🚀 25,000 sessions (and what the hell is remote recording anyway?)

Since launching the Musiversal Studio 18 months ago, we have now delivered over 25,000 sessions. That's 875,000 minutes (600 days 🤯) of music been made in realtime, between musicians and creators, around the globe. 🌍

Now, we're offering around 100 sessions every single day - 2,000 every month, from drums to cello, guitar to beat-making, production advice to vocals and audio editing to mastering. 🎶

What is a Musiversal session?

Musiversal provides remote recording sessions which connect our subscribers (music creators) with our artists (session musicians, producers and audio engineers). 'Remote recording' is a relatively new term which refers to a musician recording their instrument in a different location to the music creator on the other end - compared the good ol' days where every recording would take place between all stakeholders in the same studio.

Technology has evolved to the point where, assuming that you both have a good enough internet connection, you can stream super high quality video and studio-quality audio, which means that you can record & produce music with anyone, from almost anywhere in the world.

The implications of this are quite astonishing.

If I want to product a pop song, for example, I can sit in my bed wearing pyjamas whilst I have a drummer, bassist, guitarist, pianist, sax player or vocalist record their parts (whilst I watch, collaborate and direct in real time) - and then get the song mixed and mastered, without having to move. I didn't have to pay for travel. I didn't have to book a studio. I didn't have to organize days/ times to meet up. I didn't pollute the atmosphere with CO2. I didn't even have to learn how to play an instrument or know how to sing. Instead what I got was the world's best musicians creating a top-rate track, which stemmed from the idea I had in my head. Now, music creators and musicians can connect at any time, from anywhere - which means no more barriers and limitless possibilities in the music world.

Which software do we use?

Musiversal currently uses Zoom for the video streaming and Audiomovers for the audio feed, because we believe Audiomovers is currently the highest quality audio streaming software on the market, and since we're making music it's important we don't compromise on that quality by settling for the basic Zoom audio transmission.

Eventually, we aim to develop our own proprietary streaming software which will deliver the highest quality audio & video in combination, with an interface perfectly customized to maximize the quality of the remote recording experience. This is an exciting opportunity that will certainly solidify our defensibility & position Musiversal as leaders in the remote recording space, which is why our engineering team have already started Research & Development in this area.

However, this is not the priority for now, since our current system is working very well and our product team is focused on delivering a range of features that will be much more impactful for our users at this stage. For example: music file management, file sharing, a track-collaboration workspace, same-day bookings, and other features that will immediately deliver more value to our users' music production workflow.

In future, we also have our eyes (and brains) looking into the possibility of multi-musician recordings, where musicians in different locations can all record at the same time, in sync. It'll be just like having your own remote band!

Is anybody else doing this?

To the best of our knowledge, no other company in the world is offering remote recording sessions for music production (if you know of one, please let us know!). Here's why we believe that to be the case:

• All music marketplaces today offer freelance music providers
• These marketplaces offer a low barrier to entry for music providers so that they can attract as many on their platform as possible (in their tens of thousands)
• They need to have this low barrier to entry and a massive supply of musicians because their monetization model is to charge low commissions on every transaction (e.g. SoundBetter charge 8% on each booking). The marketplace requires a huge number of musicians, clients and therefore transactions to generate any viable level of revenues and profits
• If the commission was any higher, the likelihood of disintermediation (suppliers and customers working together outside the platform) would be too high, and the marketplace would degenerate and fail
• To provide remote recording sessions, the marketplace needs to offer an audio and video streaming solution. This would either:
  1. Need to be developed by the company itself - which is very difficult. It takes years to develop a workable, high-quality streaming software; e.g. Zoom was founded 11 years ago and Audiomovers 5 years ago, and even then they would need a dedicated Engineering team to provide regular maintenance, or, 
  2. The company would have to pay for an existing solution and offer every single music provider licenses to that solution. With such a high volume of music providers, this alone would be more expensive than the profits the company is likely to ever make.

