4 Startup Lessons From LSTN Headphones

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A year ago, LSTN Headphones was still just a concept. All we had was a website with pictures of prototypes of our headphones up for pre-sale, and an idea that we could change lives through the power of music — with our business. Since then, we’ve learned some valuable lessons about starting a business and what it takes to succeed.

Pick a Project You’re Passionate About

Can you imagine a world without sound? As a music lover, I couldn’t imagine never discovering a new artist, never hearing my favorite album, or never going to my first concert. Music is the soundtrack to my life and it’s shaped who I am today. I went from being a kid growing up in Flint, Mich. learning how to play guitar to working with some of the biggest artists in the world at major labels in Los Angeles.

Set Yourself Apart From the Pack With a Clear Vision

When we were first starting out, everyone thought we were crazy to enter a market that seemingly every rapper and electronics company in the world had already set foot in. The problem was that although the headphone market is massive, none of the existing brands were making headphones we wanted to buy. In addition to great sound quality, we set out to create headphones that were beautifully designed and environmentally friendly.

Consider Your Social Values

When we looked at that massive market, we didn’t see another company making headphones that sounded good, looked good—and were doing good. So we set forth on a mission that would set us apart: we’d produce great headphones made from reclaimed wood and, for every pair sold, LSTN would help restore hearing to a person in need through the Starkey Hearing Foundation. We make direct contributions to Starkey with each purchase of our headphones.

Remember That Success Comes in Two Forms

Running a startup is not for the faint of heart — very little sleep, a lot of travel, no money, constant roller coaster emotions. I recently returned from a trip to Peru, where I got to experience the joy of seeing people receive the gift of hearing — and being exposed to music — for the first time. When I saw the faces that lit up when children connected and communicated with their families, I lost it. It was truly life changing. It trumped being able to quit my corporate job to do LSTN full time. It trumped the feeling of getting our product into Whole Foods.

In fact, it trumped everything we had accomplished up to that point, because to even change one person’s life through our business proved that our plan was working. On that trip, we helped fit 10,000 people in various cities and villages throughout Peru with hearing aids. (We made a short video about our journey that you can see here.)

Is your business changing lives? Do you want it to?

This post was originally featured on GOOD.is.

Bridget Hilton is founder of LSTN Headphones, a music start-up based in Hollywood, CA that makes high quality wooden headphones and funds hearing restoration programs globally. To learn more, watch here.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

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Flash Crystals Shoots to Change Music Distribution in 2014

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Let’s face it: physical music promotion hasn’t changed since the 90’s. Music has evolved with cloud based music streaming, online radio, and music on the go. So why are CDs still around?

Charleson Bell, Chief Innovation Officer of Crystal Innovations, asked himself the very same question, and his answer soon became the Flash Crystal.

According to Bell and the rest of his team at Crystal Innovations Inc, the Flash Crystal is the future of media sharing. Using NFC technology, the Flash Crystal can instantly upload music, artist’s websites, business cards or media files from the Internet straight to your NFC enabled mobile device.

Pretty cool, huh?

The Flash Crystal is breaking the idea that all music should be cloud based by combining the reliability of a physical copy of media and adopting today’s newest tech. The Flash Crystal is one of the easiest way to share media content today. Unlike Bluetooth, it doesn’t require a PIN to link, and it doesn’t require an app like a QR code. Simply turn on the NFC on your mobile device, tap the back of your phone with the Crystal and you have yourself a whole album of music.

It’s that simple.

Bell spoke to me about how he came to the development of Flash Crystals when he was starting BioNanovations in December of 2012. Bell said, “Money was tight, and I was trying to sell CD’s of my own music just to get by.” He said his CD’s didn’t sell because no one buys CD’s anymore, and that’s when he met the point where desperation equaled innovation.

“I needed something that could send music straight to your phone without the hassle of a CD,” he said.

Bell is currently still the CEO of his biotech startup BioNanovations, but he works closely Ronnie Braxton and the rest of his team to bring the Flash Crystal to life.

According to ABI Research, there were 285 million NFC-capable devices in 2013. In 2014 it is estimated that more than 500 million NFC-capable phones will be in the hands of consumers worldwide. With millions losing terabytes of data using cloud-based music storage, and according to eMarketer, over 70 million people listening to their music regularly on a mobile phone in 2013, Flash Crystal has the potential to change music promotion and distribution for good.

As a Business Management major at Trevecca Nazarene University and a Division II track athlete, Josh Durham is in a little bit of everything.  Josh loves startups from tech to healthcare and recently joined the ranks of an online coffee fundraiser called Goodbean.org from his hometown of Franklin, Tennessee.

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Warner Music Exec Ping Ho Gives Important Tips For Music Startups

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Larry Miller, Medianet (L), Ping Ho, Warner Music Group (R) (photo: NMI 2013)

Warner Music Group’s Director of the Digital Strategy Team, Ping Ho, was in Nashville today for the Music Startup Academy. The event is meant to merge musicians, labels, lawyers, publishers and entrepreneurs working on startups that are touching the music business.

In my startup experience I’ve get to talk to a lot of startups. I’ve also sat on a few committees that have vetted startups for accelerator programs. So often I’ve met music based startups who have no idea how big the can of worms is when they want to do something with commercial music.

Ho, has been with Warner Music Group over the last 8 years, and always with the digital department. She’s been through just about the entire boom of the digital music age.

We’re going to continue to dive more into music focused startups in the future here at nibletz.com but in the mean time, at the event today Ho gave some very good advice to music startups.

