

Are Music Startups Destined to Fail? - schintan
http://mashable.com/2010/10/17/imeem-music-startups/

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cvinson
I run a music "startup" that is in the "extremely saturated" space he is
describing. We're now 7 years old, have 10 employees and have been profitable
since 2005 with no VC.

There are many opportunities in the music startups, just as in other
industries. Find a market need. Test your product, and iterate quickly. In our
case, we found that by bundling a website builder with tools to promote and
sell music is something that musicians want to pay for. We're not the only
one, there are many profitable companies in this space.

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rumpelstiltskin
If you don't mind, what's your startup's annual revenue?

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ABrandt
The anti-music startup sentiment has been picking up steam lately. Its hard to
argue against it being a difficult space to be in, but are we really ready to
just turn our backs on innovation all together? Music _needs_ startups--more
now than ever before. 1000s may fail (and probably already have!) but just one
needs to hit it big in this space for us all to be better off.

When everyone else is saying "run away", its the brave(/stupid) who keep
pushing forward that win in the end.

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pg
I think the secret to innovation in this domain is to find ways around the
labels. We're happy to fund music startups that don't directly touch label
music, e.g. Songkick (which focuses on concerts) and thesixtyone (which
focuses on indy music).

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starkness
I have seen time and time again friends trying to innovate in the music space
getting screwed over due to the monopoly powers granted via copyright. When
there are 4 record labels that are able to act in tandem and that together
hold the rights to 90% of the music released on labels in the US, they are
bound to hold people back.

Artists don't have to sign away their rights to labels, but unfortunately that
has not changed at the pace that many had hoped it would. The real innovation
needed here is a way for artists to be able to go it alone and break away from
the control of the labels.

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jchrisa
I think record companies would be making a lot more money right now if they'd
embraced Napster and started to compete with their own websites. But that's
hindsight.

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jakerocheleau
The music industry isn't going anywhere. The successful startups related to
the music industry will be the one's which adapt and change with a growing
market

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reednj
I disagree, music isn't going anywhere, but the music industry is
fundamentally a publishing industry, and they face the same problems that all
publishers do, in that the internet makes the problems of distribution and
marketing that they solve much less difficult.

I don't really know what that will mean in terms of startups, but it seems
like there would be money to be made exploiting these changing in
circumstances while the bigger companies are fumbling about wondering what is
happening.

