I’m selling this innovative concept after working on building the idea and concept for almost 3 years.

I’m stuck at the Beta stage made for me by a web agency during nearly 1 year.

I can’t fund the project anymore to release the public version, spend on marketing and promotion, and I am not a developer so I can’t improve anything myself.

A developer knowing how to code in Ruby On Rails will be able to easily make this concept a very profitable business !

There is only a little bit of coding still to be done to be able to release the public version : mainly Ajax, xml improvement, a few Facebook platform modifications and implementing Paypal payments in the “Promo account” section to be able to sell promo campaigns. It would then probably be 1 or 2 weeks of work.

Don’t forget to check the VIDEO PRESENTATIONS :

Meetsound Facebook Application : http://www.youtube.com/v/MbTEoOYM_EE

Meetsound Distributor Account : http://www.youtube.com/v/d0nd6pinNeU

Meetsound Promo Account : http://www.youtube.com/v/e0qxCyqxtEk

I. THE CONCEPT
A) Needs which Meetsound meets.

As they stopped focusing only on illegal downloads, most of the Music Content Suppliers realized that, in the “Web 2.0″ era, the biggest challenge was to stand out from the colossal mass of music available. Henceforth they are now looking for new ways of increasing the number of their fans, of experimenting viral marketing campaigns and facilitating exchanges so as to monetize their catalogs.

In the same way Djs are trying to increase their fame and be able to get more gigs. They are also in permanent search for new music and a majority of them never receives any promotional tracks sent via the classic promotion services, since they are not considered as being influential enough.

Music fans are looking for recommendation tools to sort out the music they’ll love from the huge amount of tracks available on the web.

B) The way Meetsound meets these needs.

Music industry’s former economic model is dominated by the idea of selling a product against a sum of money. One of the new models consists in building an economic relationship with the fans’ community and in making it grow.

Meetsound’s solution resides in a Web platform which sells and promotes music by connecting Music Content Suppliers, Tastemakers (DJs) and Music Fans.

For Music Content Suppliers, this represents the possibility of using the recommendation’s power of relevant influencers, the DJs, in order to promote and sell their catalogs.

For DJs, pros and amateurs, this represents the possibility of widening their fans’ network, of being able to download some music adapted to their needs at the best price available and to receive new tracks to be downloaded free of charge.

For Music fans, this represents the possibility of being able to discover and get tracks as recommended by their favorite DJs.

II. THE OFFER
A) The Front Office: service intended for the DJs and Music Fans.

Meetsound is an online music service for the DJs and the Music Fans which allows its users to listen to music, buy downloads and exchange musical recommendations via their social network. Users also have the possibility of downloading promotional tracks sent by Music Labels, free of charge.

Access to Meetsound’s service is at present implemented via a Facebook application, available at the following address : http://www.facebook.com/meetsoundmusicstore

Distinctive competitive advantages: receiving new releases to download for free, the possibility for DJs to extend and develop their Fans loyalty and the possibility for Music Fans to be able to follow, listen and download their favorite DJs’ recommendation.

B) The Back Office: promotion tools and Content management for Music Content Suppliers.

Meetsound is an online music service for the Music Content Suppliers which help them to sell and promote music. Meetsound allows its users to target relevant tastemakers, DJs, and thus use their power to promote and sell music to their fans’ network.

The access to the service is made available via a website at the address http://www.meetsound.com/bo.

Two offers are available:

• “Distributor Account”: allows a Supplier to sell its Contents on the Facebook application’s online store. By signing a non-exclusive distribution contract with you, the Distributor gets a % of the sales (less VAT) generated by its Catalog according to your deal (average is 60%).

• “Promo Account”: allows a Content Supplier to refine his selection of relevant DJs and send them promotional tracks to be downloaded free of charge (fixed prices to send 1 track or you could settle some subscriptions).

Distinctive competitive advantages: a direct link between promotion and music sales by connecting both aspects within the same ecosystem, a provided growing list of relevant Tastemakers, a flexible offer adapted to various types of users and allowing competitive prices (depending on your price list).

III. STRATEGY

The global strategy is to monetize the relation between Music Content Suppliers, Tastemakers (DJs) and Music Fans through the already existing social networks. Facebook was chosen as a start but the application can be adapted to other networks.

The concept leads Distributors to promote the service to their distributed Labels, Labels to promote their new releases to DJs, DJs to promote their selections to their Fans and Music fans to promote their favorite DJs to their friends.

Of course, you can adapt this concept to other digital goods like films, video games… and also decline the concept on different music genres. It also means that you could sell licenses of the technology and concept to other companies.

IV. TECHNOLOGIES

The application system (Front Office, Back Office…) has been developed by a Web agency in “Ruby On Rails”.

The Front Office application is integrated in Facebook as a Facebook application but could be run outside Facebook.

The online payment system used is PayPal with a “PayPal Micropayments” (5% + 0.05€). The basket in the Front Office application is configured so that PayPal fees are charged to the customer at the end of the invoice, allowing you to put cheaper download prices in the store.

Ingesting new contents from Content Suppliers is made either by ingesting “XML Batches” received by FTP, or by Content Suppliers uploading themselves via their “Distributor Account” Online Back Office. Meetsound uses its own XML structure; nevertheless the system can accept any kind of XML format coming from Content Suppliers after adapting it to Meetsound’s specifications.

