Marketing Strategy
M4U is Music Streaming platform based on AI (Deep Learning) that generates new songs based on uploaded files.
The problems that we solve is:
1) Artists cannot create similar music throughout their lifetime.
2) People love the music of artists who passed away.
3) Big labels consistently require for new music
The company's mission is to Rebirth and create new legendary songs using AI (Deep Learning).
What makes our product unique is that our algorithm is able to generate music based on uploaded files. It can be either new music and genre or it can be a song of an artist who passed away.
Startup Goals & Key plans:
M4U has a primary goal of reaching positive net income by 2023 by having 40 million premium subscribed users and partnership with big entities.
The key performance indicators that will help us to track the progress are Conversion rate of free users into premium and by increasing Net profit margin.
Target audience & Market
Market is as big as people who have payment enabled smartphones, that’s 1.3 billion people today with 0.4 billion growth annually. Our Global opportunity is 3 billion people who have payment enabled smartphones all over the World.
The app will be launched in the North America and Europe regions, then slowly but consistently expand its market. In 5 years we’re planning to conquer China’s & India’s markets.
Buyer personas.
Individual person.
Millennials.
People born in 1980-1994, who are actively interested in the technology, love music and can afford monthly subscriptions.
Generation Z.
People born in 1995-2012. Students and teenagers who love music and are able to pay a monthly subscription to experiment with the music.
Generation X.
People born in 1965-1980. People at the older age and whose favourite artist passed away. People would love to listen to similar songs of their loved artist even if it is generated by AI.
Commercial entities.
Small entities.
This includes small production entities that anyhow related with sound. It could be radio, podcast, small film studio or any other similar entities that do not require music constantly.
Big entities.
This includes big music labels, like Sony, or big studios, like Netflix. These entities consistently need new and original music for their artist or soundtrack to a movie/series.
Competitive Analysis.
Aiva.io
Products we compete with: aiva.io website. This is our direct competitor. They generate melodies based on AI, however, they cannot generate new songs based on uploaded files and generated melodies by their algorithm do not have lyrics. Also, they do not have a multi platform system that makes user experience uncomfortable.
Spotify
This is our indirect competitor. Spotify does not have an algorithm to generate new songs based on AI. However, they have a strong brand name and it is the first platform to become successful in the music streaming industry. Spotify does have a multi platform system that allows users to use one account across all devices.
Marketing channels.
Social Media
Purpose: Increase brand awareness & build a strong brand name.
Create and maintain pages across all the popular platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and TikTok) to increase brand awareness and build strong brand name.
Metrics to measure success: 60 million total followers across all platforms + 10% engagement rate.
TV & Radio
Purpose: Increase brand awareness & attract new users.
Advertise our service via radio to increase brand awareness and do product placements in movies/series.
It will be possible to make product placement in movies/series for barter. We give free music for movie production and they put our product into movies/series.
Metrics to measure success: 5 million new users.
Digital Newspapers & Magazines
Purpose: Increase brand awareness & attract new users.
Advertise our service via paid articles on popular digital newspapers and magazines related to music/fashion/technology.
Measure of success: 10 million new users.
Networking & Community
Purpose: Create a strong brand name and community around it.
Organize free events, so everyone could join it and see how the company is open to people.
Maintain blogs and consistently upload new content.
Organize discussions and let people offer their ideas regarding further development of our company.
Digital Ads
Purpose: Attract new users.
Advertise our service via search engines & social medias to attract new users to our application.
Measure of success: 50 million new users.
Cold emails
Purpose: Attract entities for partnership.
Measure of success: 2,000 new entities sign up for our service.
Tactics, timeline & budget
# Legend
Task / Activity - T / A
What’s involved - WI
Goal - G
Estimated cost - EC
1.
T / A: Creating a website.
WI: Develop a unique website of 7 pages. Users will be able to see the intro page, download the app, sign up, login, contact us, see our blog and see the price.
G: Brand awareness.
EC: 3,000$
2.
T / A: Create pages across all major social media platforms.
WI: Create and constantly upload valuable and viral content on all major social media pages.
G: Build brand name & gain customer loyalty.
