YOURFEST
The Ultimate Music Experience App
In the framework of Startup Lab by Ad and Pr Lab in Panteion University, we had the opportunity to create our own startup from point zero. The goal was to make radio “cool’’ again, by creating and developing innovative ideas regarding the audio and radio industry. In order to achieve this, we had the privilege to be mentored by members of Antenna Music throughout the semester.
Our first attempt of Brainstorming
When our team, heard the phrase “Try to give radio its coolness back’’ our first thought was WHY isn’t radio cool anymore?’’ After giving this question a lot of thought, we unanimously agreed on one thing. What is missing from the radio and audio sector is Interactivity.
We are in need of new ideas in the radio and audio industry and we need fresh minds to make them shine and stand out. Therefore, we emphasized in offering young and talented people, the chance to shine. But how did we expect to do so? Follow us to unleash our Start up Journey and to wander into a confused but (GOD!) so creative world of ideas!
After a huge session of brainstorming, our initial idea was to develop an application through which young people could create their own playlists and podcasts based on their music taste and share them through a personal profile. We named our application RadioTaste. RadioTaste would offer its users the chance to keep up with the trends of the music industry though customised content, and simultaneously serve as a creative outlet for aspiring musicians and podcasters.
Our biggest mistake while creating RadioTaste was that we tried to fit all our ideas into one application that would offer everything we thought young people needed in regard to audio and radio. That led to our application having a big amount of features which resulted to our project looking complicated and messy. In the meantime, while creating our Business Model Canvas we hit another bump on the road. All these features that we wanted to include in our app increased our Cost Structure and made it impossible for our application to be offered for free or at low price, as we had initially planned. So we decided to scrap our idea, take what we had learnt so far and go back to the drawing board.
The turning point of our Brainstorming
After having figured out that our idea was a bit confusing not only for the future user but also for us ourselves we decided to go back from where we started. After having a team discussion, we came to a point where nothing could help us broaden our mind and come up with something different. We decided to have in mind what is going on right now in audio and radio industry and combine those facts with our own needs. Since summer season starts early in Greece that means that many music festivals and concerts take place everywhere in the country. As youngsters, we want to attend almost in every one of them, but this cannot be achieved as our friends don’t have the same music taste as us and without company, festivals and concerts lose half of their magic. This was it! This was the starting point of our idea; YourFest.
YourFest and its Value Proposition Canvas
YourFest is a Social app that allows the user to create a profile based on their music taste. After the user has signed up he/she will be able to music match with other users. Furthermore, the app will provide information on concerts and festivals that take place both in their area and those worldwide and will be separated by genre. Besides that, the app is partnered up with other housing apps in order to help the user experience the ultimate concert feeling if that takes place elsewhere.
In addition, the app informs the user on who else near them will attend the same concert as they do and allows communication in order to create a bond based on music. Finally, the user can create content by uploading their experience in their own profiles by posting pictures, videos, live streaming or podcasts and sharing them with their music buddies. In this way they are getting Fest-ed! Missing music events because someone doesn’t have company now belongs in the past. With YourFest there is no need for the user to search on Google and YouTube for further information or performances as they can all be found collected in one place. In this way they can give feedback and documents about their experience to other users that may not be able to attend and help them “experience” them themselves.
Our Next Mission: Business Model Canvas
Following the presentation of our value proposition canvas, our next mission was to create the Business Model Canvas which includes elements that help us describe the firm’s value proposition, infrastructure, customers and finances.
The core of our canvas is our Value Proposition. We aim at having a product which saves the time of our users, provides them all the info they need for all the latest concerts and music festivals, gives them the ability to make new friends with the same music taste who can attend the concerts with them, gives them the chance to enter exciting giveaways and many more!
Our customers will mostly be a younger audience just because it is more common for them to attend the concerts and festivals we will provide content about. Also the younger audience is more interested in experiencing music festivals, getting together with other people and having fun.
The relationship we aim to build with our customers is based on creating a community in which people can connect, mainly based on their music preferences. And so our main channel will be our app in which people will be able to share exclusive content, such as photos, videos and podcasts from their experience and communicate with each other.