All Contents (audio files, images, metadatas, website, Front Office application, Back Office…) are hosted on an “Amazon Simple Storage Service” (Amazon S3), allowing unlimited storage and flexibility matching exact needs.

The whole system is piloted by applications installed on “Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud” (Amazon EC2) servers. It gives a great flexibility in managing resources and bandwidth at a low price and matching exact needs.
Content delivery to customers and audio streams are dealt by the Amazon CDN solution

V. ADDITIONAL COSTS TO BE PLANNED

Amazon :

• Amazon EC2 Server : around 60€ per month.
• Content Transfers to the Amazon S3 Cloud Storage: around 0,12€ per Gb transferred.
• Amazon S3 Storage: around 0,12€ per Gb stored.
• Amazon streaming: around 0,000015€ per second in 128kbps.
• Wav or Mp3 320k download: around 0,00001€ per track.

Current Amazon total monthly cost : 300$.

Content Suppliers :

• Signing a contract with a new Distributor costs between 500€ and 0,50€ per track to get their catalog in the system/shop depending on the popularity and terms they have. Signing with a Distributor gets you thousands of Music Labels with 1 contract.
• Signing a contract with a Music Label costs between 0€ and 0,50€ per track to get their catalog in the system/shop.

VI. WHO CREATED MEETSOUND

• Antoine ROCKLIN: 32 years old. Founder. French Business Degree and 5 years of experience as Label Manager at a well known records Distributor based in France and specialized in electronic music.
• Andrew DUBBER: 42 years old. Business Strategies Consultant. Well-known Consultant for the music industry (www.newmusicstrategies.com).
• Fabrice EPELBOIN: 39 years old. Business Strategies Consultant. Web Strategies Consultant, Entrepreneur and influential blogger (www.fr.readwriteweb.com).
• Stéphane MENET: 32 years old. Web and Technologies Consultant. Web Project Manager in a French Marketing agency with a solid experience of integrating music Contents in Web products.
• Kantik Web Agency: they built the technology (www.kantik.com). Recent works for the Music industry include an iPhone application for French superstar DJ Laurent Garnier and the new back office and website for Pias Label Group (www.pias.com).

VII. SALE

The buyer will get:
• Full ownership acquisition of the exclusive rights of use of the source codes meaning the rights to modify, re-sell, license and re-distribute them.
• The Brand’s trademark & Logo.
• Reserved domain name www.meetsound.com (currently valid until November 22nd, 2011) + 5 email addresses.
• Facebook application page with Developer account (www.facebook.com/meetsoundmusicstore, around 400 fans and around 300 application users), Meetsound Facebook profile account (www.facebook.com/musicpromotion, around 700 professional contacts), Twitter, Youtube, Gmail, Amazon and Paypal accounts.
• Signed distribution contracts and Music Contents from Kompakt Distribution, Intergroove Distribution, EPM Distribution, Because Music, Nu Urban Music, Poor records, IOT records and Al Dente records. A total of around 450 labels with around 20000 tracks. New releases delivered each week to the Amazon server.
• Labels & Distributors Distribution contracts models in English (and French) and potential Distributors contact list.
• Artwork: logo, business cards, flyers, stickers & t-shirts models in Illustrator, Photoshop and Jpeg formats. Logo designed by Loguy (http://loguy.com).
• Full Business Plan in English (and French).
• 3 days training (onsite or Skype) and 6 months assistance (Phone, email, Skype) by Me.

Option 1: You can buy a % above 51% of the Company “Meetsound SARL” (currently established in Paris, France) and keep the benefit of having the other shareholders as advisers. Buying at least 51% of the Company will make you the main owner. The price would then be the % of the reserve price.

Option 2: If you are willing to invest for a lower % than 51%, we can discuss about it. This would mean that you would like to finance the project to be able to : keep the staff as it is, invest in marketing, promotion and a few more Suppliers and finance a Developper to finish the product.

Revenue Details

A) Facebook application.

Free access to the Service.
Purchases by download (VAT included) per format (Track = 0,99€, Album = 9,99€, Singles between 1,50€ and 5,50€). The PayPal fee is accounted and paid extra by the customer.

B) “Distributor Account”.

Free access to the Service.

The Distributor gets an average of 60% of the turnover (less VAT) generated by the download sales of its catalog.

C) “Promo Account”.

Example of prices you could settle :
• Free: send 1 track to 5 contacts maximum.
• 10€ campaign: send 1 track to 50 contacts maximum.
• 50€ campaign: send 1 track to 1000 contacts maximum.
• 100€ campaign: send 1 track to 5000 contacts maximum.
• 250€ campaign: send 1 track to 25000 contacts maximum.
Or you could settle a premium subscription model for X€/month.

C) Adverts

You could also place adverts in the Facebook app store.
Traffic Details

No marketing or advertising has been done seriously as we don’t have sufficient funds to do it, but with some Facebook adverts, contacting a few big DJs and with the global concept you should be able to grow the user base quite quickly.

Starting Bid ($): 150000

Application URL: http://apps.facebook.com/meet-sound/