Echo Waves
By: George Mitsoulas
Tags: Innovation, Startup

Who are we?

We are BrandNew and our team consists of three, members: George, Voula, and Anna. On this semester of ADandPRlab, we are going to work on a new lab: The #StartUplab. In this year’s Start-Up lab, we are going to corporate on the project: “The Big Music Bet” with Antenna Music Partners and explore the music innovation field. Our mission is to create a startup, that will solve a real-time problem of the music industry and offers an actual solution, and at the same time, we have to make sure that the startup we are creating is actually sustainable.

How did our journey start?

In order to begin our journey, we had to move on step by step. We knew that we wanted to bring customers closer to music, but we didn’t know how. So, we decided to approach future potential costumers and ask them what do they think about the existing music platforms or apps.: If they are pleased, if they believe that there is something missing out or even if they had interests that no existing music startup could cover. It was important for us to have real feedback because we wanted to create something useful for the customer. If you wish to solve a problem, you have familiarized with it.

But first of all we took a look to some music start-ups and saw what happens to the market. So, we defined what innovation is and decided to analyze Mila start-up. Then we tried to find some key problems of the music industry. So, we found those:

— New artists cannot come to the surface.

— People have the need for new music

— It is expensive for labels to “build” new artists.

Value Proposition Canvas

We summarized the answers to our potential customers and we created our value proposition canvas. You can see the completed canvas right here:

We summarized the answers of our potential customers and we created our value proposition canvas. You can see the completed canvas right here:

a) Costumer Segment

As you can see the customer segmentation consists of three categories: 1) Costumer Pains, 2) Costumer Gains and 3) Costume Jobs.

Costumer Pains: At the current music apps, costumes have to deal with ads, problematic data-signal, huge battery consumption, Memory slot if you have to save the songs and last, but not least very pricey premium packages.

Costumer Gains: The current music apps offer the customer a big range of music from famous artists to listen to, very good user experience and easy navigation and they include very interesting features.

Costume Jobs: People need an app that will be functional, emotional & social. They need many features, easy navigation, UX settings, fast approach and playlists. Additionally, they need to feel the fun and the relaxation that music helps you feel and the social tab of an app, like followers, interaction & communities.

Then the idea was born…

After a lot of brainstorming, we came up with the app “Echo waves”, a name based on soundwaves. But because we wanted to give voice to unknown creators, we decided to twist it into Echo waves. Also, we give a change to the users to discover new music waves — content.

b) Value Proposition

At this point, we knew that our startup had to solve some core issues for our potential users. The costumer Validation also consists of three categories: 1) Gain Creators, 2) Pain relievers and 3) Products and services.

Gain creators: users should be able to rate the content and apart from the freemium part, there has to be a premium. Also, the users have the ability to support the artist through Crowdfunding. The music labels will also benefit because through that the new creators aka artists that start their carriers will already have some fans and followers when they start working with music labels.

Pain Relievers: Customers have the ability to come across new music and artists very often and keep their interest in music alive. Also for the creators the fact that they are going to gain fans, it’s a big pain reliever. This also applies to the music labels, because when they start a contract with an artist, they don’t have to start from zero.

Products and services: A change could be offered for the discovery of new talents. Also it empowers the user. The user rates, supports, decides and uploads. Lastly, the user can also turn into a creator through the app.

So, we concluded to the 2 key-personas and the 2 target groups after asking 45 users and 15 creators, with those needs;

Prototype

After the business model canvas, we moved on to our prototype.

It is important to mention the technical parts of the app. As the customers sing in, they write on their bios some things about them and whether they are creators or simple users. They have the ability to listen to music and upload their music as well. At the same time, simple users can be part of a big community and decide the charts and the next music trends while discovering new music.

The app will have 2 versions add, the freemium version where our surfer (as we call our users, because they are waiting for the next music waves, which is the next song, and the creators are the beginners’ surfers who are trying to catch the music waves). will be able to enjoy new music and rate it as they like, but unlike the premium version in this one, the will have and won’t be able to skip more than 10 times in a day to a song on a playlist. In the premium version, there won’t be adds and the surfers will be able to have as many skips as they wish. Also in the premium version, they will be able to edit a sound file and make a podcast. In the premium version will cost 4euros per month. Now, about the revenue streams, except the premium version, in the freemium version will be adds and the users will be able to donate to their favorite creators through crowdfunding and Echo Waves will keep a service fee. Finally, they can take notes & see the lyrics to every song.

So, let’s take a deep look to the app.