EC: 5,000$/m
3.
T / A: Outbound marketing campaign
WI: Sending cold emails to potential entity partners.
G: Gain partnership with entities
EC: 59$/m
4.
T / A: Digital advertising
WI: Place ads on search engines & social media
G: Attract new users.
EC: 10,000$/m
5.
T / A: Product placement
WI: Partner with entities and create music for them for product placement
G: Increase brand awareness
EC: Free
6.
T / A: Ads on newspaper & magazines
WI: Place paid articles on online newspapers & magazines
G: Increase brand awareness & attract new users
EC: 3,000$
Self-reflective essay
This is a self-reflective essay on a subject of my startup project.
My startup project is a music streaming platform based on artificial intelligence and deep learning. Startup name is M4U it is an abbreviation for Music for You. We want to make music affordable for everyone.
The 21st century made a revolution in people’s lives. The spread and availability of the internet offered people things that were unimaginable before. Today, traveling between continents is a matter of a few hours. People have never been so close to each other, however, no matter how paradoxical it may sound, but, this closeness makes people move away from each other. And nowadays, their smartphone is the only thing that people go deep into. Nowadays, people use their devices twenty four hours a day, and seven days in a week. People listen to the music much of the time when they are going for a walk, traveling, working and studying.
15 years ago a person with headphones in the public place was abnormal, however, today the majority listens to music, podcast or radio while doing any activities or going from point A to point B. Owners of smartphones were downloading music or any media to their phone in the past to listen/watch it, however, with the development of the technologies and availability of 4G, recently online streaming platforms got popular. This is a trend that people from now on will shift from storing any media or data on their devices to watching or listening to online streaming services.
Seeing a huge demand for online streaming platforms I came to the idea for creating a new music streaming platform, but just another platform cannot satisfy the users, hence, will not be popular, so I created a unique feature that other services do not have and which is out of any competition. In our app the users can listen not only to the existing music but generate new music.
In terms of competition, I would like to state that there are 2 main music streaming platforms. It is Spotify and Apple music. They both work on similar business model. However, Apple music is not available on Android platform, while Spotify can be used on various platforms including iOS.
For the convenience of our users our application will be available across all major platforms, and can take advantage of it. Our potential market is enormously big and constantly growing. There are 1.3 billion payment enabled smartphones with annual growth of 0.4 billion worldwide. These numbers include growing markets that are only entering the online payment system. Also, there are countless countries in the early developing stage of online payments, so in a couple of decades, they will be able to be our customers.
There are legendary musicians, singers, groups and bands in history, and a lot of them passed away. This application gives an opportunity to give a new birth for their music career. Image, a new single from Beatles, or creating a new Chopin’s etude that transfers the atmosphere of that time. Users can mix old and new genres of music and this will be a revolution in the music industry.
The algorithm used in the application makes it possible to generate a new complete produced music. The music is generated by artificial intelligence, so it can be either a brand new music/sound, that doesn’t copy a selected artist’s style or the generated music can be on a base of specifically selected artist or a specific chosen song.
The difference is that if a user selects to generate a new song based on a specific artist, the song generated by our algorithm will analyses artist songs that were created throughout his or her life, highlight what all his songs have in common, copy his/her style, voice and generate lyrics based on his song, after that the application will be able to generate a song that is similar to his/her other songs.
On the other hand, when a user chooses to generate a song based on the specific song, the artificial intelligence copies the performance style of a specific song, notes that were played by an artist, lyrics and the overall message of the generated song will be similar to that specific uploaded song.
Due to the introduction of 5G the date processing and generating new music will not take more than 10 seconds, the application potentially can maintain full functionality for 10 billion users at the same time.
In conclusion, I would like to say that this is a revolutionary application that aims to change the music world. People have never seen any application like this anytime before and could not even think how potential this could be. And the main thread for our success is people’s perception of something that is generated by the computer, people still think that if a song or any other media is generated by artificial intelligence this product does not have a soul and cannot be treated as a piece of art, however, this application aims to prove that art can be created by artificial intelligence as well.
Done by: Ulugbek Shakirov
