#mamusicind MED7201 Week 10: The Jazzman app

As part of my MA course, I was asked to generate an idea for a new (digital) business opportunity that I could pursue, but which had a clear cultural aspect to it. My initial idea was Jazzgirl that I talked about in week 4’s post.

However, in a lot of the feedback that I got, people raised the concern that it might be too niche.

Now to clarify the idea – the label would focus on female artists within all genres that Jazzman Records cover (hence the name Jazz Girl) but the app would include information from all Jazzman Records labels.

I can see how this might be confusing for some (to have an app called one thing and it covers something else), so I wanted to run by a new idea with you all that I had this weekend.

DISCLAIMER: Before anybody goes crazy in the comments field, I would just like to point out that the ideas and thoughts in this post are all THEORETICAL and part of my MA degree. I would appreciate you giving me feedback and help, but in a constructive way if possible.

So the new idea that I had was to just create a Jazzman app that would take advantage of all the material we get hold of when we “dig deeper” and give people access to a bunch of unseen material that sometimes doesn’t make the cut due to lack of money or time or space (there is only so many pictures you can fit in a booklet before it becomes a mini book…)

I am basing this idea a lot on the Blue Note app but I would like to take our app one step further and link the bridge between digital and real life – mainly because we pride ourselves on our physical products.

I would firstly like to share some screenshots borrowed from evolver.fm to give you an idea of how the Blue Note app looks and works, and then explain how I would like to make the Jazzman one a bit different.


Homepage where you have features on artists or playlists, as well as recommendations etc


Dexter Gordon – artist page with different types of content – here it is music


Biography


Videos


News


Similar Blue Note Artists to Dexter Gordon

The actual app is free to download, but it is only if you decide to subscribe monthly for £1.99 that you get access to ALL CONTENT that the app has to offer.

The way I had envisioned the Jazzman app would be similar – so free to download to your tablet or smart phone but pay a small monthly fee to subscribe and access all available content, as well as getting all the latest news or new content before others.

Maybe even incorporate the blog and the radio show in there if that is possible?

However, I also wanted to add some premium accounts to the mix that would connect the digital world with the physical one, as well as features that would hopefully make the fans of the brand feel more involved with what we do.

One idea was that for a certain amount each month, you would subscribe digitally as well as physically to all new Jazzman releases – so with that specific premium account you would have first access to the new Jazzman releases digitally via the app, and you’d get them sent home to you without the hassle of trying to order them on the website.

Another idea was to create a special “Jazzman Recommends” section linked to our webstore where Jazzman Gerald personally would pick out the best releases of either the week or month and for a certain amount each month, people could subscribe digitally and/or physically to get those releases sent to them automatically. A bit like a record club generated by Jazzman.

And if that would take off, we could even introduce a guest feature, so you would get a notification saying that next month Gilles Peterson would be picking the releases.

I know this isn’t a new business, more like an idea to expand a part of an existing business, so I might not be allowed to do this.

Nevertheless, I would still love to hear your thoughts on this though!

P.S. If you are not familiar with Jazzman Records, we basically “dig deeper” not just music wise, but also when it comes to liner notes (so information about the artists and their music), pictures, and with the app, it would mean video and so on too. It would give us an opportunity to bring to life all the content that we have, as well as sharing the content we might not have been able to share on physical releases.

5 thoughts on “#mamusicind MED7201 Week 10: The Jazzman app

  1. Rich Saysell

    Apologies for the typo – typing whilst lying down, in rehab from an op.

    Just a question, but do you know how successful the Blue Note app is for them? I was interested in that until you said it was a subscription for content…

  2. Rich Saysell

    I think it’s a nice idea Orsii,

    I like the premium subscription idea in terms of getting the digital and physical releases and that’s something I would look at, as long as theter isn’t £50 of releases a month!

    I wouldn’t subscribe for content only though, this should be something that’s driving sales for Jazzman, and building a community – early tickets for gigs etc, rather than a revenue stream in itself. I’m guessing most of the information on the app would be available elsewhere at some point if not immediately which is why I don’t subscribe to The Times for instance…

    Just my take on it, hope it helps.

    Rich

  3. Jon

    Ok, so it’s not an original idea, but it’s an innovation in your own business so there’s no problem there. I like the idea of linking the digital and the physical. Something to think about – you’ll need to crunch numbers and decide if this is the way your customers will think – but perhaps the business model should be digital free / physical charged. So the app AND the content is free but the desirable physical product is charged for? I’m assuming here that within this genre people are interested in the physical object – the fetish object: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/opinion/sunday/17gleick.html?_r=0.

    So the follow on from all of this is: how much can you do yourself? Who can help you see this through? How much will they charge? And how much can you make?

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