DA from Chester French; Program Lead from Music Unites ; Mitsue Artist

Although the concept may seem old, it works and its certainly not seen enough. Entertainment is one those industries that cashes more checks than Bill Gates.  So why not use that financial strength to do good.

When you look at companies out there that are laying the ground work for artists and empowering individuals, Music Unites (MU) is one such organization. Music Unites (MU) is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting established and emerging musicians and genres, in addition to supporting music education by underwriting free concerts for the public in various cities. MU aims to break down barriers between music genres and introduce new audiences to unfamiliar artists.  Motown Ini will continue to track this organization and see how they shape the playing field for emerging talents.

On a similiar note, just last week MU had a Chester French event at the Red Bull Space and it was a very engaging event. They highlighted the new popular artists Chester French (new group pub’d by Pharrell Williams) as well as emerging talent Mitsue (check previous blog entries to learn about our relationship with her efforts).   Although Chester French was the focal point of the event, when we walked in with Mitsue the crowd turned toa frenzy, there was a lot of curiosity about who she was.

Chester French with Pharrell Williams

Upon entrance someone immediately placed a TY KU bottle in her hand for some branding shots, and I don’t blame them one bit. If I had a product to sell, I’d want her face on it too. “I must admit, I was there to see Chester French perform. But the moment I saw this red hair girl enter and the press swarmed her by the step and repeat, I had to see what she was about and I completely forgot why I was there” claimed one guest. “I love her look, where can I find her music?”.  If Music Unites can attract and continue to support this level of professional emerging talent, then they’re really onto something.  Motown Ini will hope to do the same for emerging entertainment.  FOLLOW JUMP FOR IMAGES.

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I know, broad question right?  As I continue to dig into our financial pro-forma, to ensure that all revenue/cost figures are current before I hand it over to 4corners, I just can’t see how you can’t develop profits in the broadband video market.  Every time I look at the margins and costs involved, even when using improbable absorbent cost figures, the financial sheets always project that we will see initial profits within one year of operation.  This is not normal for a start-up; normally it should take years for investors to see a return.   Of course success is completely contingent on the number of unique visitors a website attracts, but to date there hasn’t been one major broadband video site to attract less than 600k unique visits in a month.  I think market costs were about 5x as much only about 18 months ago, so maybe it was just harder to be profitable in the past, but by our measures if you have good advertisement relationships and a reasonable overhead, 1.8-2M views in a qtr should leave a video company on the cusp of profitability.   Every major site, even those that have failed in the long-run, has at some point hit over 600k unique visits in a month.  However, at that point, a particular site either engages users and continues to grow rapidly, or it losses.  There is demand for online video, so there is no shortage of users to drive unique visits. It seems success is completely dependent on the quality of the product presented.
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I’ve spent the entire day reading about Content Delivery Networks (CDN) and I’m burnt out.  Every broadband video company needs a CDN solution; after all, that’s how the data is propagated through the internet.  We’ve been considering developing our own CDN solution, but there are a few issues with this approach.  It is the CDN that ensures video is delivered in a timely manner. It is also the CDN that is responsible for website analytics, but most importantly the CDN handles Digital Media Rights (DRM).   While I do believe that we could create a functional delivery mechanism to create our unique video experience, and we could utilize a 3^rd party service for analytics, it’s the DRM portion that concerns me.  To keep our content competitive and fresh, we’re going to need to form relationships with major network content distributors, and I bet money that they will be less than interested in an unproved DRM methodology.  If we can’t protect our partner’s content, then they won’t want to be a partner at all.  This is why I’ve decided it is best that we look for proven services to deliver our content.   As long as an outsourced CDN doesn’t interfere with website functionality as we envision it, I think it’s the best way to go.

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Over the past week, we met with a number of broadband video website teams, and what we learned was that there are a collection of streaming video solutions available on the market that many of today’s websites use.  At this point, I can say with confidence that our team has a complete understanding of what it’s going to take to develop the next level of online media.  We have devised a comprehensive set of wireframes and technology plots to guide our efforts, and all that’s left to do is research which services we are going to use with regards to video streaming, video storage, hosting etc.  While Motown Initiative doesn’t plan to use all “out-of-box solutions”, we do plan to minimize our development work load by searching out existing technologies that we can revise into custom solutions that work for our purposes.  Over the next week, the team will be looking near and far for the best services available for the broadband video application.

