Quick Poll: Investing in Music

[QuidPro]

Hi,

I'm doing research on a project that I'm working on. As part of that, I need to get some information on what people who like music think.

So here's the question.

If you could invest directly into a song you liked by an artist you liked, how much would you invest?

a) none, investing is stupid

B) $20, that's all I have

c) $50, if I knew I could make money

d) $100, I really love music and know how to pick a winner

Again, if you think this is stupid, my apologies, I just needed to test a theory.

-bruce boston

QuidStreet.net

Edited April 1, 2006 by QuidPro

[DudeAsInCool]

If you could invest directly into a song you liked by an artist you liked, how much would you invest?

a) none, investing is stupid

B) $20, that's all I have

c) $50, if I knew I could make money

d) $100, I really love music and know how to pick a winner

-bruce boston

QuidStreet.net

$100

[method77]

I would invest $100 if I knew it would go well

[Excrement_Cranium]

It would depend on what returns my investment goes toward.

$20 is a no monetary return investment people make when they buy music in the first place, so that may be an easy chunk.

I also think the oppurtunity to back a song or artist may help people to connect more with the music marketplace....

[method77]

tell us a bit more about the project Quid

[QuidPro]

tell us a bit more about the project Quid

Hi Method,

The concept is pretty simple, its all about allowing people to make investments that are normally closed to them. In the internet market, that means being able to invest in start-up companies from an much earlier stage than most investments are made.

In the music industry, I think it takes on a different twist, I think the investment that I'd love to make would be in individual songs themselves. But, I'm a sort of economic geek, so its not clear to me if anyone else would want to do the same.....

That said, investments in a song could be fun. Instead of investing in the music company itself which has tons of songs, artists, marketing efforts, et, etc. With a song, its not as difficult to guess approximate sales. You can kinda look at similar songs and guess if its gonna do better or worse.

So theoretically, the investment could look like, $100 to buy a percentage of sales on itunes. What percentage, ($100 / expected sales), so if expected sales where $100,000, $100 would buy you 0.1% ($100/$100,000). If the song makes $150,000 in sales, you get $150 back, if the song sells $50,000 you get back $50. Again this is just theoretical. It would really come down to a person's ability to know when and where the expected sales where too high, and when and where expected sales were too low.

I'd also agree that it might have interesting effects of people's relationship with the artists, music companies, etc.

Could be fun, no?

-bruce

QuidStreet.net

Edited April 1, 2006 by QuidPro

[DudeAsInCool]

Investing in songs is a good idea, provided you know how much promotion is going in to backing an artist or a song. I was with a a publishing guy yesterday - he told me that if you have money, you can almost guaranteed being successful with a song as long as the artist has a half-way decent voice and look. The song, the musicians, the mix and the marketing machine can be bought

[QuidPro]

Investing in songs is a good idea, provided you know how much promotion is going in to backing an artist or a song. I was with a a publishing guy yesterday - he told me that if you have money, you can almost guaranteed being successful with a song as long as the artist has a half-way decent voice and look. The song, the musicians, the mix and the marketing machine can be bought

Hi Dude,

The system pretty much takes care of the raising the money part. There are some legalities that I wont go into detail here, but one of them basically says that the investment would include guaranteed uses of a portion of the funds.

I'm not sure what the right percentages are for the music industry, but if production companies normally spend $50k to promote a song, QuidStreet would set it up to contractually bind the music production company to spend $50k on promoting the song, so they would take $50k of the $100k they raise in investments and do so. This would help to ensure that the right amount of money is spent on promotions.

Add to this that you now have 500-1000+ investors in the song that tell their friends about their investment.

And then add the fact that if this works out, the last thing a music company wants is a reputation for cheating song investors, as this pretty much guarantees no one invests in their next song, I could see their other sales going down as well if they were really bad.

Business is normally about a system to produce lots of products and there is little incentive to screw investors, the most you could make is maybe $20k-$30k, not nearly enough to really justify it.

Again, no idea if there is an interest, but if anyone knows any music producers that want to give the system a try, but I'd love to include them in the initial group of investments.

My guess is the press for the system will be pretty good the first round as well.

-bruce

QuidStreet.net

Edited April 2, 2006 by QuidPro

[DudeAsInCool]

Again, no idea if there is an interest, but if anyone knows any music producers that want to give the system a try, but I'd love to include them in the initial group of investments.

I'd be interested in putting up some music candidates...

[QuidPro]

I'd be interested in putting up some music candidates...

Cool!

You can talk about it here, or you can send me an email: [email protected]

They'll need to be fairly well known musicians, and have music you think people would invest in. If the plan is to release via iTunes, or other distrabution, they'll need to have previous experience in doing so. People will want comparibles, and if its someone new that you are hoping to make big, my guess is you'll have a hard time raising much money for them.

Also, if you know what types of budgets you'll need that as well. Really any and all information is important, as well as contact info, etc, etc, etc.

-bruce

QuidStreet.net

[DudeAsInCool]

Thanx for the info. Hopefully some of the artists and potential investors will check it out, too