MusicMind

01 Mar 2016

Summary

MusicMind is an attempt at building a product focused on quality news backed by a fan-generated Wiki and in-depth song information for KPop music.

Explanation

As CTO of FourLeaf Media Co., I worked to develop both the requirements and execution of this application. Along with my two co-founders, who both worked professionally in the KPop industry.

Problem

KPop music has a large and growing international fanbase (see figure below). However, the existing “successful” websites that serve this audience primarily do so as gossip/tabloid sites. As a consequence, the existing sites also often function at odds with the music industry itself. None of the entertainment companies in Korea are happy with the impact these sites have on the brand of their artists.

Solution

MusicMind is an attempt at creating a professional, fun, site devoted to fans of KPop Music and the stars of KPop.

We used our connections to the KPop industry to generate novel content (interviews, first person POV stories, etc.). This acted both as an avenue for marketing (over social media) as well as became our content.

Supporting the core content was all the information we collected surrounding major KPop acts. Acting similar to an ESPN for Kpop, we sourced songs, lyrics, links to youtube videos, invited fans to contribute information, and eventually opened it up as a Wiki. Our hypothesis was that people would come for the meaty stories and stick around for the web of related information and stories.

Technologically, I built this out using Rails/MongoDB/Javascript/JQuery and deployed over AWS/Mongolab.

Results

We were able to generate a considerable amount of attention for a fledgling site (>1 million pageviews in under a year, > 117k likes on facebook), however we were not able to determine exactly how to turn it into a sustainable business model. We experimented with running an advertising campaign with a blue chip Korean advertiser, however quickly realized the scalability was questionable.

Conclusion

Content sites will always be the hardest thing to start. Growing a quality brand without an incredible amount of money to push it takes some next level creativity.