Running Head: MARKETING PLAN

Course Project - Marketing Plan Final

Kaylene Ritchie
Keller Graduate
Professor Dyrren Davis
MKTG-522 Marketing Management

MARKETING PLAN

Table of Contents
Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................................... 3
Situation Analysis ......................................................................................................................................... 4
Market Summary ...................................................................................................................................... 4
SWOT Analysis ........................................................................................................................................ 4
Competition............................................................................................................................................... 7
Service Offering ........................................................................................................................................ 9
Keys to Success......................................................................................................................................... 9
Critical Issues .......................................................................................................................................... 10
Marketing Strategy...................................................................................................................................... 10
Mission.................................................................................................................................................... 11
Marketing Objectives .............................................................................................................................. 11
Financial Objectives................................................................................................................................ 12
Target Markets ........................................................................................................................................ 12
Positioning .............................................................................................................................................. 13
Strategies ................................................................................................................................................. 13
Marketing Mix ........................................................................................................................................ 14
Product ................................................................................................................................................ 14
Price .................................................................................................................................................... 14
Distribution ......................................................................................................................................... 15
Marketing Communications ................................................................................................................ 15
Marketing Research ................................................................................................................................ 16
Controls ....................................................................................................................................................... 17
Implementation ....................................................................................................................................... 17
Marketing Organization .......................................................................................................................... 17
Contingency Planning ............................................................................................................................. 19
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 19
References ................................................................................................................................................... 21

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Executive Summary
Music Blast, Inc. is planning to launch an innovative new music app into an existing
competitive market. Our unique idea on how we plan to transform the way music lovers listen to
and find new music is what will set us apart from our competitors and not only allow us to
compete in a tough market but also excel.
Our music app will be priced competitively compared to the other music apps on the
market but offer much more capabilities and benefits to the casual listener than what currently
exists. Music appeals to consumers of all ages, it will be our distinctive user experience that will
set us apart and will allow our app to gain recognition.
The main objective within our first year is to gain brand recognition by publishing our
app in the major app stores for the three largest mobile platforms. The free app will allow us to
generate income by having ads that display within the user interface. Music Blast, Inc. estimates
that our company will be able to generate over 5 million dollars in revenue after the first one
million in downloads.
It will always be an option for the user to subscribe to our paid service at $9.00 a month,
however we dont anticipate converting users to the paid subscription until after users start to use
our service. At an estimate of obtaining 100,000 users a month for the first month and
converting 35 percent of our users to the paid version, we will be able to generate $3,780,000
from paid subscribers. This will net Music Blast, Inc. over 8 million dollars of total profit within
the first year.
Our goal will be to minimize costs and operate at zero profit or at an operating loss of no
more than 1 million dollars within the first year. By the end of the second year, Music Blast, Inc
plans to turn a profit of 9 million dollars.

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Situation Analysis
Music Blast, Inc. is preparing to enter the highly competitive and extremely diverse
music streaming industry. There are many players in the music streaming industry of which
some have already amassed over 40 million dedicated users to their services. Competition in this
industry is extremely fierce and profit margins are constantly at risk of dwindling due to higher
royalty fees paid for the songs that are listened to by our users.
To be highly competitive in this market, Music Blast, Inc. will have to be superb in its
content delivery, provide a consistent and enjoyable experience, and sustain distance from our
competitors by providing a totally unique experience of listening to music not found in our
competitors apps.
Market Summary
Music Blast, Inc.s market is an extremely saturated market with many competitors but it
is a market that is increasingly seeing new subscribers on a daily basis. Some of our leading
competitors such as Pandora has 70 million active users, Spotify has 10 million users, and there
are constantly new companies entering the industry such as Apple, Google, and Amazon.
The number of digital streaming music users has increased by 32 percent per year
compared to other mediums of obtaining music such as physical media and digital downloads
which has seen their share decrease by 6-13 percent. (Sikka, 2010)
SWOT Analysis
Music Blast, Inc. has many strengths that includes its unique streaming experience that
integrates music ID fingerprinting technology bundled with a digital content streaming service
that is not matched by any competitor in our industry. This totally unique experience for users
will provide an initial benefit for Music Blast, Inc. as we will be the first to market with such a
product. However, our efforts will be challenged by a market that is aggressively competitive

