TRACKITDOWN: THE ONLINE DANCE MUSIC COMMUNITY 1.

EXCECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report analyzes the challenges and opportunities for the music industry within electronic marketplaces, statistical data highlight that the online sales in the UK alone will reach 78bn a year by 2010 (Econsultancy, 2009). The marketing endeavors have to be directed to the effective online promotion of music and keep in regard issues of design, security copyright management. Furthermore the Internet interactivity and customizability peculiarities have affected the communication model toward the emission of targeted and personalized contents. In this scenario the music business encourage the proliferation of niche markets based SMEs that focus on the satisfaction of their market segment with a comprehensive service inclusive of music and side products. Through the examination of the business model developed and implemented by the e-commerce music, merchandising and technological equipment website 'www.Trackitdown.net', this research aims to critically evaluate the best practice in the strategic management of the online music business. 2.INTRODUCTION 'Producers can pick up on consumer trends, repackage them and sell them back to paying costumers' (Bilton, 2007 p.152). This report aims at critically investigating the business model deployed by the online service www.Trackitdown.net. This online retailer for dance music and associate products has cleverly mirrored its segment market, as states the above quotation, to satisfy its needs and build up long-term commitment and bond of trust with consumers (Chaffey et al, 2009). The Trackitdown director described the website as a community where DJs and fans find the electronic music sub- gender they prefer, the technological kit to play the tracks, the merchandising and the news related to the dance background. The exploration of the website products and services will be expounded throughout the company communication and revenue strategy. Thus will be explored the contemporary opportunities and challenges the music industry is facing after the electronic marketplaces blown up and capsized the established major label control (Graham et al, 2004). The realization of a complete and factual analysis of the case study implies the exploration of economical, marketing, technological, design and legal matters. According to Chaffey (2009) generating an e- business

strategy means blending the traditional marketing, business and supply chain management with the information system peculiarities. The study will keep in regard the matter of fact of that the Internet is a consumer-generated medium (Jenkins and Deuze, 2008). Websites are developed with CSS (Cascade styling sheets) technology: 'style sheet language that allows authors and users to attach style to structured documents' as asserts the word web consortium (www.w3.org). The feasibility of customization changed the media communication standard, the users are no longer passive receiver of the media content (push strategy) but they are empowered to find information (pull strategy) (Hutchinson, 2006), and manipulate the contents (Pelsmacker, 2010). The online commerce has to grant security and data encryption in the transactional phase, stated by the Distance selling Regulation In (www.berr.gov.uk/Policies/consumer-issues/buying-and-selling/distance-selling).

addition, the sale of music implies the safeguard of intellectual property and copyrights of the wide choice of tracks on the website archive (England and Finney, 2007). While providing all these components, the online service has to build up an effective structure in which consumer can easily and effectively find and complete tasks (Rubin, 2008). This exploration of the convergence of different fields of studies in an unique business strategy will refer both to the academic and industry literature, and will be supported by the direct evidence emerged from the declarations of the director of the company (see Appendix 1). 2. OVERVIEW: 2.1 Trackitdown Backstory The original idea of Trackitdown project dates back at the end of 90's, when the company partners were DJs performing dance music mixes around UK music clubs. They witnessed the at that time cutting edge, CD mix technology put side by side to the traditional turntable plats. The music was still just sold in vinyl, but producers and DJs were using digital technology to compose and easily restyle and remix tracks. The professional dance music community started a massive interchange of CD with their creations, the production of tracks increased while the clubbing culture was taking over, also thanks to this huge network of artists (Leyshon et al, 2005). The basic idea of the Trackitdown founders has been to adapt the iTunes electronic delivery model to the dance music background.

