Business Plans

There is a lot to be learned from professionals in the business consultants just from their views on business plans. In the previous post, I researched Frank Gloey and Dave Lavinsky. These two have similar views that I found rather helpful. They both talk about realistic assumptions and how realistic the business plan is (Lavinsky, 2012) (Goley, 2012).

I incorporated information from both professionals in my business plan. Goley stresses being genuine and realistic. I made the most realistic assumptions in my business plan as possible. As a company, we care genuinely about our clients and their music.

From Lavinsky, I found it best to make a unique company that has a high edge on the competition. In the specific area my company is located in, there is no other company just like it. As my business plan describes, the studios in the area are focused on other things. They are not focused on building the music scene in Pittsburgh. JustRiot Productions uses the management side to help their bands and really grow the music in the area. This is what I have incorporated into my company. I also incorporated scalability. My company could easily expand. Another studio could be built anywhere in the country, and there is no real limit for the amount of studios we could expand to.

There is a lot to think about as an investor. Many things come together to make a company strong and profitable. What I think is most important is understanding the business plan and implementing it completely. This is a concept of Frank Goley’s, and I’m sure many other consultants us the same concept (“About us,” 2012). I think knowing your business plan shows investors that you know what you are doing. I also find it important to be scalable, unique, and genuine. Scalability speaks loudly to investors. They want their money back and to make the most out of a company as possible. A good exit strategy goes hand-in-hand with scalability. As Lavinsky stated, the exit strategy is where the investors make the most off a company (Lavinsky, 2012).

Resources:

About us. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.businessconsultingabc.com/About_Us.html

Lavinsky, D. (2012, May 13). Finding angel investors & convincing them to give you funding. Retrieved from http://www.growthink.com/content/finding-angel-investors-convincing-them-give-you-funding

Goley, F. (2012, May 9). Effective investor and venture capital pitch tips. Retrieved from http://abcbusinesssuccessblog.businessconsultingabc.com/2012/05/09/effective-investor-and-venture-capital-pitch-tips/

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Investors and Business Plans

FRANK GOLEY

Frank Goley is the business consultant at ABC Business Consulting. He has worked for many years in a vast variety of different business industries. He has also published books about business plans and success. (i.e. Business Planning book and The Business Success Guide) ("About us," 2012).

The way ABC Business Consulting and Goley operate is through planning, consulting, and implementing. As they say, the plan will only work if it is implemented. Anyway, what good is a plan if it is never put into practice ("About us," 2012)?

There are many important critical and key components that investors look for in a plan. One important one is being genuine. Being perceived fake is not going to get you or your business anywhere. Realistic assumptions in a business plan are also important. Realistic assumptions can show investors that you are not expecting too much and that you know what you are doing. It makes you and your business both look credible (Goley 2012).

DAVE LAVINSKY

Dave Lavinsky is the founder of growthink. Growthink helps “entrepreneurs to successfully start, grow and/or exit their companies,” (Growthink Inc, 2012). Lavinsky has written over 100 business plans and hundreds of article about entrepreneurship, business planning, and capital-raising, according to his company’s website ("Dave lavinsky," 2012).

Some of Lavinsky’s tips for investors consist of scalability, high barriers to entry, and your exit strategy (Lavinsky, 2012). Scalability determines how much the investors are going to make off of your business. They are not going to want to keep putting more and more money into your business to get it to be full scale and growing. They want to make the most money off of you while putting the least amount of their own money in. High barriers deal with competition. The harder it is for others in the industry to compete with your company, the better. You want a definite, strong edge on the competition. Your exit strategy is where the investor will potentially make all their money. You want your company to be likely to be bought out or to go public, according to Lavinsky (Lavinsky, 2012).

Resources:

About us. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.businessconsultingabc.com/About_Us.html

Dave lavinsky. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.growthink.com/team/dave-lavinsky

Lavinsky, D. (2012, May 13). Finding angel investors & convincing them to give you funding. Retrieved from http://www.growthink.com/content/finding-angel-investors-convincing-them-give-you-funding

Goley, F. (2012, May 9). Effective investor and venture capital pitch tips. Retrieved from http://abcbusinesssuccessblog.businessconsultingabc.com/2012/05/09/effective-investor-and-venture-capital-pitch-tips/

Growthink Inc. (2012). About us. Retrieved from http://www.growthink.com/about-us

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Mobile Recording

When the iPhone became popular, developers began making more and more apps to do a variety of things. From games to finances to even being able to control Pro Tools from an iPhone. This introduced an even easier way to use mobile recording.

ProRemote has been around since 2007. With Pro Tools LE, the app gave 8 channels of faders. These channels ran in real time and even gave colored monitoring like that inside Pro Tools, itself.

Not only did ProRemote run on iPhone, it is available for iPod touch, as well. Mobile recording became even more popular.

Pro Tools is not the only DAW with an iPhone controller. There are also controllers for Logic, Ableton, and many other DAWs. Many of these can be run from ProRemote.

The remotes available in the App Store are getting more and more advanced. They allow you to do even more away from your computer than ever before. DAW Remote is much more advanced. It allowed for a lot of control over Pro Tools, Logic, or Ableton Live.