MARKETING PLAN

and there is a concern for our competitors to create a copycat service or merge together with an
existing company that already offers digital music ID fingerprinting.
Strengths: Music Blast, Inc. will be able to build on three basic strengths
1. Innovative Product Our product is the only one on the market currently that
provides a seamless experience for the user to listen to their favorite artists, find
new music via the music fingerprint ID technology, and the ease of use of adding
new music to their existing playlist.
2. Simplified User Interface Our user interface is designed to be extremely user
friendly and puts the most used controls right on the users screen in an easily
accessible place. Our app makes it effortless for our users to search for new music
by providing a search box at the top of the app and a button to the right that
activates the music fingerprinting ID feature.
3. Competitive price Our subscription based service is priced at the same cost as
our competitors at $9.99 a month but what sets us apart is the additional benefit of
finding new music just by letting the app record 30 seconds of a song. This is a
substantial benefit that adds additional appeal to our product and sets our app apart
from our competitors at the same cost.
Weaknesses: Music Blast, Inc. can benefit from entering the market now because we
have been able to analyze what makes our competitors successful and what we need to do as a
company to stand out among the group. However, there are two identified weaknesses that our
company will face:
1. Lack of Brand Awareness Music Blast, Inc. will be a new service that no one
has heard of before. Music Blast, Inc. will be competing in a market that has well

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established name brand services that users have come to know and trust. Music
Blast, Inc. will address this issue by aggressively promoting our services and
showing new users how the unique experience of our app will benefit them in their
daily lives.
2. Initial Growing Pains Since we are a new company, there will be some initial
problems that will be foreseen as it relates to the reliable of our service. As we can
project an anticipated number of users, we run the risk of more users subscribing to
our service which can lead to a lack of bandwidth which would hinder a seamless
streaming experience. Music Blast, Inc. will have to prepare for this possibility and
have a plan in place that will allow us to add additional bandwidth quickly to
address any potential problems.
Opportunities: Music Blast, Inc. will be able to take advantage of the following two
major opportunities:
1. Increased demand for music streaming service The number of users switching
over to digital streaming services has increased by 32 percent per year and there is a
consistent trend of users moving away from purchasing music in stores or via
downloads.
2. Unique experience Music Blast, Inc.s app will set itself apart from our
competitors by offering what no other competitor has to offer in their app. Our app
will be a complete music listening, finding, and digital content consumption
experience. When a user of Music Blast, Inc opens our app, it will be the only
application that they need to use to enjoy listening to the music that they love as
well as discovering new artists that appeals to their musical preference.

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Threats: Music Blast, Inc. will face the following three threats as soon as our app is
launched
1. Increased Competition The music streaming market is already filled with major
players such as Pandora, Slacker Radio, Spotify, and Beats music. There is also the
threat of new competitors entering the market on a daily basis.
2. Copycat Services Our efforts will be challenged by companies that see our
success and will start to add the same music fingerprinting ID technology in their
apps. To maintain our initiative of providing a unique experience not found in our
competitors apps, Music Blast, Inc will continually enhance our product to better
suite our customers by constantly listening to our users feedback and
implementing new features that are mostly demanded by our customers.
3. Rising Royalty Costs The rising cost of providing copyrighted content will
continue to create a strain on our companys bottom line. These costs will need to
be offset in some way to help maintain profitably.
Competition
The digital content delivery market is a highly competitive that is filled with existing
well-known companies that have a strong user base. Our competitors are continually enhancing
their products and provide a quality user experience as well. Some of our key competitors are:

Pandora Pandora is the major competitor in our market and has amassed 70
million active users. They provide an enjoyable music listening experience and
their application is easy to use. Their efforts are hampered a little by only having
around 2.5 million paid subscribers to their service. (Houghton, 2013)

