The web's first comprehensive lifestyle community for young music consumers.

MUSICOSM.COM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1997

The Musicosm is the first on-line music entertainment channel and community-building recreational environment built to appeal to both the lifestyles and pocketbooks of “wired” young audiences worldwide.

Providing them with unprecedented interactive participation in the music industry, The Musicosm integrates all of the attractive aspects of music’s appeal to young consumers into a single interactive and transaction-enabled on-line context.

The Musicosm’s “virtual world” of music-themed entertainment, community, and retailing is dedicated to becoming the world’s leading producer and aggregator of music-related entertainment on-line. Unique Interface, Programming, and Attitude The Musicosm highlights the most popular genres of music using the characters of a fictional record label as its interfaces.

Through The Musicosm’s industry connections and the involvement of Hollywood’s major record companies, each of these channels offer music enthusiasts worldwide their first ever virtual “backstage passes” into the Los Angeles-based record business. This engaging, story-based context comprehensively showcases all of the music industry’s latest releases, chats, merchandise, news, contests, etc., to create a worldwide user community built upon the audience’s pre-existing interests in the latest music and youth culture. It also offers sponsors and retailers distinct, pre-qualified audiences self-selected by music preference and lifestyle.

Audience and Industry Demand
The Musicosm addresses the clear market and industry demand for a centralized on-line music content service which aggregates and filters the best of the $40 Billion worldwide music market for on-line audiences. The enthusiasm of young people for both music and new technology is surpassed only by retailers’ and advertisers’ needs to reach such trend-setting audiences. The Musicosm’s creative use of on-line technology meets these needs by establishing entertainment-oriented on-line communities built around their audiences’ music-related lifestyle interests and associated retail and advertising opportunities.

MTV + GEOCITIES + YAHOO! + CDNOW = THE MUSICOSM!

Target Demographic
The Musicosm targets the most important demographic of both today and tomorrow: young, wired “Screenagers”. This demographic of 12-27 year old consumers has an unprecedented familiarity with, access to, and enthusiasm for computers.

These factors all suggest the huge potential of innovative PC-based recreation which uses entertainment and on-line community to popularize PC-based entertainment beyond “early adopter” audiences to mass market consumers worldwide.

Market Opportunity for a “Category Killer” Music Destination Site
After pornography, music is the most popular topic on the Net, yet no major on-line presence has staked out cyberspace like MTV did when it single-handedly revolutionized both television and the music industry in the 1980’s. Concurrently, music is the one form of entertainment which already unites members of the Screenage demographic worldwide. It is also a proxy for many of their lifestyle and purchasing decisions, transactions which The Musicosm enables as part of its business model.

Album reviews, CD retailing, audio, chats, news, and music content are today spread across the World Wide Web in an unorganized manner that keeps audiences fragmented and profitability limited. Aggregating music content and services and integrating them with lifestyle-related products and purchasing opportunities to establish a branded user community around popular music offers the best profit opportunity on-line today.

Business Model: Multiple Revenue Streams
Revenues for The Musicosm are based upon sales of music and related lifestyle merchandise such as CD’s, clothing, and tickets, as well as upon sponsorships and advertising.

The “virtual” employees and offices of The Musicosm’s fictional Sunset Boulevard office complex encourage user interactivity and provide innovative product placement and purchasing opportunities for goods and services related to the lifestyles of The Musicosm’s audience.

Market trends clearly support the viability of the product placement-rich and transaction-enabled Musicosm environment. IDC and Jupiter Communications forecast more than 225% growth in on-line audiences in the next four years alone, accompanied by a more than 300% growth in on-line advertising revenues, and an almost 550% growth in on-line shopping revenues (of which sales of CD’s, clothing, and tickets represent a major percentage)in the same period.

The Musicosm is explicitly designed to capitalize on all of these trends as potential revenue streams to ensure its profitability. The Musicosm’s cost structure is both low, reflecting the low costs of on-line distribution and outsourced staffing strategies, as well as scaleable to cost-effectively take advantage of the Net’s rapid growth and eventual opportunities in broadband entertainment.

Marketing Strategy: College & On-line Promotional Programs
The Musicosm pursues two major marketing strategies: on-campus and on-line. Initially targeting trend-setting young audiences on selected college campuses with Musicosm-sponsored contests, concerts, web cybercasts, college radio giveaways, stickers, parties, etc. will help establish “mind share” and build site traffic and community.

Simultaneously, The Musicosm’s dedicated on-line “street team” of students, interns, and fans worldwide will continue its work in chat rooms, Usenet groups, and on message boards across the Web promoting The Musicosm and encouraging user interaction and community. The combination of these efforts will cost-effectively reach music fans worldwide to promote The Musicosm’s brand identity and establish its loyal user community.

Examples of The Musicosm’s innovative programming include:
The “Cosmic Clix!” Music Links Service which incorporates into The Musicosm the best underground music and lifestyle web sites nominated by the channel’s on-line audience. By providing this interactivity to its audience community, the Cosmic Clix! service takes advantage of the low-cost distributed production potential of the World Wide Web, builds user loyalty, and creates a much-needed “information filter” for audiences overwhelmed by the amount of information on-line today.
Similarly, the Top Trax! demo tape competition for unsigned bands also involves The Musicosm’s audience and encourages their positive word-of-mouth promoting The Musicosm as their favorite music destination site.

Strategic Differences from Existing Music Web Sites
The integrated retailing, promotional, and entertainment approach The Musicosm offers users is unique and unprecedented. While other ventures have built on-line showcases for music-related information or CD sales, The Musicosm recognizes that on-line markets are moving toward integration of services, products, and information into community-based transactional on-line environments which create lifestyle-centered “consumer affinity groups”.

The Musicosm takes advantage of these trends by:
• Cultivating content and communities around specific genres of music (which is the same way that consumers live and shop), bettering the generic “one size fits all” approach of other sites.
• Going beyond just music retailing to address the entire lifestyles of its audience, taking advantage of the many marketing opportunities for apparel, accessories, tickets, etc., which go hand-in-hand with people’s interest in music.
• Creating a “destination site”, rather than just an index or service. This means that its user community views it as a place to be visited regularly and shared with friends.
• Offering a different look, feel, and attitude that reflects its audience’s interest in Hollywood and “backstage access” to the issues, stars, and events of the music business, rather than the generic corporate (adult) approach seen in most music web sites.
• Employing an experienced and well-connected team of entertainment industry professionals who can leverage The Musicosm’s base in Los Angeles to package and export the rock-n-roll lifestyle to young music enthusiasts both in the US and worldwide.

The first on-line channel to successfully integrate cutting-edge music entertainment content into an appealing context offering both retailing and community, The Musicosm is now on-line establishing market share to become the premier on-line entertainment network franchise and lifestyle retailer of the digital entertainment age.

Having started with Venture Capital seed funding, The Musicosm is now raising funds for further growth and implementation of its vision for the future of on-line entertainment.

Contact:
C. Scott Fedewa, Esq.
CEO & Executive Producer
Spottworks, Inc.