Our world is a talented place that is populated with new and budding talents. The only time you come across some exceptional artists is when they either get signed with a record label, appear on a talent show or when you accidentally stumble upon their work on YouTube. Come on, finding them should be less complicated than that, don’t you think?
These days, there are portals to find practically anything. Be it taxis, real estate, rental property, shopping; you name it and it’s more or less present. Then why not have a portal that allows artists to showcase their work and for you to find and book them for events of your own?
To solve this exact problem, there is a new start-up in tinsel town called Musicolio. This is a splendid music maker’s network that allows talented artists and people looking for them, meet.
Know the Great Minds Behind Musicolio!
The men behind this ground-breaking new app are Jon D. Carter, Billy Clark and Maitreya Yasuda. While Mr. Carter and Mr Yasuda are the primary investors, Mr Clark along with Luis Banascao and a small team of developers are currently responsible for all day-to-day operations. Musicolio was conceptualized and co-founded by the team to make a difference in the music industry.
Jon is a serial entrepreneur, a former SVP/GM of e-commerce and was on artists services at Live Nation while Billy, an A&R and Artist Manager was with various labels including Sony, Def Jam, and Atlantic. Maitreya is EVP, International Business & Legal Affairs at Lionsgate.
It is this collective experience in the showbiz industry that gives them the upper hand in creating a portal that is so interesting and unique.
What Inspired Them?
“We all observed how finding and booking creative talent was a complicated and inefficient process, even for the multi-billion dollar entertainment companies we all work/worked for. We chose to start in Music because that’s where our own experience with the problem was most clear, but our model really applies to all creative talent”, says the team.
A Little More on Musicolio!
Musicolio is a collaborative community of people working together to even the playing field for aspiring artists and music professionals. The team’s mission is to make finding and booking creative talent as simple as possible. Before Musicolio, if anyone wanted to find a great songwriter, videographer or dancer, they would either have to depend on their personal contacts or craigslist.
If these fail to connect them to an artist then their last resort was to look through a sea of profiles on professional and social networking sites like LinkedIn, eLance, Thumbtack, Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud or YouTube. However, looking through networking sites for leads is like finding a needle in the haystack as these portals were not built for the purpose of finding and booking artists.
On Hurdles Faced by the Start-up
Sticking with the concept through all the doubts and personal sacrifices was the team’s biggest hurdle. Nevertheless, they are here to debunk all the doubts and impossibilities.
“There’s this dominant meme out there that music isn’t a worthy start-up cause. We stand in defiance of that meme. Our solution is beautiful because we are empathetic to those involved on both the getting booked and booking side of the equation. We have carefully crafted an experience that puts all of the important information in one place so both sides can make a decision on whether they want to work together. Before Musicolio, a person might have needed to go to 3-5 different sites to make that same determination on a prospect”, adds the team.
On Competitors & Expansion Plans
Musicolio is a one-of-a-kind start-up and thus does not have any serious direct competition. However, several sites or apps like LinkedIn, Thumbtack, Fiverr, eLance, IMDB, SoundCloud and Craigslist can pose as indirect competitors as they do address parts of a user’s problem.
“Our ultimate goal is to disrupt the traditional talent agency/label paradigm by letting talent (and those seeking talent) connect directly to opportunity. To be clear, we aim to do to the traditional talent business what Uber is currently doing to taxi companies. Right now we are busy growing the network but early next year, talented people from around the world will be able to declare their skill and set their own prices for doing what they do best”, adds the team.
On Plans of Monetizing
When it comes down to monetizing, the team intends to take a small fee with every successful booking of talent, similar to how Airbnb or Uber works.
“We also see a range of professional products to better enable companies looking for lot’s of talent on a regular basis (e.g. shows like The Voice, America’s Got Talent and X Factor) to be able to find and engage that talent based on geographic location, skill and social media following”, further adds the team.
To perfectly sum it all up, Musicolio is the perfect platform for those with creative talents (e.g. DJ, singer, musician, a band, dancer, performance artist, etc) and for those seeking them (e.g. venue, tv show, festival, etc). With the help of this impressive portal, artists across the world finally get a solid platform to showcase their work and creative forte to the world at large.
For all talented folks and for those you are just curious, you can learn more about this awesome start-up by just visiting: musicolio.com
