Music Business 1For my module project I have chose to release a short sampler video along with an official website with logo and create relevant social media platforms that I can use to promote my business to the community and potential clients. My business is called ’Social Soundwaves’ and is a community based organisation that delivers musical workshops/projects such as Rap, Lyric Writing, Beat production, DJ & Dance to the youth and community of South Wales. From my 7 years experience delivering such workshops I believe that my target audience for this type venture is young people aged 15 - 25 but can still offer many services for other age groups. For this project I will mainly be targeting young people age 15 – 25.The overall goal for my project would be to establish a recognised, self sustaining business within South Wales that has a positive effect on those who use the services.As a young teen I was involved in a similar organization called ‘Urban Circle’ and was supported in learning the fundamentals about music, performance and being a creative artist. It was a social enterprise that had a young people database of over 2000 young people, and was the perfect place to come to socialise with other young musicians/creatives and had the facilities to perfect your craft whether it be recording time, rehearsal space, production software, photo/video editing software workshops, it was all accessible to young people.

https://www.facebook.com/UrbanCircle?ref=br_tf

I aim to take a similar approach to my organisation by offering similar facilities and support to young people and provide them with creative workshops/traineeships giving them an introduction to the creative industry.

The unique selling points for my business project would be:

1. Social Soundwaves has the ability to create and deliver tailor made project plans e.g, if somebody is interested in getting involved in music production, I would first have a consultation meeting with that person/group and find out what kind of music they would be interested in making and then create a project plan based on their music preference and existing ability within that field.

2. The organisation is based within a friendly youth facility and has its own professional recording studio/creative suite within the premises. Every project will take place in a comfortable studio setting and will be uninterrupted. Many workshops I have seen and delivered have been held at rather rowdy places like youth clubs, schools etc and the progression of the participants learning is highly affected by other young people interrupting the sessions.

These are things I think are important for clients to have knowledge of as its results in a much bigger impact on the consumers interest.

In terms of PROMOTION and MARKETING I firstly created ’Social Soundwaves’ web pages on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. I then deigned and launched an official website for the business. Even though many organisations and businesses these days solely operate via social media platforms and don’t feel the need for a website. I felt that having an official website styled in an ‘Urban’ fashion would make the business look more professional and will appeal to both project funding bodies and my target audience of young people. Social media platforms have limited capabilities in terms of styling your pages appearance with colour themes, text fonts, sliding pictures etc therefore not looking as branded as a customized website.In order to achieve my desired look for the website, I firstly organised a photo-shoot in a professional recording studio with some young people I have worked with for website content. The pictures I shot show young people getting hands on with industry standard equipment to show their engaging smiley faces as a nice touch for the website visitor. I then photo-shopped the images to a matching mood of the website theme for a professional look. I have also

I also uploaded tutor bios & pictures, case studies of successful past participants, and listed the services Soicial Soundwaves has to offer.

After completing the website I then focused on creating the promotional trailer video.I wanted to capture real life events of young people engaging in all of the workshop types on the services list so the viewer could see for themselves how effective this type of project can be for young people. I took my camera along to a number of workshops I delivered and filmed the young people taking part, performing etc.I also used footage from a master class workshop that was part of a past project I delivered involving members of legendary Hip Hop group.. Dilated Peoples. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilated_Peoples http://dilatedpeoples.com The footage shows young people actually performing along side these industry celebrities and having a great time. Something I believed would be VERY effective for potential consumers to witness. (Evidence can be seen on the promo video) I also posted on Facebook a picture of the master-class along with a description about the positive project outcome, again tagging a number of relevant people to it.

After editing and completing the video I then posted it to my Facebook and the projects Facebook page along with a large description detailing who Social Soundwaves are and what we do with a personal message from me sharing my opinion on how important creativity is in the development of young peoples futures.