2.2 The online music shop The core product (Chaffey et al, 2009) of the website is the music download. The featured music player follow the user in the exploration of the variegate dance music genres, enabling the track preview and the creation of the play list to enjoy while reading or commenting the news of the sphere, the updated artist profiles or just checking out who's ranking in the chart. This is the Trackitdown atmosphere. As we can deduce from the prior events, the music product online shop has essentially been designed for the insiders, DJs and producers can easily find material for their performances and they are supported by the secure download and the continue upload of new tracks within the catalogue. The ulterior music genres diversification characterizes the intent to engage the client through an accurate segmentation according to users taste (Mintzberg et al, 2002). The business action plan entails the 'affiliate programme', Trackitdown allows other websites to present either all the music catalogue or select a part of it. Trough the EDI (electronic data interchange) technology, a communication protocol and standard for the data interchange among computer, the host website access to the patron music database and can store it 'behind' its interface thanks to the CSS technology. In this manner, the consumers don't feel redirected to another website during the purchase phase. This forethought endorses the consistency of navigation, a core trait of web usability (Sdl, 2010). The enterprise runs stores for Mixmax: the online dance information service (http://mixmax.co.uk/), Kiss Fm: am online radio and TV (vwww.totalkiss.com), and Dogsonacid: a Drum n' Bass massive online community (www.dogsonacid.com). The benefits of the cooperative sub contraction form (Graham et al, 2004) are noticeable: extension of the business, prestige acquisition within the business contextual relationships (Mintzberg et al, 2002) and also lower transaction costs and less pricing competition (Laudon and Traver, 2009). Those advantages require high standard commitment from Trackitdown in the management of the chain of suppliers, both in the contractual phase and in the long- term venture, in fact even the minimal variation of the website structure could affect the affiliates operative (Reymond, 2005).

2.3 Technological apparatus component The website session dedicated to the sale of DJ equipment demonstrate the company intent to maximize the value of the customer experience with the deep knowledge of its costumer segment of the dance music niche market. The contents segmentation practice 'allows the marketers to more efficiently direct the business market effort (Bloc and Bloc, 2005) and affirm the online branding strategy of the company (Ryan and Jones, 2009). The expertise demonstrate with the selling of such dedicated and specific products corroborate the engagement of the company in creating a bond of trust with the costumes, by providing them a complete service within a customizable and consistent experience (Chaffey et al, 2009). 2.4 Merchandising According to the opinion of Trackitdown director, the fans still prefer the CD as format for buying music. The business patronizes every year the DJ Mag (www.djmag.com/) top 100 DJ project, obtaining a 35.000 fans database with their votes, and therefore taste and trends. The merchandising is a valuable ploy to monetize on the 'additional features beyond the core product' (Chaffey et al, 2009, p. 451) and in this particular framework represent the successful endeavor of the firm to broaden the audience throughout the insertion of tailored products configured around the customer proposition values (Pelsmaker, 2010; Preckumar, 2003). This branch of the trade is successful, according the report of Trackitdown director, and a promotion tool recently realized (May the 11th, 2010) supports the merchandising branch: a link to the featured product of the track played on the music player. 3. CURRENT ISSUES AND PREFORMANCE 3.1 Building the online reputation The electronic marketplace is an exciting field in which marketers are challenged to contemporarily broaden the audience while narrowing the focus on the individualization and customizability of the products (Ryan and Jones, 2009). The pull interactive medium allows a direct and personalized dialogue with users (Nicholas and Stokes, 2006). The users, on the other side have the power to manipulate the reputation of the brand trough the world of 'click': the online version of the traditional word of mouth and grassroots marketing (Hutchinson, 2006). These denotations date back to Nicholas Negroponte (1995), who predicted the potential of the Internet users to effectively pull in the medium ideas and contents instead of