First things first, in my experience, I’ve met quite a few founders who want to offer some kind of “radio” or “streaming” service and are adamant about doing their own thing and not using an API from someone like Spotify or Rdio. That may be the biggest mistake you’ll ever make.

Licensing music directly from a major label and can be very costly. Legitimizing your startup among independent artists can be a very long tail process. If you don’t have millions (and I’m not exaggerating) you may want to reconsider those Spotify API’s until you can build up traction.

Stubborn? Headstrong, oh ok you have the greatest idea in the world and want to go directly to the label then read on…

For starters Ho did say that it’s a lot easier to score a meeting or at least a chance to get your startup in front of her team than it would be for an artist to get in front of a traditional A&R. But pay attention here or you’ll blow it.

The Boy Scout Rule: Be Prepared.

Sure this is common knowledge but for Ho, and her counterparts at other labels this means.

– knowing your pitch
– knowing your market
– knowing your competition
– knowing what you need from the label
– having a white paper or deck, but they want to see both business plan and product, and in depth.

On this, here is the absolute biggest thing Ho said that will get your meeting shut down…

Have a ProtoType, DO NOT BE IN A CLOSED WORKING BETA.

Ho said that many times startups have pitched her. They get to a meeting and have set up a wonderful login for her to use to access their startup. They are happy, headstrong and proudly say, “We’re in a closed beta with 5000 users, and they love it”, “They’re using our service four hours a day each”. Then she, or an executive in her position, goes to the actual product and they’re using Warner’s music in the “beta”. Well guess what, your great idea and great startup are now stealing WMG’s product, and with 5,000 users using the service four hours a day, you’re stealing a lot of that.

The music business is going through it’s biggest fundamental change ever. An executive with Sony earlier in the program said “The album is dead, we need to find more high margin product businesses”, digital licensing is now the catalog vault.

“I’m going to rely on the artist to help build my customer base” makes Ho cringe the way that “we’re going to grow socially and organically over the first two years” makes me cringe.

Artists aren’t going to get involved until they see how your startup is impacting their bottom line. This can be a double edged sword as well because remember, the death of the album is affecting artists just as much as it is labels. They’re getting into more and more businesses, and a lot of them are digital.

So now that you’ve got all that, check out digitalmusic.org they’ll help you get to that next step.

Here are more great startup stories from Nashville.

 

Tampa Startup: Muzime Is A Spotify For Indie Artists That Kicks Ass

Music sharing startups are popping up all over the place. A lot of them would qualify as “a dime a dozen” but that’s not the case with Florida based Muzime. Joel Fenelon tells the FloridaTechnologyJournal that while he was in college his studies pivoted from business to music. After that he studied and became a conductor, eventually leading to an offer to conduct overseas.

While building up his musical repertoire he realized that his works were his and filled with emotion. He also realized he didn’t want anyone else to own his music, he wanted to own it, perform it and share it with who he wants to when he wants to. That tiny idea eventually evolved into what today he is calling Muzime.

Muzime is a familiar idea, a music sharing platform ala the newest iteration of MySpace and of course social music powerhouse Spotify. However those comparisons just about stop after the “shared music” anomoly.

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Joel Fenelon CEO & Founder Muzime (photo: 84degrees.com)

What separates Muzime from the Spotify’s of the world, is that the platform is entirely about indy artists and musicians, like Fenelon, who hold onto the rights of their music.

The service is free to sing up for both artists and music buffs. Artists can create a profile page and share snippets of their songs on their pages. In fact they can upload as many songs as they like. From there, Muzime charges $.89 for the user base to download songs. Of that, the musician gets $.69 while Muzime holds onto $.20 from each track, to keep the servers running .

One of the great features about the site itself is that music lovers can stream each song two times. After the second time they can get a :30 clip of the song or download it for the $.89.

Muzime catalogs the music by artist, title, genre and mood. If you’re feeling happy, sad, angry or any other mood you can select music that way as well.

Muzime has a wide variety of music from just about every genre. We checked out “Jam Bands”, Hip Hop, Jazz and Classical all offering a good sized list of songs and artists. Also each song and artist have their own page where you can get lyrics, read stories about the song and artist and interact with the artists. Muzime is an incredibly robust platform especially considering it’s made up of just independent artists.

The real beauty behind this innovative Florida startup is that Fenelon is not just looking to expose new artists to more people, he’s looking to help artists monetize on their works, which is obviously a win-win for everyone involved.


Linkage:

Check out Muzime and sign up here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else”

source: FloridaTechnoloyJournal

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Massachusetts Startup: Have You Heard Wins “ReThink Music” Startup Competition

from left: Rethink Music Genesis Project startup competition winners Adam Gottesfeld and Joey Seiler, co-founders of Have You Heard?; (photo: hyperbot)

Two Harvard Law School students, Joey Seiler and Adam Gottesfield and the startup they’ve founded called  “Have You Heard” have one a music startup competition sponsored by ReThink Music Berklee and Babson College. You may be wondering what studying and law have to do with this music based startup, well nothing, but it’s a great idea.

From my days in top 40 radio in medium and major markets the hardest thing for a music director in a radio station to do is actually listen to new music. On any given Tuesday (new music day) there are anywhere from 10-30 “priority” records that the record labels want to get airplay. In the 90’s there was a competition called the AIR competition (Active Industries Research) a company founded by Jonas Cash who founded the Billboard Airplay Monitor. Music directors and Program Directors at R&R reporting radio stations would compete every week to guess where a track would end up on the charts. At the end of the quarter prizes, including BMW’s and 30,000 in cash were awarded to those that got the most right.

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