☭ marselip0910 叶俊华™

Start by identifying who you are and what you represent. Note your sound and your style; to whom you compare yourself and why; how you fit into the landscape of the music industry as you know it; and what you believe makes you worth people’s while.

Next, establish some basic goals and objectives—what you wish to achieve and how. Goals and objectives are essential to any business plan, even if you are having trouble identifying yourself. So, if need be, start here and worry about my prior suggestion later (as long as you address it in time). Think globally, act locally is a term you’ve probably heard before. You’ve got a big dream, perhaps a global vision in mind—but in order to make that dream a reality you’ll have to start with what you know and build your business incrementally from there. Remember, before you sell ten million records you’ll need to sell ten. Yes, just ten—to people who are neither good friends nor family. Even that is an accomplishment, a small victory in itself, for anyone who is just getting going—much like ten thousand is to someone who is starting to catch their stride.

A conventional business in the twenty-first century builds its plan around four primary areas. They are:

• Finance: the development and management of a budget


• Marketing: product, place, promotion, price, and branding


• Operations: how your business will function and what it will need to do so


• Information Technology: Web presence, e-commerce, and related maintenance needs, as well as your computer hardware and software

Once you’ve established your business plan, you may chart a course of action you can manage—one which follows a linear sequence and results in small measurable successes you can see. This will give you the confidence that you can do it on your own. Just be realistic and make sure your goals are reasonable. Realistic expectations is a term you’ll hear over and again. Take your time, when you have to, in order to avoid skipping steps. Overnight success is unlikely, so you may as well do things right. Don’t waste time—that won’t help you—you’d only be cheating yourself. Be prepared for a long, slow ascent. As long as you’re moving forward you will get wherever you are going.

Ad supported music service SpiralFrog went dark yesterday. The company's limited assets have been surrendered to creditors.

SpiralFrog, like other ad supported music services, began life stunted by major label liscening demands. Then once finally birthed it failed to gain traction with consumers bothered by a combination of ads and restrictive DRM required by the labels.

Upheavel in a contentious executive suite hurt Spiral Frog. But bad timing and the economy did the most to quicken its demise before experimentation with the business model could ever occur. SpiralFrog was also hit by a "a macro-economic perfect storm" a source close to the company told CNet. A devesated global economy along with "the collapse of the capital markets" and "rapid compression of the ad markets" were too much to overcome, said the source.

Ad supported music may be down, but is far from out. Some like the scrappy WE7 are always experimenting and streaming sites like imeem and Spotify are gaining real favor with both fans and the labels.

SprialFrog採用含有DRM的音樂免費P2P下載模式，包含了主流唱片公司的曲庫。在08年4月曾列於美國最熱門的10大多媒體網站中。SprialFrog截止目前上線運行僅一年多時間。從Compete的資料顯示，在2008年5月達到月訪問美國用戶350萬獨立IP，之後就直線下滑。

要說SprialFrog的失敗，應該不外乎兩大主要原因：1.DRM保護限制了用戶的使用，也就限制了其用戶的增長；2.其在音樂版權授權的成本高達數百萬美元，廣告成本不足以Cover其成本。或許是SprialFrog生不逢時，它誕生沒多久即碰上主流的音樂商店紛紛開始放棄DRM，接著又碰上一個寒冷的冬季。問題都還是老問題。其餘的廣告支援音樂服務目前像imeem、we7…看來日子也並不好過，能不能捱過這個冬天還真不好說。