merely absorbing the information flow propel by traditional media. The challenge is the unpredictability of the users response (Jenkins, 2006): marketers have to be proactive in renewing and evolving their strategies (Mintzberg et al, 2002) in order to identify, anticipate and satisfy the audience needs (Caffey et al, 2009 p.416). The Trackitdown tackle this process by providing various levels of personalization; the company director states: 'We offer the opportunity to be part of the community of Trackitdown, rather than someone that just download the music and doesn't get involved'. With the creation of their online Trackitdown profile, users not only access the purchase of tracks and goods, they can actually leave their feedback or comments and choose a personalized newsletter service. The final goal of this customized e- mails is the consumer retention, they facilitates the company task to focus on the audience personal interests, and enhances the engagement with the community (Pelsmacker, 2010). The Trackitdown newsletter service is effective: not invasive and delivered on regular basis, provide the user a shortlist of 'what's new' in the community within the previously selected sub- areas. The interactive opportunity to filter the email configurations convey trough the storage of the details furnished by the user in databases, which are also valid tools for further analysis within the market segment (Chaffey, 2009). In addition to these customizable services the website launches periodical competitions; as well as all the tactics performed in the digital marketing strategy, they are tailored for the Trackitdown audience. The business director explains the market segment 'How sites work and how people feel about them largely depends on whom you are selling to [...]. We are selling most to 18-30 years old: they're very computer savvy, they know how the Internet works; they write music: they know how to use the technology. But they are also very passionate about the product...' (see Appendix 1). 3.2 Social networks: friends or foe? Another powerful and controversial e- communication strategy is the usage of social networks. The phenomenon is in its exponential expansion from the last few years, they revolutionize the approach to the web, entitling the publication of photos, rich media, text and music in a structured network of peer-to-peer contacts. Thanks to their popularity those websites have become a powerful channel for the e-marketing strategy. The creation of the brand profile on those websites is a largely diffused practice in the contemporary industry scenario and opens a wide range of opportunities. Those channels are the viral marketing forge: the public can interact

with the brands trough their favourite network, and exchange opinions with their friends: (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Becoming 'fan of a brand', reports E-marketer on 02 April 2009, is a leading-edge strategy: according to Insite Consulting research, 35% of respondents has 'followed' a brand online (www.emarketer.com). Furthermore, '64% of consumers report making a first purchase from a brand because of a digital experience' (Schmitt, 2009). Social media, along with the traditional channels of return of investment (ROI) measurement, give the combination of the platform specific metrics with the reputation monitoring tools (Econsultancy, 2009). In addition, marketers can directly grab the audience exchange and gain the direct feedback on their opinions (Ryan and Jones, 2009), reach and envision the impact of early adopters (Advertising Age, 2010). The usage of social networks in a promotion campaign, require the continuous commitment of the brand in the direct interaction with the users and at the same time they increase competitions between similar enterprises. The opinion of the audience can rank or destroy the online reputation of a brand with just one click. The Trackitdown approach to those social conglomerates is smartly aware of their double-sided power, and their actions are targeted to en effective and cutting edge service. First of all the 'benchmarking' of the sector they continuously update, plays high attention on the ever-changing popularity of tools and channels. High dedication is given to the currently most powerful and popular channel: considered that 16% of Trackitdown downstream traffic is generated via Facebook (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/Trackitdown.net), a member of the company is dedicated only to the management of the profile of the community. They also have developed an application dedicated to Facebook, the device is the adaption of the music player available on the patron website, this ploy reinforce the branding awareness of the costumer and ease the audience stream towards the commercial online zone (Schmitt, 2009). Facebook provides also the immediate measurement of the outcome of the application, on the 12th May 2010 the instruments has 11901 users, while Trackitdown Facebook fan page counts on 10329 followers (www.facebook.com). 3.3 Services Upgrade Online since the 28th of January 2004 Trackitdown can be considered an established business within the 'young online marketplace', they are a powerful hybrid between emerging and mature industries. They are moving within an environment created by

technological and sociological recent breakthroughs. it is interesting to see how they reached the grade of experience in which research and dynamic stability combine the best of mass customization and continuous improvements aimed to the longterm customer bond (Mintzberg et al, 2002). The Trackitdown e-crm (electronic customer relationship management (Chaffey et al, 2009) is positioned towards the continuous implementation of tools and communication facilities. The attention of the in- house development team is addressed to the needs of their customer database and to the stakeholders collaborative partnership (Miles et al, 2005). Working in relation to the effective marketing segmentation, the organisation makes use of online surveys for the analysis of the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threatens (SWAT analysis), in order to improve their service while maximizing the business marketing efforts (Chaffey, 2009). The survey is planned in a way that identifies the consumers 'awareness, preference or intention to consider or purchase', its questions focus on variables that measure not only the statistic data but keep in regard the psychological influences of human response to the marketing strategy (Block and Block, 2005). The online questionnaire recently proposed to the audience included the investigation on the awareness of the features and their effectiveness. The scope was to verify the consumer response to a tool or a website session and establish the subsequent pattern (see Appendix 1). The next implementation planned by the company, consequent to the data analysis, is the online sale of the tickets of dance music live events. The feature will allow clubs and promotes to add their events on the website and to link the sale of the ticket with the music preview and purchasing. The ploy is meant to broaden both the connection with fans and strengthen the company network within the professional dance scenario. Besides, the professionals will share the ROI (Return of Investment) of this effective tool of promotion with Trackitdown (Ryan and Jones, 2009). 3.4 Business to business trust approach: copyright guarantee The business model based on the charge of the music downloading proposed by Trackitdown is an effective response to the piracy issue, each track on the website is protected by mechanical rights. However, in order to meet the music producers and DJs needs, they are not subjected to the DRM (Digital Right Management) restrictions: once purchased the track can be played, performed and edited. Furthermore the tracks are available both in wave and in mp3, to fulfill all the possible uses the file will be allocated and therefore meeting all the dance DJS and music producers requirements. According to Premkumar (2003) the reorganization