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Spotify Spotify provides a similar experience to Grooveshark. They offer a nice

music streaming experience that allows users to select individual songs that they
want to listen to and add to their playlist. Spotify has 40 million active users.
Spotify has been more successful with its subscription service as they have 10
million active subscribed users. (Adegoke, 2014)

Slacker Radio Slacker Radio is a similar user experience to Pandora. Slacker

Radio allows you to select a particular and they play music from that artist and
related artists. Their user interface is extremely clean and easy to use. Slacker
currently has 30 million registered users of which 5 to 6 million of those users are
paid subscribers. (Buli, 2013)

Grooveshark Grooveshark is a service that allows its users to upload MP3 songs
of their own and allows other users to add those songs to their playlist. Grooveshark
was and extremely successful service had started off extremely strong. At one
point, grooveshark had 30 million active users. Due to legal problems with their
app, Grooveshark has seen their subscriber base diminish to 12 million users.
(Fiegerman, 2013) However, Grooveshark has settled their legal battles, solidified
their service, and has started to experience growth. They quit offering their free
service and charge every user $4 a month. (Simply Zesty, n.d.).

Beats Music Beats music is a new startup music streaming service which sells
their app for $9.99 a month. They also have an agreement with cell phone carrier
AT&T which allows their users to sign up for beats music and the streaming does
not count towards their data usage.

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Even with the tough competition, Market Blast, Inc. will be able to compete extremely
well due to the additional benefits that our app has to offer. The majority of music streaming
services available all provide the same types of features. There is very little that distinguishes
them apart. Our app with the music ID fingerprinting service will be a whole new experience
compared to what most users have experienced.
Service Offering
The Music Blast, Inc. provides a convenient digital content consumption experience for
users that have smartphones or a pc. The app will provide a way for a user to find artists that they
love to listen to and stream it to any electronic device. The main features that application will
have is the ability to play any song or whole album from an artist that they like, add songs to a
playlist, find new music through an integrated search capability, and find the artists of songs
played on the radio via digital music fingerprint ID services.
Keys to Success
Music Blast, Inc. will monitor the number of downloads from the appropriate app store
such as apple, google play, and windows store. We will also monitor the number of connections
to our site from a PC and how many active users are streaming from our servers.
Our system will allow us to monitor the all aspects of streaming even down to the number
of individual songs stream to a device and how many minutes that songs was streamed for. We
will also monitor industry forums and news feeds to get general sense of the buzz that our app is
creating. In addition, we will use track-able links on postings of social media sites to track how
many users are clicking those links and how many times the link is reposted.

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Critical Issues
Our users will be able to download our app from the major smartphone app markets.
These markets include apple apps, google play store, and the windows store. Users will also be
able to access our website and stream music directly from our web page.

Marketing Strategy
Cater to the users needs:
Music lovers have very specific needs and want to be able to find music that they can
listen to with ease. That is the basis of Music Blasts app. By providing a simplified user
interface that allows users to add songs from artists that they already know and allow them to
easily find new songs with the touch of a button, this will make for a more pleasurable user
experience that is sure to delight any customer.
Provide targeted email marketing:
The last thing that Music Blast, Inc. wants to do is annoy and upset any of its customers.
However, that also does not mean that we can also choose to ignore our customers once they
start using our service. Music Blast, Inc. with use specialized targeted emails that will be sent to
customers on an occasional basis that will help further promote new and existing features of the
app, as well as provide information on new services that the company will offer.
Maintain Simplicity:
As a company, our commitment will be to always make certain that the usability of our
app is simple to use. This will ensure that anyone who downloads our app will be able to start
using it to its fullest potential right away. The ease of use will in turn enable our users to
recommend our app to their friends and family members with confidence that they too will be
able to enjoy the music that they love just as easily as they do.

