify will finish what Napster started — deliver instant gratification to music fans.
The Los Angeles-based startup StageIt can deliver a different type of gratification. The platform lets artists set up digital concerts and gives them a way to make money without ever having to leave their house.
Two years ago, StageIt founder Evan Lowenstein founded the company based on the idea people that would pay for a unique experience.
Not long ago, Lowenstein came into play for me to demo the service: As a singer himself, he played “Crazy for This Girl” to show how fans purchase tickets to watch him live and use a chat feature to talk to him during the performance.
“You can’t pirate intimacy and you can’t pirate an experience,” Lowenstein said.
Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
See Also:
- Steve Case’s New Whopper Of A Fund Won’t Be Touching Silicon Valley Startups
- Google: Whatever Numbers You’ve Heard About Google+, They’re Way Low
- Dwolla, The Tiny Iowa Company That’s Trying To Kill Credit Cards, Makes All Transactions Under $10 Free
—
drag2share – drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)
Use Amazon’s Price Check App and Get Up to $15 Off Your Purchases [Deals]
Source: http://lifehacker.com/5865572/use-amazons-price-check-app-and-get-up-to-15-off-your-purchases
![medium 98cc63ef2b25feceb8da20289bbe987a Use Amazons Price Check App and Get Up to $15 Off Your Purchases [Deals]](http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/17/2011/12/medium_98cc63ef2b25feceb8da20289bbe987a.jpg "Use Amazon's Price Check App and Get Up to $15 Off Your Purchases")
iPhone/Android: This Saturday, December 10 would be a good day to go shopping. Amazon’s offering 5% off (up to $5) for select items if you barcode scan them using its Price Check app; the offer can be used three times.
To get the discount, you’ll need to check prices on a qualifying item in one of these categories: Electronics, toys, sports, music, and DVDs. After putting it in your shopping cart with the Price Check App, you’ll have 24 hours to buy it (you can do it from the Amazon website or other Amazon apps) and get the 5% discount automatically applied.
As we’ve noted before Amazon Price Check is a really versatile price checking app you can use to look up products using your voice, photos, barcodes, or old-fashioned text search.
The promotion starts at 9pm PST December 9 and runs through 11:59pm PST December 10. So go download the app by the weekend, if you haven’t already.
Price Check for iPhone and Android | in the iTunes App Store | in Android Market
—
drag2share – drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)
Nissan sells more than 20,000 Leafs in first year; Fiat, Not So Much
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/30/nissan-sells-more-than-20-000-leafs-in-first-year-high-fives-co/
Excerpt: Only a few months after announcing that it sold 10,000 all-electric Leaf cars in international markets, Nissan stated at the Tokyo Motor Show today that the company has sold over 20,000 Leafs since the car went on sale in December of 2010. The company also added that it expects to sell more than 10,000 Leafs in the U.S. by the end of 2011.
SOURCE: http://adage.com/article/news/francois-fights-fiat-fiasco/230033/ This contrasts with Fiat, which went to great expense to make branding commercials with JLo which stirred more “huh’s?” from audiences than sales. One former auto-marketing exec Peter DeLorenzo called “quite possibly the worst automotive spot of the last decade, hands down.” No official sales numbers were mentioned, probably because it was too embarrassingly low to mention.
Who are they advertising here… the car or JLo? 
SOURCE: http://blog.web.blogads.com/2011/11/22/j-los-shameless-strange-and-sad-fiat-fiasco/ Widely denounced, shameless and strange product placement and promo during JLo’s performance at the American Music Awards.
Watch the whole bizarre performance here (The Fiat stuff starts around 1:15):
Digital Consigliere
Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.
http://twitter.com/acfou
Send Tips: tips@go-digital.net
Digital Strategy Consulting
Dr. Augustine Fou LinkedIn Bio
Digital Marketing Slideshares
The Grand Unified Theory of Marketing
Tags
Popular Posts
- drag2share: The Most Famous Brand Each State Has Produced
- Marketing Costs Normalized to CPM Basis for Comparison
- Coke vs Pepsi vs Dr Pepper
- Netflix vs Blockbuster - Perfect example of an industry replaced by a more efficient version of itself
- Vapor4 May Be the First Bumper Worthy of the iPhone 4
- drag2share: The Most Pinned Brand On Pinterest Doesn't Even Use A Pinterest Account [THE BRIEF]
- Retailers Still Striving For A Single View Of The Customer Across Channels
- The Grand Unified Theory of Marketing(tm) - Digital String Theory
- The Top Endorsement Earners In Each Sport
Published Articles by Dr. Augustine Fou
- #SESNY: Toward a Performance Mindset for All Advertising
- Tips for Marketers Selecting a Digital Agency
- Context Is Not King or Queen; It's Just Necessary
- 2013 New Year's Digital Marketing Resolutions
- The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Online Campaign Ratings and eGRPs
- Why You Should Banish the Net Promoter Score Immediately
- Digital Strategy To-MAY-to vs. To-MAH-to
- The Agency-Client Relationship is Forever Changed
- Targeting vs. Privacy - Who Will Win?
- Digital + Traditional = Unified Marketing
Pages
Archives
- June 2013 (54)
- May 2013 (87)
- April 2013 (70)
- March 2013 (114)
- February 2013 (89)
- January 2013 (136)
- December 2012 (96)
- November 2012 (130)
- October 2012 (147)
- September 2012 (94)
- August 2012 (92)
- July 2012 (112)
- June 2012 (71)
- May 2012 (82)
- April 2012 (80)
- March 2012 (122)
- February 2012 (114)
- January 2012 (129)
- December 2011 (60)
- November 2011 (54)
- October 2011 (29)
- September 2011 (17)
- August 2011 (30)
- July 2011 (18)
- June 2011 (19)
- May 2011 (23)
- April 2011 (23)
- March 2011 (52)
- February 2011 (69)
- January 2011 (108)
- December 2010 (82)
- November 2010 (67)
- October 2010 (68)
- September 2010 (44)
- August 2010 (101)
- July 2010 (61)
- June 2010 (28)
- May 2010 (28)
- April 2010 (26)
- March 2010 (33)
- February 2010 (21)
- January 2010 (12)
- December 2009 (4)
- November 2009 (2)
- October 2009 (14)
- September 2009 (6)
- August 2009 (19)
- July 2009 (34)
- June 2009 (11)
- May 2009 (4)
- April 2009 (6)
- March 2009 (13)
- February 2009 (32)
- January 2009 (25)
- December 2008 (1)
- October 2008 (1)
- June 2008 (1)
- November 2007 (1)
Prototype Web Services
- drag2share – quickly share news items by drag and drop on email addresses
- LivePhotoFrame – upload and remotely manage a digital photo frame via unique URL
- MedleyTuner – create a continuous listening experience by uploading mp3s
- MusicSamplr – discover new artists and music, listen to samples
- SharedMost – what links on ANY webpage are shared most?
- Signatory – sign and date a document and verify it hasn't been altered since that exact time.
- WebTeleprompter – just what it says it is