DAW Remote is much more advanced than ProRemote. DAW Remote even allows the user to add and delete markers, scrub through the session, punch record, and many other features.

With the iPad, things have been no different. One specific company is embracing the power of the iPad.

PreSonus is introducing their new version of AudioBox. This update includes software to use with a free iPad app.

With this app, almost anything inside Virtual StudioLive (the DAW for AudioBox) can be controlled.

Controls include:

Volume

Pan

Aux Sends

FX Buses

Fat Channel Parameters

Not only can this app be used as a live console with AudioBox and a laptop, it can be used as a studio controller. As a live console, AudioBox can function with small gigs as a mixer or for recording. With studio work, it can be used as an extra set of faders.

The recording industry is facing a new, more mobile way to work. These apps can be very helpful in the studio or doing live work. The ability to check levels while being away from the computer can save a lot of time. Being able to mix and edit can save a lot of time, as well. Mobile recording will continue to grow with the growth of smart phones, tablets, and laptops.

Resources and links:

http://eumlab.com/daw-remote/

http://mixonline.com/news/presonus_audiobox_interface_update_1406/

http://www.folabs.com/proremoteLE.html

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/presonus-ab1818vsl-remote/id531541393?mt=8

http://www.presonus.com/

http://www.presonus.com/products/Detail.aspx?ProductId=65

http://www.presonus.com/products/Detail.aspx?ProductId=53

Pictures:

http://eumlab.com/daw-remote/images/app-daw-remote-timeline.jpg

http://a5.mzstatic.com/us/r30/Purple/v4/0f/4c/6f/0f4c6f51-f338-6c59-ee2a-2c5b774e16e4/2p8f4nTaMwZ8hkfrG4zUfw-temp-upload.ywopopze.480x480-75.jpg

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Affordable Analog Recording

Even though the digital world has taken the recording industry by storm, analog is still hanging in there. Unfortunately, using tape and the equipment needed for it is not affordable for everyone. A company named Endless Analog has made it a little more affordable to get the analog tape sound, however.

Endless Analog offers a system called CLASP. CLASP stands for Closed Loop Analog Signal Processor. Sounds complicated, right? Well, technically it is, but is pretty simple to use. CLASP allows for an easier workflow will still getting the tape sound and sample accuracy.

Retrieved From:
 http://blog.mixonline.com/mixblog/wp-content/uploads/
2012/05/covershot-web11.jpg

CLASP is both a hardware piece and a software program to be used with a tape machine, console, and a DAW (Pro Tools, Nuendo/Cubase) (Clasp, 2012).

With CLASP, the audio is fed from the tape machine directly into Pro Tools (or the available DAW of your choice). This eliminates a lot of hassle. Instead of recording everything to tape and then dumping it all into Pro Tools, it goes straight into the DAW. Also, you don’t have to use extra channels to go from your tape machine to your DAW. CLASP does it all with much less hassle.

CLASP can be used for up to 72 channels of analog recording.

The Endless Analog website offers a lot of information about CLASP and how to get it up and running. They include the signal flow of CLASP with your console and tape machine as well as all of CLASP’s functions.

Endless Audio now offers CLASP 16 and CLASP 8. According to Mix Magazine, these are, “scaled down versions of the original CLASP so those with more limited analog track counts, don’t have to pay for 24 channels,” (Becka, 2012). They have also released the Machine Matrix and Machine Matrix I/O. The Machine Matrix gives you 8 channels of audio. The Machine Matrix I/O gives an additional 8 channels.

Resources:

Becka, K. (2012, May 08). Endless analog bows new products. Retrieved from http://blog.mixonline.com/mixblog/2012/05/08/endless-analog-bows-new-products/

Clasp. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.endlessanalog.com/what-is-clasp

http://www.endlessanalog.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/CLASP-Closed-Loop-Analog-Processor/73345181839

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Podcasts

The Intellectual Property Law Podcast series has a lot of very helpful information. The first part goes over what intellectual property actually is and intellectual property law actually covers. This may be the most important part of the podcast. There are many different types of intellectual property and many ways to cover it.  Its important to know what kind of law you need to cover your intellectual property properly. There are patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secret law. Professor Beckerman-Rodau goes through each kind of intellectual property law. The most important types of intellectual property law for my business plan are copyright law and trademark law. This series has also showed how certain intellectual property laws can come up a bit short. Patents and copyrights eventually come to an end. Once the protection time is up, these pieces of intellectual property go into the public domain. Once in the public domain, anyone has legal access to it (Beckerman-Rodau , 2012). As Professor Beckerman-Rodau says in the podcast, this is where trade secrets may pay off more than a patent. His example was the trade secrets of Coca-Cola. If the company had used a patent for their recipe, it would be in the public domain by now. By using trade secrets, they have kept the recipe secret for over eighty years. (Beckerman-Rodau , 2012)

Episode 23 of Gordon Firemark’s Entertainment Law Update Podcast covers the topic of Righthaven. According to the podcast, people go around collecting copyrights and suing people that have used them. A lot of people just settle instead of fighting against the infringement charges. This brings around something to be very careful about. For my company, it may be possible to get sued by a group like this. This podcast shows that the courts are now more aware of these types of situations. It’s better to fight the charges than to just pay them off (Firemark, 2011).

