Ooizit's pitch is for a new generation of marketing and promotion for bands that uses social networks to build profile and support both online and offline. Founder Thomas Fearn launched the site in beta mode in May last year, and employs four staff at the Derbyshire base with modest funding from an angel investor.
Competition is big - MySpace, for one, has become a staple promotion tool for bands and is expanding its music section too. But Ooizit is working hard to build a UK fanbase with local musicians, and Fearn explains how they plan to grow the site.
• Explain your business to my Mum
"Ooizit.com is a social network which is purely dedicated to exposing new UK music artists, bands, DJs and producers via the web. The online portal offers music artists all of the tools they need to promote themselves in this digital age. It's free, and each month we select one of the best artists from the site and work with them to promote their music both online and offline. They receive free marketing advice, plus material to take their music to a wider audience and so far, we've produced everything from fliers and banners right through to beer mats and life-sized signage."
• How does that work?
"Once a user is signed up to the site, which only takes two minutes, they are able to build their own profile by adding a biography, uploading their MP3s, YouTube videos and news, creating a personal blog and adding image galleries very much like Facebook. It's a UK-based site, so people are able to interact with people in their local area."
• How do you make money?
"Micro-payment services, like our SMS service, which help users promote their profiles and music. We have numerous online and offline advertising opportunities and are actively seeking a national, music-relevant sponsor for the site. The next phase will be a payment gateway where users will be able to sell their music through the site, as well as premium subscription services."
• What's your background?
"I've worked in numerous digital roles since my degree in multimedia technology, including digital marketing manager for Daily Mail & General Trust where I was responsible for assessing new markets/verticals, developing potential revenue models, then designing and implementing digital strategies to take their new online portals to market."
• How many users do you have now, and what's your target within 12 months?
"When we tested in beta mode late last year we had just over 1,000 users, and that was before we started actively promoting the site. Our objective is to have at least 250,000 users by the end of 2009."
• Name your closest competitors
"Our main competitors are Reverb Nation and MySpace, but they both operate on a worldwide basis where as we're much more localised than that which is one of our unique selling points."
• Any weird business experiences so far?
"As part of our marketing and promotion of one of our featured artists The Colours, we sponsored their UK tour and sent a 12-strong street team to Birmingham to promote their gig one night. Despite making the local council aware of our campaign, we hadn't even entered the city centre before we were being jumped upon by support officers thinking we were protesters! We had produced huge placards so I can see the confusion..."
• How will you survive the second dot com crash?
"I'm not sure that there will be one, especially within the music and social network arena. If anything the music industry is yet to find their foot online – which is quite exciting for us. I believe social networks will continue to become more niche and with the market potential for online music artists somewhere in the region of about £20m worldwide, it certainly proves that music consumption and production will grow, not crash.
"Only until you fully understand both your target market and your business downfalls can you succeed, so we keep testing, changing and diversifying."
• What's your biggest challenge?
"Ensuring that music artists and fans get everything they need to promote and get access to local music. There are a lot of new technologies available for bands and fans but we're making sure we're using the right ones and not just putting everything we can into our portal for the sake of it."
• Which tech businesses or web thinkers are the ones to watch?
"The idea behind Zopa is fantastic; the idea of utilising a social network for a market so saturated with large corporate is great. I like what they've done with the design too; it's clean easy to use and has got great call to action."
• Who's your mentor?
"My father has spent years building a very successful business but in doing so has definitely experienced the hard times along the way. He continually challenges my decisions, despite not having built an online business before, which is great as it makes you always think of the real world solutions too – hence why we operate so heavily offline as well as online. It's all too easy to get wrapped up in the world of web and can blur your judgment sometimes, so it's good to have a mentor that'll push you in the good times and support you in the bad."
• How's you work/life balance?
"Let's just say it could do with some tweaking."
• What's the most important piece of software or web tool that you use each day?
"Google, without a doubt. I lose track of how many times I use that per day, from researching new technologies to finding new open mic nights so it's used constantly throughout the day."
• Where do you want the company to be in five years?
"To be the number one resource for new, unsigned UK music artists. We will have instigated a UK number one in the download charts and be embarking on other versions of the site for other countries and their local markets."
So what do you think?
• Is Ooizit's idea different enough to existing sites that bands use to promote themselves?
• How much demand is there for this, or are bands quite sophisticated in adapting the bigger social networks to promote themselves?
• Do you think Ooizit should pursue a formal A&R arrangement with an existing, major label?