Before posting, I tagged a large number of young people and anyone else I thought may take interest into the project and asked them if they would kindly share the post on their wall as another way of engagement. The chose to post it on a Saturday evening at approximately 8:00PM as that’s when I believed a large audience would be sat chilling at home scrolling through the world of Facebook. In approximately three hours the post reached around 25 likes, 10 shares and a number of people commented positive feedback.I then done the same the next day with the projects website and Facebook page

tagging many other relevant people to the posts. This time around 4:00 – 5:00PM, where I believed many people would be stuffed from their Sunday dinners, couch bound and Facebooking! This post had a much bigger reaction to the first resulting in the Facebook page to generate over 100 hundred likes in just two hours, along with approximately 15 shares. I think posting on a Sunday afternoon is allot more effective than a Saturday evening. Many people go out and socialise on Saturdays meaning less people on Facebook.

On the evening of Sunday 10th January I purchased some Facebook promotion to ‘Boost’ the Social Soundwaves page using Facebooks advertisement service.I paid £15.00 for 3 days advertising, which I was estimated by Facebook to reach an estimated 6,000 to 18,000 people costing £5.00 per day. When setting up the ad Facebook gave me options as to where the ad would go and what type of people would I would like to see it by adding a target location and interests. As my target audience is 15 – 25 year olds I added interests such as, Eminem, Drake, Jay Z, Xbox 360, PS4, One Direction and many more I thought were relevant to young people.

By Tuesday 13th January 3:30PM, the page had reached 6,964 people but only generated 44 likes, comments and shares.I think to gain more interest using this type of advertisement I need use a better picture make the ad more appealing to young people like maybe using captions such as..DO YOU WANT TO RAP??DO YOU WANT TO GET INVOLVED IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY??ETC.I think this maybe more striking to young people promoting them to click on the ad.

As for other types of social engagement I personally set up meetings with different youth organisations such as Randomz, CCYP, Bron Afon housing and Cardiff Council. Pitching my project to them and showing evidence of past workshops i.e. the Promo Video etc.The reaction was very positive and have recently received confirmation from both Bron Afon and Randomz that they will be using my services both on 28 week project lengths! A Fantastic result bringing in over £5000 of profit between both contracts.Both of these organisations are government funded and have a combined data base of over 15,000 young people. So getting a foot in door with these I can foresee being very promising for future projects!

(BRON AFON PROJECT CONFIRMATION)

I also set up a ’Dizzyjam’ merchandise online shop, and designed an updated version of the project logo that would suit better on T-shirts etc. The main purpose for this was to give Social Soundwaves more of a branded quality so the business looked a lot more current & professional.

I created a number of different items on the site such as hats, mugs, t-shirts, bags and hoodies.

I then posted a status to the Facebook page with links to the merchandise shop stating that what ever profit is made form the merchandise would be going straight towards Arts Award training for the tutors of Social Soundwaves enabling us to deliver Arts Award OCN qualifications to young people.Something that is VERY appealing to youth servives, schools etc.

http://www.artsaward.org.uk/site/?id=1346

Other forms of engagement I achieved were:

Getting a DJ of Newport City Radio to promote the business over their broadcast.

Having the following organisations promote to their young people data base. Urban Circle, Randomz, Bron Afon & CCYP.

What am I going to do next? I am going to continue to promote the project via all the social media platforms I have signed up to, posting new media content from workshops etc. Building up an audience of followers and potential clients.I will also look into other types of social engagement such as writing to various newspapers & magazines and asking for a press release, sign up with more social media platforms, print flyers, business cards and hand out at schools, colleges etc.

Through the approaches I took to promote this project I believe I have definitely created an identity for the organization along with an interested bunch of followers. The majority of people that interacted with the online content were young people aged 15 – 25, therefore reaching the intended audience.

I have learned many things throughout this module but I think the main lesson

was that if your going to release anything then you NEED a strategy! As I was mainly focused on the creation of the online content throughout the module, I released my project rather late and left myself very little time to strategize a more effective release as that potentially could have reached a lot more people. I am still happy with the overall outcome as by putting the skills I have learned from this module together I have established a self sustaining business out of what I LOVE doing, and to me… that’s a WIN!!

Gareth Leaman.