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The simplicity of our user interface will also appeal to users of all ages. The goal of the
user interface is to make it very clean and easy to find all controls. The design will be elegant
and modern but still extremely functional.
Listen and respond to the customers:
The sole basis of our app is to connect our users with the music that they love. Our main
focus is to keep our customers happy and wanting them to continue to use our product. By
listening to our customers and responding to their feedback, whether that is adding new features
or improving upon the ones that currently exist, this will make for a happier user experience and
will ensure that our customers will continue to promote our brand through word of mouth.
Mission
Music Blast, Inc.s goal is to allow people to discover the music that they love and allow
them to listen to it anywhere at any time on any device that they choose. We strive to provide
the best possible music listening experience by constantly improving how our product interacts
with the user based off of their feedback. The simplified user interface of our app allows users to
find new music in a whole new way and connects them with the artists that they love which
cannot be matched by our competitors.
Marketing Objectives
The objectives of this service are as follows:
1. To add over 100,000 users within the first three months.
2. To become top music streaming app on both Android Play Market and Apple App
Store by the end of year one.
3. Increase sales by 100% by the end of year two.

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Financial Objectives
Music Blast, Inc. plans to add 100,000 users a month for the first 12 months of existence.
The goal is to increase subscribership to 200,000 users a month by the start of year two. Music
Blast, Inc. will offer a free of charge subscription which will include advertisements on the users
screen while listening to music. Music Blast, Inc. will generate revenue through these
advertisement agreements.
There will also be a paid VIP subscription service that will remove the ads from the users
interface and will cost the user $9 a month. Out of the number of users that subscribe to our
service, Music Blast, Inc. would like to initially convert 35 percent of those users over to the paid
subscription service. After the first year, the goal will be to have over 85% of new subscribers
on the paid subscription service.

Target Markets
Music Blast, Inc. will be targeting their app to users between the ages of 18-44 years of
age. Based off of our smartphone ownership research, this target group has the largest

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percentage of cell phone users that carry smartphones compared to the older traditional cell
phones that dont have data plans. (Smith2013).
As part of the sign up process, users will be required to enter their date of birth and zip
code. This will allow us to see what users are listening to in a specific area and age. This data
will enable us to target customers with new songs that they may like based off of their age and
what similar users in their area are listening to.
Positioning
Music Blast, Inc. will be positioning our app as the all-inclusive app which will be the
only one that you will need for your music consumption entertainment. Our users have a need for
finding songs from artists that they love and our app is intended to fill that need in the easiest
way possible. Our marketing team will be able to highlight the benefits of using our app as an
all-in-one music center which will be the only app our users will need for their enjoyment.
Strategies
Music Blast, Inc. marketing department will have access to data on how our users are
using our app and which features they are using the most. The marketing department will be able
to tell what genre of music is listened to the most, which method is used most to find new songs,
how long our users are streaming music from our service, and various other statistics that will
enable our marketing team to effectively target new users.
This data will enable our team to send content appropriate marketing emails that target
the specific needs of our users. They will also be able to highlight our most used features. Our
team will also be monitoring industry related forums and social media sites, actively posting on
relevant topics, and reviewing feedback submitted from our users to help adapt our application to
meet the expectations of what our users want in the app.

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Marketing Mix
Product
Music Blast, Inc. will be offering its app as a free download or a subscription based
service via the app stores for each individual phones platform. Our product will enable our users
to search for individual songs of an artist and add them to their playlist. They can also select
from automatically generated playlists based off of a specific artist. The app will enable our users
to find the name of a song playing on the radio simply by hitting the button in the search box that
activates the music fingerprinting ID service.
After recording only 30 seconds of a particular song, that data will be sent to our servers
for analysis which will return the name of the song and the artist that sings the song. In addition
to this information, the user will be presented with a convenient button to automatically add the
song to their playlist.
Price
Our app will be added in the app store of each individual phones platform free of charge
which will include ads to help with the costs of providing our services. The user will have the
option of paying for a subscription based service at $9 a month which will remove the ads from
the users screen. In addition to the monthly service, our company will also offer a yearly
subscription which would be $99 for the whole year.
This will give the user a full two months of premium service at no cost should they pay
for the whole year in advance. We will also have promotional months intended to attract new
customer which will have the cost of our subscription be cut in half for the first three months of
service. After the initial three months, the cost of the subscription service will return to its
normal full price of $9 per month.

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Music Blast, Inc. anticipates to have 100,000 users a month for the first year download
our app from one of the major app markets. Of those users, we expect to convert 35 percent of
those users to our paid subscription service of $9 a month. Out of the 35,000 users that will be
converted to the paid service, it will be our anticipation that 10,000 of those users will take
advantage of the yearly price of $99.
Our revenue from the monthly subscription service will be $225,000 per month. We will
also generate an additional $990,000 from our yearly subscription for the first full year. By the
start of year two, our goal will be to double the amount of users that we are subscribing on a
yearly basis to 200,000 users a month. Of those users, we anticipate to have 170,000 of those
monthly users paying for subscription service. This will result in 1.53 million dollars of revenue
per month.
Distribution
Music Blast, Inc. only course of distribution for app will be the app store of each mobile
phone platform. This will include the Apple store, Google play store, and Windows mobile store.
The app will be featured in the music category of the respective app store.
In addition to marketing our app, we will also have our music streaming service available
on our website for our users to listen to music. Our programmers will work hard to make certain
that our website comes up on the first page of search engines when a user is searching for a
music streaming service. We will also have our marketing team promoting our service on
industry websites, forums, and blog posts that will contain links to our website and app location
for their respective app store.
Marketing Communications
Our marketing efforts will include posting to our social media site, sending specific and
targeted advertisements via email, and actively communicating via music related forums.

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Continual research into the listening habits of our customers and which medium they are using to
consume their entertainment will enable our marketing team to strategically advertise our app
effectively.
Our market research will also enable us to proactively stay ahead of any trends in the
market and adapt to our users needs. The ability for our company to gauge the most active hours
of listening, the genre of music our users are listening to, and the amount of time our users are
streaming from our service will enable us to better target specific advertisements that cater to
each of our individual users needs.
Music Blast, Inc. will devote $500,000 for the first year to promote our app. Our
marketing department will send out monthly email blasts to our customers about any new
promotional plans that we are offering. In addition, they will run weekly television promotional
ads to help establish brand recognition within our market.
Marketing Research
Music Blast, Inc. will be utilizing various different research techniques to effectively
gauge how our app is viewed by the public and how our app compares to our competitors. We
will use the built in rating methods of the individual app stores to determine how our users like
our service and compare our ratings to our competitors.
Music Blast, Inc. will also provide a way on our website and directly within our app that
will allow our users to provide feedback on their experiences of using our app and
recommendations for improvements. We will also be utilizing periodic customer surveys sent to
our users that will provide us with information on how satisfied our users are with our app.
In addition, our marketing department will scour industry related websites, forums, and
blogs to get a better understanding of what users are saying about our app. They will also
actively chat to users and help promote our brand or directly respond to any criticism.

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Controls
Music Blast, Inc. will be establishing controls to measure how successfully our music app
is being downloaded and the success of our marketing department in converting free users to our
subscriber based service.
Implementation
Music Blast, Inc. will be closely monitoring the quality of our app by constantly
reviewing the feedback provided by our customers and the number of bug reports submitted by
users. By monitoring these services, it will enable Music Blast, Inc. to respond to any glitches
within the app or concerns by our users within a minimal amount of time.
Music Blast, Inc. will also be carefully monitoring other variables the affect our bottom
line such as the number of times our app has been downloaded within the last month and
compare how many users have been converted to the paid service based off of our initial
estimates.
Marketing Organization
Music Blast, Inc. is a small startup company that was founded by two senior level
programmers. John Stevens and Clyde McVeigh met each other while working for leading
antivirus software company. They decided to leave their current positions to start Music Blast,
Inc. Both John and Clyde bring with them over 10 years of programming experience and will
head the development of the Music Blast app.
Sophia Lee will be spearheading our marketing department. She was the VP of
Marketing for a large gaming development company and brings with her 18 years of marketing
experience. Sophia will be in charge of managing a small team of two additional employees that
will be in charge of promoting our application and getting users to convert from our free app to
our paid service.