Episode 29 of Gordon Firemark’s Entertainment Law Update Podcast goes over the 360 deal in the music industry. The 360 deal lets the recording company share in every part of the musician’s music career. According to the podcast, this type of deal is in violation of talent agency regulation acts in certain states (Firemark, 2012). The podcast focuses on the California label code (Firemark, 2012). It brings up a very important topic in general. Though my company is based in Pennsylvania and the podcast does not mention any sort of law in the state, it is an important thing to look into. There are laws that my company could break without even knowing about it. When starting deals with bands, we will have to look into Pennsylvania law to make sure everything will be legal.

Podcasts:

Beckerman-Rodau , A. (Performer) (2012, April 25). Ip law concentration. Intellectual Property Law Podcast Series. [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from - http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/intellectual-property-law/id388454392

Firemark, G. (Performer) (2011, August 10). Episode 23. Entertainment Law Update. [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://www.entertainmentlawupdate.com/2011/08/elu-episode-023-monkeying-around-with-copyright-law

Firemark, G. (Performer) (2012, March 29). Episode 29. Entertainment Law Update. [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://www.entertainmentlawupdate.com/2012/03/episode-29-360-deals-rights-of-publicity/

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Industry Controversies

In the recording industry, there are many copyright controversies. One of the biggest is definitely due to pirating. Not only is pirating stealing, it is copyright infringement.  It is an ongoing problem and controversy in the music industry and all other entertainment industries. Though the United States’ government has tried to find ways to stop it, it does not seem that they are going about it correctly. The extent that pirating has gotten to is ridiculous. The music industry loses a very large amount of money each year due to pirating. Of course, I think there will always be some extent of pirating. It will always be a controversy in the industry. However, I do think we need to find a way to cut back on it.

While looking around at different controversies in the music industry, I came across a very interesting one. The Borromeo String Quartet has started using MacBooks and foot pedals in place of sheet music. Instead of having sheets and sheets of music to read, it is simply on their MacBooks. To change a page, they tap the foot pedal. This results in fewer missed notes and a much easier way to perform for the musicians. This presents a problem with copyright infringement, however. Edward W. Guo has made a website to host all the sheet music. This makes it possible for others to also upload sheet music to the site. Not everyone that uploads the music is a copyright holder. Also, anyone can access the site for free. This presents a lot of infringement issues. While I think this is a very awesome idea, I think it needs to be run differently. There are ways to host this site without the copyright infringement and the controversy.

Sampling in music causes another controversy. It has become very popular for bands of many genres to sample older songs. Sampling can be using the same rhythm and notes as another song, sampling a clip from another song, or even sampling an audio clip from another course.  If the proper legal action is not taken with this, the song can be in violation of copyright law. I think this is a very important thing to think about. Though there are only a few notes that can be used, there are a variety of ways to use them. In most cases, I do not think it is necessary to use a previous artists work. There are more creative ways to make music than sampling. In some cases, it comes off as lazy, to me. Though, I will hand it to them, some artists do use sampling very well. They just need to make sure they get the right permissions to use them.

Resources/Articles:

http://www.riaa.com/physicalpiracy.php?content_selector=piracy_online_the_law

http://brianrowe.org/LIS550/2012/02/24/online-music-scores-cause-copyright-controversy/

http://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2009/06/article_0007.html

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Dangerous Updating

It’s very well known that Apple updates Mac operating systems very often. They have already made it the whole way to Lion, and I’m sure the next update is due soon. All these updates can cause a lot of compatibility issues for digital audio workstations and other digital audio programs. I have had issues with this myself in upgrading to Lion.

In the industry, it is common knowledge that you should check compatibility before updating your computer or your software. Pro Tools, one of the most popular digital Audio workstations (DAW), even has a page to tell you when it is safe to update your operating system. Different operating systems can cause a lot of weird bugs in audio programs. With as many Macs as there are in the industry, it is surprising that there are still so many OS updates.  Lately, it seems the updates have not been that much different than the previous version anyway.

It’s not only in the audio and recording industry that new operating systems can cause problems. The latest version for Mac, Lion, is not compatible with anything previously made for Adobe. Though this brings in a lot of money for other companies that update their software and sell it as a new version, this can be hard on a lot of people. Not everyone can afford to upgrade all the time, whether it is the operating system or his or her software. After upgrading one, it’s not likely you want to spend the money on even more upgrading.

It seems that most companies are starting to upgrade more often. This is fine as long as the upgrade is worth it. Even Pro Tools has released two new versions in the last two years (Pro Tools 9 in 2010 and Pro Tools 10 in 2011). Luckily, for those that recently upgraded or bought Pro Tools 9, Avid gave free upgrades.

Upgrading is a very tricky business. It is very necessary to be aware of the upgrades and what they will actually mean and do to your computer.

Resources:

Osx lion: Welcome to the jungle!. (2012, January 10). Retrieved from http://www.recordingmag.com/blogs/post/151.html

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