The Business of Outsourcing

Concept

Kavinda has astutely recognized the place of music in our culture and seeks to cater to the limited segment of people interested in music produced by the Stanford community. The site would serve as a cross between an aggregator of links to the artists’ websites and a permanent paid host of the content. The target audience is thus highly focused, which allows significant precision in designing the site for its end user base, but which also limits the potential for expansion. Nevertheless, there is still a niche market, which would be served well by such a site.

Design

Cardinal Music uses a mellow color scheme, which is not too harsh on the eyes while the logo instantly reveals the site’s focus on music. The homepage immediately presents the user with a search field. However, it would be helpful to incorporate a more general browsing mechanism for users who are unsure of the name of any specific band. A critical aspect of any good site is making the content easily navigable. This mechanism could include browsing by most popular artists as well by genre or title. Tools like tag clouds are also convenient visual aids in navigating the site.

Partnerships

It would be useful to investigate working with performance oriented student groups like SOCA (student organizing committee for the arts) or classical groups like the Stanford Symphony Orchestra and partner with them to help supply the site with additional content. Many of these groups do not have recordings of their work on their websites while some do not have sites at all. As such, the prospect of earning revenue through Cardinal Music may be appealing to them as long as the hosting fee remains modest.

Business Plan

Cardinal Music intends to gain revenue through contextual advertising, which may be difficult given the small audience and thus limited traffic. Instead, the site could apply for a grant or fees from the university given its university focus. Another issue, which needs to be addressed as the framework for the site begins to be laid down, is the marketing plan and how Cardinal Music intends to spread community buzz about the site.

Comments

One of my main concerns is that it is extremely difficult to get users to pay for music – often the worst pirates of music are college students themselves, which further complicates the issue. Also, though there may be a number of talented artists on the Stanford campus, there may not be much breadth in the genre of music.

Since most, if not all of the content will be hosted on external sites, it would be difficult to maintain updated links if the content is ever moved. Therefore, it would be a good time investment to explore possible methods of automating the indexing of artists’ music without having them submit it to the site directly.

On the whole, I think Cardinal Music does a fine job of keeping itself focused on its core users and I eagerly anticipate its success in the future.