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Sophias group will also be in charge of monitoring the number of users who our
downloading our app and will use this data to help them with their marketing strategies. They
will also be given additional information about how our users are using the Music Blast app so
that they can target specific marketing communications to our customers.
Zachary Chase will be our Sales Manager. Zachary has 9 years of sales experience
working for our competitor Spotify. He was able to successfully increase Spotifys sales by 200
percent. He is a valuable member of our team and will greatly help to promote our product.
Zachary will also be in charge of a small group that contains two additional sales
representatives. The two sales representatives will be in charge of specific regions and will both
report back to Zachary.
See the below chart of the eight-person organization structure:

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Contingency Planning
Music Blast, Inc. is preparing for an increase in competition with new companies
entering the market. Our company will prepare for the competition by making certain that our
app remains as the most user friendly interface that provides the best overall music listening
experience. To ensure that we can meet this strict guarantee, Music Blast, Inc. will make certain
to listen to and respond to our customers feedback about product improvements.
Our company would be prepared to hire additional programmers if needed to be able to
keep up with product enhancements and make certain that our updates are pushed out in a timely
manner.
Music Blast, Inc. would also run special promotions and develop a loyalty plan to help
combat any pricing war that may arise with our competitors. Our marketing department would
be able to promote our app at a rate of $4 per month to help attract new customers. In addition,
we will also provide a retention department that will be able to offer the $4 a month discount to
existing customers trying to cancel service or provide a couple months of free service to help
retain customers.

Conclusion
Music Blast, Inc. is embarking on an exciting new venture that is being led by two
exceptional programmers that have vast amount of experience in their respective fields. Our
main goal is to provide the best music listening app that has features not yet incorporated into
our competitors products.
The Music Blast app will be a one-of-a-kind product that will make it seamless for users
to listen to the music that they love and find new songs without the need of knowing the artist
that sings the song. Our unique idea of integrating a music streaming service with music ID

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fingerprinting technology will set our app apart from what currently exists on the market. We
will be competitive and aggressively promote our product so that we can establish brand
recognition within our market.

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References

Adegoke, Y. (May 21, 2014). billboardbiz. In Spotify Now Has 10 Million Paid Subscribers, 3
Million In U.S. (Exclusive). Retrieved October 10, 2014, from
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/digital-and-mobile/6092226/spotify-now-has10-million-paid-subscribers-3-million.
Buli, L. (June 7, 2013). Forbes. In Music Streaming Service Slacker Makes Moves Toward
Analytics. Retrieved October 9, 2014, from
http://www.forbes.com/sites/livbuli/2013/06/07/music-streaming-service-slacker-makesmoves-toward-analytics/.
Fiegerman, S. (April 22, 2013). Mashable. In Grooveshark CEO: 'I'm Broke'. Retrieved October
10, 2014, from http://mashable.com/2013/04/22/grooveshark-radio/.
Houghton, B. (May 23, 2013). Hypebot.com. In Pandora Reports: 70M Active Users, 2.5M Paid
Subscribers, Revenue Up 55%. Retrieved October 8, 2014, from
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2013/05/pandora-reports-70m-active-users-25m-paidsubscribers-revenue-up-55.html.
Sikka, P. (July 9, 2014). Yahoo Finance. In Must-know: Key trends signifying the music
streaming market. Retrieved October 8, 2014, from http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mustknow-key-trends-signifying-170020908.html.
Smith, A. (June 5, 2013). PewResearch Internet Project. In Smartphone Ownership 2013.
Retrieved October 8, 2014, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/06/05/smartphoneownership-2013/.
Simply Zesty. (n.d.). In Grooveshark No Longer Free; Users Now Being Asked To Pay $4/Month
Fee. Retrieved October 9, 2014, from
http://www.simplyzesty.com/Blog/Article/February-2012/Grooveshark-No-Longer-Free;Users-Now-Being-Asked-To-Pay-$4-Month-Fee.