In either case, the company would also need to:

1. Ensure that every single music provider has a fast enough internet speed & RAM to run all of the streaming and music softwares (like DAWs) simultaneously,
2. Ensure that every single music provider is actually comfortable and happy to conduct sessions over livestream (unlikely - would provide a higher barrier to entry and reduce supply which they can't afford to do), and,
3. Ensure that most, if not all, music providers are competent enough to engage professionally with clients (easier said than done, especially with an un-curated marketplace with no onboarding process).

All in all, the likelihood of existing marketplaces offering remote recordings is low, since the necessity of having a huge supply of music providers makes it very difficult to standardize and quality-control.

How has Musiversal managed to make it work?

• We have one super high bar standard of quality that all of our music providers need to meet (what we call a "curated" or "managed" marketplace)
• We hire music providers who have all the right ingredients to make remote recordings possible, including professionally equipped home recording studios, fast internet speeds, industry-standard hardware & software and having great communication skills
• Our recruitment process is highly selective, putting applicants through the treadmill of auditions and interviews, accepting less than 1%
• We spend time onboarding and training music providers, offering robust training guides and conducting mock sessions before they get into the real thing
• Our musicians have a fixed schedule each day, which means they can offer specific session slots that customers can book - ensuring that they're available and ready to record remotely
• We pay for every music provider's licences for Zoom and AudioMovers; links to which are provided through our own platform to ensure a seamless transition from booking to attending the session for our users
• We have an effective product which streamlines the booking, scheduling, file management flow and session notifications
• We pay our music providers a salary, which means they're paid for their session, preparation and admin time (and enjoy a much higher quality of life, perhaps even getting their first mortgage!)
• We optimize the match between music provider supply and customer demand, by maximizing booking utilization, which means we can service a platform that is both workable, efficient and profitable at the same time
• We've determined a pricing model for customers which allows Musiversal to make gross profit margins on each session so that the business model is sustainable, whilst still providing a 10x disruption in affordability for music creators
• No other marketplace would be able to achieve the above without an extremely well-crafted intermediation and platform management process, which is what we have developed (and continue to perfect)
  
  

The world's first fully remote recording studio

We're proud to hero this statement, and to be able to offer a disruptive solution for music creators that the world has never seen before.

Whilst it's an incredible feat to have gotten this far, it's not easy and there are challenges. Having a curated, employed supply of music-providers is game-changing and has many, many benefits. But at the same time, it has its downsides, too. Or maybe just one: the cost of paying musicians a fair wage every month.

For any company, in the most basic terms possible, you need to make more money than you spend, right? So it's important that Musiversal makes more money from subscriber revenues than it spends on paying musicians, the team & other costs like marketing, etc. This was one of our main focuses last year - and we’re now hitting 25% gross profit margins (and rising) on every session 🥳 (that’s 10x more margins than your traditional marketplace). This doesn't mean we're profitable, yet. But like many startups at our stage it means there's a clear path to becoming profitable in 1-2 years. And once we get there, the sky's the limit!

Our Wefunder Community Round* is one way to ensure that we can continue growing, continue hiring musicians, and get even closer to that milestone of profitability. And from that point onwards, any profits or further funding will solely be used to scale the company so that we can become the market leader as quickly as possible. Any pledge contributions in our Community Round will directly help us realize that ambition.

Have you tried a Musiversal session yet?

If you're a music creator and still haven't tried out a Musiversal session yet, we encourage you to do so! Our customers say that it is one of the most engaging, creative and fun experiences they've ever had in their musical lives and we want that for you, too. We have a 2-week Free Trial where you can book a free session with any of our musicians, so there's really nothing to lose, and we've found that 80% of those who do book that session end up becoming a subscriber!

*Wefunder is a US-based securities portal that allows people to invest in companies via crowdfunding. Our Wefunder community round is currently 'Testing the Waters' and accepting pledges for future investments from our community.

Testing the waters legal disclosure: We are 'testing the waters' to gauge investor interest in an offering under Regulation Crowdfunding. No money or other consideration is being solicited. If sent, it will not be accepted. No offer to buy securities will be accepted. No part of the purchase price will be received until a Form C is filed and only through Wefunder’s platform. Any indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind.