Three quarters of a million dollars š„³
That’s one hell of an achievement – and we thank each and every one of our 669 new investors who helped us reach this important milestone for the round š
Having said that we’re still feeling bullish and we’ll be pushing hard over the next 7 days to reach our goal of $1 million – which will also unlock the prize for one lucky artist-investor to work with Anthony Kilhoffer and receive Vampr A&R support in a priceless promotional package š„
The round closes in one week today – don’t risk missing out and invest today by heading toĀ www.wefunder.com/vampr
Josh & Baz
In our last post we mentioned that Vampr had just released a major update focusing on improvements to our Publishing and Pro products.
Today weāre going to break down changes to our approach on privacy and to Vampr Pro.
When we released Vampr Pro, our premium subscription service in August 2020, we promised users that no existing or adored Vampr feature would be hidden behind a paywall.
Promises made – promises kept.
Instead, we added a suite of useful new features for small businesses, such as hiding your profileās age. For a brand or a retail store like Guitar Center, this was obviously not a relevant profile detail to highlight on their Vampr page.
At the time we believed it was appropriate to charge for this as it is a feature which would only benefit working professionals or brands who wanted to get in front of as many Vampr users as possible, and who had something to sell.
Weāve since heard from hundreds of users who disagree on the basis that privacy is not something a company should ever ask a user to pay for. Whilst we believe our initial thinking was justified when explained like this, we happen to agree wholeheartedly that any individual user on Vampr should enjoy the full suite of privacy features we have to offer, whether they are a Pro member or not.
We also wanted to make sure that any changes would have a net positive effect on MAUs and revenue.
As such, we are pleased to announce that weāve released an update which gives every single user on the platform the ability to hide their age from their profile without losing any privileges or benefit when searching through the Vampr algorithm.
Privacy is of utmost importance to us, both us a company and as individual founders/songwriters who always valued control over our image and careers above all else. We trust you will agree that this is the right move for a proudly progressive company such as Vampr.
There are only 17 days left in our equity crowdfunding campaign and we need your help!
With an internal goal of reaching $1 Million weāll need each of you to share our campaign page – www.wefunder.com/vampr – with your immediate network, or if youāve been sitting on the fence until now we implore you to invest before time runs out!
Josh āļø
Vampr Publishing was officially announced in May 2020 and was always designed to be disruptive.
- Disruptive in the sense we want more independent artists getting access to sync opportunities.
- Disruptive in the sense we want to compete with the biggest sync libraries in existence, but in a way that provides a huge selection of diverse original music for Music Supervisors and Creative Producers in the most efficient way possible.
We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, but we’re not doing what everybody else in the sync industry are doing.
We’ve positioned ourselves as an enablement for independent artists with commercial catalogues to compete more effectively with library/production/stock music.
The concept of Vampr Publishing started when we realised we have over a million music-making users on our app, a number that only ever gets bigger, and their individual catalogues only ever get bigger too.
That means two things to us:
1. Artists need help being represented for sync. Especially in this DIY era where artists already have to look after extensive highly-demanding record releases and their promotion/marketing.
2. We have a very unique opportunity as a partner with those who need to use licensed music. A never-ending, exponential-growth, diverse catalogue and extremely easy mobile submission system that helps quality control, metadata management and reduces friction to the sync market.
We launched the first version of Vampr Publishing in the app and watched 10s of thousands of artists submit over 50,000 songs to be considered in a record-breaking amount of time.
Meanwhile, we quickly onboarded interest from a network of over 300 music supervisors, sync partners and a publishing admin partner.
Launching during the pandemic was both a blessing and curse. A curse because the sync industry was one of the hardest hit by the pandemic (filming stopped). And a blessing because it allowed us to take a macro view of the sync industry, where it’s struggling and where our strengths lay.
Some Important Things We’ve Learnt From Vampr Publishing 1.0
Too much/the wrong information being submitted is not helpful to anybody
We’ve had to find a careful balance of exactly what information is important to help a track get sync attention and being the most user-friendly mobile sync submission system available.
Some music is more sync-friendly than other
There’s a saying in sync that there’s a “home for any song”, but the reality is that there are trends, preferences and standards. We’ve invested more and more attention and energy into research in this respect to ensure we’ve got what Music Supervisors need.
Human interaction at the wrong stages of the submission process is deceptively not helpful to anybody
We’re always cautious with automation and being “just an app”, not a team behind it, but this operation called for more effective systems to ensure artists aren’t being left in the dark about the status of their submission, and in this instance, removing people from some stages of submission and introducing better technology allows us to be much more efficient with communications and status updates.
The sync market just doesn’t work without very granular metadata tags
There are always multiple stakeholders involved with what music is chosen for sync, and way back at the pitching and searching stages specifically, music is being searched for with an obscure “theme” language. To be prepared for these searches, operations need to be based around that language.
At this scale, music and metadata needs to be managed with technology
Systems, even those used as standard in the music industry, just aren’t well-prepared for dealing with bulk (read: mass) quantities of metadata. We tried our best to work within our initial means, but eventually we realised that we weren’t going to be able to achieve our vision without technical intervention.
Urgent end-of-day turnaround search normality isn’t the kind of behaviour you’d see in FTSE companies outside of the creative industry and needs disrupting
Nobody seems to want to say it but… Last minute rushing is because somebody, somewhere in the procurement process, is disorganised. This would not be practical in most business situations, and it only is in sync because “it’s the way it’s always been.”
We want to make the music industry more lucrative, so we have to start behaving like more lucrative businesses. Therefore, we’re going to do our bit to ensure we’re organised and ready when a search comes in. Reactive chasing should not be the standard.
How you organise and categorise music ready for searches is extremely important. How you make sure music is being distributed into that organisational environment is equally so
Following above; we’re committed to organisation. Making sure we’ve got what’s needed and know where to find it quickly and efficiently is our overarching strategy.
Partners matter
Getting syncs is all about distributing music as far and wide as possible to reach opportunities through routes of relationships.
What’s New in Vampr Publishing 2.0?
- A whole new, revised submission system built to support submitting music and data tags in a way that increases chances of a song being syncd, starting from an easy mobile submission from our app
- Better explanations of why things are needed for sync, and where to get them, through the submission process
- An easier way to tell us songwriter splits
- A whole new Tags & Metadata screen that allows artists to tell us EXACTLY how a song should be used in sync, without having to fiddle around with ID3s or spreadsheets
- Drastically improved submission status notification in the app
- A whole new desktop submission system to provide all deliverables necessary in one screen
- Improved sync chances
- Potential special creative roster artist projects
We are absolutely buzzing for this next stage in Vampr Publishing and can’t wait to help more of you with your sync efforts! šš½
What a hell of a month š„ŗ
Last week we were nominated for a Music Week award for the second year running, and today we learned that Vampr has been added to Fast Companyās prestigious list of the worldās Most Innovative Companies for 2022.
Being a musician is bloody hard. The industry is notorious for its gatekeepers.
And yet every day Vampr is making it easier for millions of musicians to carve out their own path and make a living from their music.
To date, over 7 million professional relationships have been brokered on Vampr, with users making an average of 2 new connections per session (comparable to Facebook). Try to imagine the impossibility of making that many connections and collabs in the days of planes, trains and automobiles – or as we say B.V. (before Vampr š)
In the past year weāve nearly doubled the size of our user-base; watched as the number of messages being sent each month has grown 200%; and launched multiple revenue streams generating a Run Rate currently sitting close to half a million dollars.
And weāre just getting startedā¦
āWeāre totally thrilled and humbled to receive recognition from the likes of Fast Company and Music Week,ā says Josh Simons, co-founder of Vampr. āWeāre proud that our work so far is getting the recognition it deserves, and weāre committed to further radical innovation in the future.ā
Fast Company honors businesses that are making the biggest impact on their industries and culture as a wholeāultimately thriving in todayās ever-changing world. Vampr is now proud to sit among those companies bringing in the future today with some of the most inspiring accomplishments of the 21st century.
Having raised $2.6M previously, Vampr is actively raising $2M in a private round as we simultaneously celebrate raising over $650K through a Reg CF campaign on Wefunder which is due to close in three weeks time on March 31.
Don’t miss out – invest today!
JAY-Z, Kid Cudi, Travis Scott, Michael Jackson, Ye. What do all these artists have in common? They were recorded by legendary mix engineer and producer Anthony Kilhoffer. And you could be next in line to have your music listened to by Anthony and even win a day in the studio with him, by simply investing the minimum $250 in our Equity Crowdfunding campaign.
Every investor in Vampr is being offered the opportunity to have their music heard by the legend, with his favorite artist being selected to head straight into the studio at the world famous Record Planet in Hollywood to make music happen. If youāve invested in Vampr previously you’re already in the running – just send an email to info@vampr.me with your track submission!
But thereās a catch: this opportunity will only be unlocked if we reach our internal goal of $1M. Weāre already over halfway, with $650K in the bank. So letās get to it –Ā the round closes on March 31.
Head toĀ www.wefunder.com/vamprĀ to enter and invest!
Ps. Donāt forget, even if you donāt win youāre still winning, as a new owner of equity in the fastest growing social-professional network for creatives. How good is that?
Sincerely,
Josh
Hey everyone,
Amazing turnout on Friday for the webinar! We’ll be answering any questions we didn’t get to in a coming video update š¤
In the meantime, and for those who missed it, you can catch a replay here:
@Army – pleaseĀ share the link with your network orĀ anyone who you think might be interested (and if you haven’t already – sign up to the Investor Army here!)
As previously revealed, our fundingĀ round is scheduled to close Thursday, March 31st! Don’t miss your opportunity – invest today!
Josh