Sharpe Records Business Plan

1. Sharpe Records Business Plan Luke Tookey, James Sharpe, Yunus Khan

2. Short Term Aim: We aim to release Ellie Hutton’s EP for April time and hopefully make some profit from this through the EP release gig and downloads of songs. • Mid Term Aim: Assuming we have made some profit from the release of Ellie Hutton’s EP, we will have money to put into our label for expansion, meaning we will be able to fund merchandise for sale, etc. • Long Term Aim: Expand to a point where we have multiple artists to exploit, meaning more money for the company and more recognition from the music industry. Executive summary

3. To take the pressure off the artist so they can focus on their music and creativity. • What we can do for them: Marketing, Promotion, A&R (advice on songs), Production, Organisation and management, Make them feel like they have ‘made it’, Use our greater understanding of how the industry works to help them succeed. Why are we a record label?

4. Our label has been formed as a partnership between three people. These being James Sharpe, Luke Tookey and Yunus Khan. We will split any profits made equally between the three of us whilst also allocating a percentage of profits for the artist (Ellie Hutton and Friends) that we have signed. This will work out as 30% for each of the partners in the label and 10% for the artist. Company summary

5. We plan to try and sell the artists music on bandcamp as a digital download where people can pay what they want. It is free which is ideal as we don’t have any money so trying to get the music onto ITunes or similar via digital aggregator would be hard. However, some aggregators such as Horus music offer a free option where you get 80% of all royalties which is definitely something we could look into and most likely do as well. This would extend the reach of the artist’s music and potentially allow us to make more money than if we just used bandcamp. • Other income options could be merchandise, physical CD’s and live shows. However due to us having no money to produce mass amounts of CDs or merch then it would be impossible to actually make anything from these sources. Live shows could be an option for an income stream however it would also cost money to set them up. We are thinking of setting up a launch gig as a group though but this is more of a promotional thing rather than an income stream. It could be a good idea for us to make say 15 CD’s and see if we could sell them at the release gig. • It could end up being that we make no money from the music and this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem as we will be investing hardly anything (if nothing) into the business. Products and services

6. Launch gig organised between the whole group • Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, (show reel/live music video/audio only video/vlogs), Soundcloud (no downloads), Bandcamp (people can pay what they want) • Flyers handed out to music students for live gig(s) • Try to get on BBC introducing/podcasts • Remix competition (winners on album as alt cut) • CDs? Marketing ideas

7. Unlike in a real world scenario we all fulfil the studio roles. These roles include recording, editing, mixing and mastering. • For promotion via social media, we will all have access to the various social mediums used, but Luke and James will have most control over this, but everyone else can have a say. • For physical promotion, Yunus will take a leading role. This promotion will include merchandise (such as shirts/wristbands) and flyers/posters. Management summary

8. SWOT Analysis