So which are our Key Activities that will make people download our app and continue using it? Simple things that make a difference such as not searching the internet for hours in order to find everything you need, having all the concerts separated by genre and area and lots of exciting contests and giveaways. All these will provide to our Key resources which are based on the original content we will provide.
Our Cost Structure will consist of our app designers, web developers, our stuff, our paid advertisement, the record labels and artists we’ll work with and our partners in other sectors. These partners and the traffic on the app will be our revenue streams.
Finally, our Key Partners will be Antenna Music, Viva Wallet, Airbnb, Booking.com and Aegean airlines that will help us provide to the users the best experience possible.
So when we finished our presentation based on our Business Model Canvas we had to make some last small changes in order to perfect our idea and present a final and all aspects completed product to Antenna Music.
Our Final Pitch
First of all, we consider the Customer Validation. What’s the problem we solve? YourFest is the perfect application to help young people not only find company to attend every music event they like, but also keep them informed about where to stay for it. Furthermore, the users will create their personal profile, in which they can also upload content from their music experiences.
In order to make our idea more sustainable and find out more about our target audience, we created a questionnaire related to the app and we presented the answers in statistics. Our first observation was that the majority of our respondents were aged from 16 to 26 years old. We were glad, since our main goal is to attract young audience. The vast majority of the respondents (73%), replied that they would be interested in downloading a music App like YourFest.
The next question had a positive result as well, since the 69,5 % of the respondents replied that they are indeed concert/festival fans. As for if they would be interested in finding people with the same music taste, approximately the half respondents(53,3%) replied yes, a good amount (33,3%) replied maybe, and just a small amount (13,3) replied negatively.
Our next step was to calculate the amount of money we will need in order to bring our vision to life. After doing some research we came to the conclusion that the total amount we will need to cover for our expenses is approximately 90.000€ to 120.000€ including everything we need, from app designers and developers to right holders and even rent and furnishing for our office.
In our revenue plan, we aim to create partnerships with Apps like : Viva Wallets, Βooking.com, Αirbnb, Τripadvisor and also with airlines & transportation companies. Last but not least, considering the feedback we got, we added Couchsurfing which includes an overall experience of hosting for the most alternative.
Our business model couldn’t miss out our competitors. As our main competitors we consider other music applications such as Stubhub, LiveNation Entertainment, Bandsitown, Ticketmaster, Ticketfly and Songkick. We would like to highlight our main difference. These applications may offer information and booking, but YourFest offers you the ultimate experience by creating a whole community of users that can share their own concert content and interact with each other.
Your First Peek at YourFest
There are two options in the front page. A user can see the home page, or press Get Started in order to create his personal profile. You can sign up with Facebook or email, as in most applications. After that, the app informs you that it needs access to your library and location, in order to create the appropriate personalized calendar for you.
After joining YourFest, you have access to information about all the concerts in your area and the people who are interested in them as well. If you are looking for something specific, you can use our search bar. There’s also an option that enables you to choose between our assembled applications, in order to get exclusive deals and find the accommodation that suits you and your music partners the best. But, if you want to go one step further, which means being able to enter giveaways and chat with your concert buddies, you need to get a premium account, so press learn more!
Let’s Talk About Premium, Shall We?
As for our premium edition, we priced it at 3€, in order to give our users the privilege of tickets, merchandise, giveaways etc. According to our research, about one out of three responders (31,7%) were interested in getting a premium account, half of them (50%) replied maybe and just (18,3%) replied no. Respectively, the half of them (50%) said that they would be interested in creating or having access to exclusive concert contents, approximately the other half (43,3%) replied maybe, and just a few responders replied negatively.
So, if you are young and you’re looking for the ultimate music experience, make sure that you are getting Fest-ed!!
This concludes our start-up journey as documented by the Starketers team. Sofia Anastasiou, Nektaria Ignatiou, Marianna Kantli, Marianna Brousti, Martha Tselemegkou. Special thanks to Betty Tsakarestou and the team of Antenna Music for guiding us through this unique learning experience.