Ultimately, I believe we will have three partners, and each will address a different task. Advertisement support (Tremor Media), media player/delivery and hosting needs will all be done through partnerships.  By the end of August we plan to have secured the needed services to push the Initiative forward.  Stay tuned.

As we have been developing our new broadband video site, one of the integral components has been ad targeting.   We feel that its important for users to see ads relevant to their lives.  Just imagine, what if every day was the superbowl? I don’t mean non-stop football, I’m referring to fun and engaging advertisement.  Not that we can guarantee every ad will be extremely cool, but it’s just a good analogy to describe the pleasurable advertising experience we want to create.   This approach is not only important for the user experience but for video montization as well.  Over the past few months we’ve been developing our overarching strategy with regards to targeting, and along the way we met Tremor Media.

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I don’t think we’ve covered this topic yet on the blog, but I figure there is no better time than now.  Recently we’ve had the chance to go out and spread the word about Motown.  In general we’ve been well received but, depending on the execution, the all important elevator pitch has garnered different degrees of curiosity.

The first time I found myself pitching the idea, it turned into a 5mins spiel, at the end of which the people in front of me still didn’t completely understand the business.  Now I could easily answer their questions and describe the products value to their application, but the only I was only able to carry such a long conversation due to my environment. In this particular situation I was amongst people genuinely interested in broadband video.  However, I won’t always be so lucky to have that audience. One of the people I was talking to was kinda enough to notice that I need help with the elevator pitch. So he gave me a chance to sit down with him and just throw 6 liners at him.   To be honest, I still don’t think we have the elevator pitch as concise as it should be, but with a little more help and experience we’ll be all set to go.  For anyone looking to learn the art of the elevator pitch, I recommend Venture Hacks, check out this blog entry from them.

The elevator pitch is important for any company that is in the midst of VC introductions.  You really need a concise message, I’d say 180 characters or less, that can deliver impactful insight about your said venture.  It’s how you get your foot in the door.  We’ve been lucky enough at this point to already have our foot in the door, and thus we jumped straight into the Deck Pitch (I guess i’ll write on that later as well). Nonetheless, until we have the appropriate funding in hand, I want to have all my tools in order to execute on a pitch.

Over the weekend, I sat down with a friend of mine who had been following the Initiative since its inception.   As an extremely experienced and web-networking savvy character, he of course has a lot on his plate all of the time, but it has been my goal to pull him over to the Motown side.

For the first time, we sat down and I willingly “opened the books” per say, and gave him a glimpse at the future of our broadband website.  He was instantly intrigued, and on the spot  began to analyze the code of competitor websites.  In just one hour, I gained a new understanding of how to succesfully deliver an immersive video experience, and more importantly monetize it. For example, we found that some websites we thought were competitors actually lack a sufficient revenue model, since they are simply embedding content from other sites and serving it up to their site viewers.  No video website can be successful with just banner ads and pre-roll in-video ads.  In anycase, point of this entry is… we offically have a Chief of Technology (CTO).

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June 10th, 2009….Got my ticket to NYC today from Virgin Air, my favorite airlines hands down. If you haven’t been on one of those planes yet, you’re really missing out. Even when you’re not in first class, the ambiance and accommodations are second to none.  Now that they have wifi on all their planes too, I’m quite sure this going to be the best cross country flight ever.

My trips are always for business and pleasure, so I’ll be catching up with some of the parties involved with the Motown Initiative, as well as some family and friends. Should be good times. Our production partner group, 4th Deck Productions, has setup shop and is rolling right along, so that will definitely be my first stop.  We’ll be starting some work on pre-production work and some company strategy task.  It’ll be nice to working with a team and be amongst what’s happening now. I also hope to officially confirm our first strategic alliance during this trip. If there are any good industry events or parties during my stay in NY? I’ll post them up here, so you can look out for that.

March 29, 2009…As the digital realm expands in reach and capability, there are some other businesses suffering, specifically brick-and-mortar retail stores.  Unless the store is selling a product that is exclusive or can satisfy an immediate need, online shopping is often the better alternative.  We all remember the first time we stepped into a Circuit City.  I thought it was one of the coolest stores ever just 10 years ago and now it’s gone.  Where did they go wrong? They failed to continuously refine their business model and innovate within their industry.   One company in this industry that i know is not going to suffer the same fate is Best Buy.

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