Ready to learn about Musicspace?
Again, it’s been awhile, but we are back with another Music Entrepreneur HQ exclusive.
I recently caught up with Karan Beghi from Musicspace on Twitter (yes, you can still build great connections on Twitter).
Here’s what he had to share with us.
1. Tell us who you are and what you do.
My name is Karan Beghi and I’m the founder of Musicspace! I’m an entrepreneur who has had a passion for music since childhood. Growing up I was always surrounded by music, whether it was my parents playing Michael Jackson, Darren Hayes, Bob Marley, and RUN-DMC, or the rest of my family listening to Jazz, Hip-Hop, Reggae and EDM music. I currently run Musicspace, a music catalog management platform for artists and record labels.
2. What is MusicSpace? How does it benefit artists?
Musicspace is a simple music catalog organization and protection platform. We currently offer three core benefits, including:
- Catalog Management: Users can easily store any metadata related to their tracks, including: Track files (WAV’s & MP3’s), Cover arts, lyrics, publishing splits, publishing ownership percentages, collaborator information, genres & moods, BPMs, quick access links to various platforms, and track notes for any other types of data related to a song.
- Copyright Protection: We hired a worldwide Copyright expert lawyer to help us create Musicspace Protect, a simple and highly affordable way to protect your songs, lyrics and other creative files. It works as follows: You upload your work and provide details about it, such as the title of the work, the type of creative work it is, and who owns the Copyright to it; You then process a one-off payment of $2.50 per work and our site generates a three-point certificate that logs the time, date, and the I.P address of where you registered the work. We call this the “Three angles of proof”. You can then access your own digital certificate any time from within your dashboard. To go a step further, we’ll also sign a sworn affidavit should any courts require us to that proves that an artist protected their work on our platform at whatever time, date and location.
- Milestones: Our milestones feature allows you to document important career memories right from within your dashboard. Whether it’s your first tour, or first sale – You can track any and all memories in a timeline view right from your Musicspace dashboard. We have a firm belief that artists don’t often cut themselves enough slack, and that tracking their small achievements is a great way for them to look back and take a glance at all the things they’ve overcome to get where they are today!
3. What is the importance of metadata as applied to music?
4. What are some of the typical issues you see with artists managing their catalogs?
One of the issues that scares me the most is that so many artists don’t even organize their music catalogs to begin with. They’re putting out music, not knowing who owns what part of the song, and not knowing what metadata even is – or why organizing it is even essential so early on in their careers.
Additionally, without a record of your catalog, along with the important metadata that comes with it, artists are losing on hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars because they become too risky to work with. If a brand wants to license an artist’s music, and the artist has no idea who owns the publishing or where their track metadata is, the brand will pass up on them in an instant. This happens often.
Without a record of your catalog, along with the important metadata that comes with it, artists are losing on hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars because they become too risky to work with. Click To TweetA brand would rather license music from an artist who is organized and has his/her metadata in check. They simply don’t want the risk of any lawsuits. In other words: Organize your catalog, and you’ll be well-prepared for commercial opportunities.
5. Is there anything else I should have asked?
What separates Musicspace from other management tools?
Being a new company in the catalog management scene certainly isn’t easy when going up against players who have been in the scene for a while, but there are four areas we focus on that set us apart.
1. Education:
Unlike other businesses in our vertical, we have a core focus on education. We started our Instagram page, @Musicspaceio and post daily marketing, legal and industry-related tips for musicians of all sizes. Our ethos isn’t to drive sales by paid ads or other channels that see users as “conversion metrics” and “KPIs”, but instead to genuinely educate people (whether they’re our clients or not), and to let Musicspace be a by-product of their own “want” to become organized.
2. Pricing:
We currently have five plans for artists of all sizes. Our free plan, which allows you to organize up to three tracks at no cost; our Basic plan ($3.99/month), which allows you to organize up to 10 tracks; our Pro plan ($5.99/month), which allows up to 30 tracks; our Elite plan ($12.99/month), which allows up to 100 tracks, and our Unlimited plan ($29.99/month), which allows you to organize & protect unlimited tracks.
Compared to our competitors, none of them offers an unlimited plan for as little as we do – and our plan is unmetered, meaning it’s truly unlimited.
3. Direction:
Our goal is to make Musicspace the “brain” of an artist’s catalog, allow them to leverage their own catalog data to help make smarter career-based decisions, as well as to help them exploit their music commercially all from within our dashboard.
4. Privacy & Bootstrapped:
Unlike other businesses, we have a strong focus on data privacy. This means we do not sell, share or make use of any of our users’ personal or catalog data for profit. In a climate where data has surpassed many things in price, we feel that it’s our duty to let the power of an artist’s data remain in their hands.
Musicspace is also a bootstrapped business, meaning we have no investors or shareholders to answer to, and no need for unnecessary price-hikes to drive up profits. We’ve been profitable since last year, and intend to grow steadily without sacrificing our morals as a business.
Final Thoughts
Wow. The music business sure can be complicated at times. Aren’t you glad to know there are tools like Musicspace out there that can help simplify various aspects of your career?
And on another note…
Did you enjoy this interview?
Make sure to say “hi” to Musicspace on Twitter and thank them for their time: @Musicspace_io
If you have any other questions, be sure to leave them in the comments below!
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