customer facing applications
The applications we have built and are continuing to develop fall into three initial categories:
- artist web presence
- label web presence
- specialty internet retail site
artist web presence
We have built an application that enables artists to easily create an effective web-site to establish their presence on the web. This is just the beginning, however. An artist’s presence on the web is not limited to their own web-site. It exists also at other sites (such as MySpace). It is also starting to exist on cell-phones and other devices. We will be enabling the artist to extend their presence beyond their own site and into these other environments. Our goal is to turn the traditional view of web-presence inside-out: instead of focusing on getting every customer/fan to come to you, we will be focusing on enabling the band to go to the customer/fan, wherever they are. We will integrate the customer/fan into this process, and enable them to contribute to the artist's presence.
We will enable the artist to have a direct connection with their fans, and for the fans to have a direct connection with the artist and with fans. We will achieve this by creating HTML and scripts which can be easily placed on an artists community sites. These allow us to extend components of our functionality into those community sites and extend our virtual presence.
label web presence
We have built an application that enables our labels to easily create an effective web-site to establish their presence on the web. This is completely analogous to the artist sites, and most of the capabilities carry over. There are additional capabilities specific to labels that we will be creating. For example, we will enable the label to take advantage of the digital realm to efficiently and cost effectively market their artists. This ability will leverage the ability to discover fans and create a connection with them; it will build on that to create customer-friendly communication methods and metrics/methods to measure their efficacy. Also, we will build technology to assist a label in discovering new talent: we will measure and quantify an unsigned artist's popularity and potential as evidenced by activity on the web.
We will provide tools to help our labels establish their brand on the Internet, both in terms of traffic generation, value added editorial content, and promotional capabilities. As with artist websites, we will allow our labels to extend their "presence" into community sites, advertising campaigns, etc.
These technical capabilities will also help differentiate Twenty-First Century's labels compared to others, and will provide further reasons for labels to want to become part of our corporate family.
specialty internet retail site
Our ecommerce platform services our own labels and signed artists, as well as others which we choose to distribute. Our retail presence provides a filter and editorial voice which helps consumers and fans decide which music to listen to, which bands to learn about and lets us participate more widely in the genre's we target. Initially we are focused on indie rock, including punk, metal, hard rock, etc. The capabilities are equally applicable to other genre's into which we will expand over time.
We have built an application that enables us to run an ecommerce site that sells both physical goods (CDs, Clothing, etc) and digital goods (music, video, etc). We will continue to enhance this platform to provide ever greater customer focused functionality including event ticketing. Although we will operate our retail systems on a consolidated basis, we will also be able to offer virtual stores and event ticketing services on all artist and label websites.
We will also provide a back-office procurement, warehouse, logistics and shipping system through a combination of in-house development and third party licenses. We will develop a variety of traffic generation programs to drive traffic to our commerce engine and to redirect search engine queries. We will provide our own tools for advertisers, as well as participate in ad networks. We will create new and unique packages and promotions combining a variety of these elements.
We will support not only PCs, but phones and eventually other consumer electronics devices. We will support multiple languages, currencies, payment types, taxes, and geographies.
Using the same conceptual approach as outlined for artists and labels, we will make it easy to extend our commerce capabilities into other sites; community oriented as well as others.