of the supply chain after the impact of illegal peer-to-peer downloading, implies a deeper understanding of customers needs, and the education of the public on copyrights. This standpoint is reinforced by the research conducted by Sandulli and Barbero (2007), in which they remark that the ethical issues related to illegal download are advertised as harmful for the economy and the artistic production, while previously was promoted the opposite perspective. The authors, in addition analyze the differences between peer-to-peer sharing and Legal Digital Music Providers. The first difference they present is the better reproduction quality in legal stores (Sandulli and Barbero, 2007); Trackitdown guarantee the quality of the files by dealing directly with the record labels. The company, is planning to offer an additional royalty management service to the record labels they store by protecting and monitoring all the links related to each track available on the website (see Appendix 1). The other difference, which is also an advantage of Legal Digital Music Providers versus pirate downloads is the trustworthiness: peer- to- peer downloading entail connection hurdles, and, above all, 'many P2P systems are highly vulnerable to pollution attacks, in which attackers target specific content and inject corrupted versions of it into the system' (Sandulli and Barbero, 2007, p.68). Users are aware of the danger; therefore the tendency is to address their attention to a charged but secure service, taking advantage of (Meisel and Sullivan, 2002; Shultze et al, 2004). 3.5 Multiple, easy and secure transactions Secure online transactions in UK are guarantee by the Data Protection Act of 1998. The necessity of regulation in the subject stewed from the rapid diffusion of computers in 1970s, which implied the increased speed and quantity of data operations (Carey, 2000). The compliance with electronic commerce law within the personal and financial data processing and storage operations guarantees the trustworthiness of the online transactional operations (Bart et Al, 2005). The technology that undertakes the protection of data storage and transmission is the encryption, a procedure throughout textual data are converted in 'cipher text' that cannot be read by anyone other than the sender and the receiver' (Laudon and Traver, 2009). In addition to the security of transactions and personal data manipulation, Trackitdown offers different currencies and payment systems to ease the process and facilitate the customer retention (Chaffey et al, 2009).

3.6 Navigation and color schemes: creating a smooth and captivating design

The planning of a user- centered design is a core issue, in fact 'commerce sites can influence their impression of trustworthiness by carefully designing their site to avoid amateurishness, set and meet reasonable user expectations, trust and usability' (www.phisophe.com). Usability 'refers to how well users can learn and use a product to achieve their goals and how satisfied they are with that process. (http://www.usability.gov/basics/index.html). Statistical results remark that the 82% of customers is less likely to return to a website, if its design lacks in the application of usability essentials (Econsultancy, 2009). The first step for a website intuitively usable is a well-organized web architecture, that structures contents and information in a coherent search optimization taxonomy, and communicates the overall site organization (White, 2010). Then, the architecture has to be supported with a correct and transparent linking strategy, 'if the customer can't find a product, then he or she will not buy it' (Nielsen, 2002, p ). Furthermore, the description of the product should inform the consumer on the information necessary to make the purchase. In addition, the checkouts page has to set the transactional phases clearly, and comprehensive of data protection details. The speed of page load is an ulterior guarantee of mastery and affordability, which will drive to customers satisfaction and retention (Nielsen, 2002). The Alexa online analysis reports the Trackitdown average load time as 'Very Slow (7.883 Seconds), 94% of sites are faster' (www.alexa.com). Also Nielsen (2002), recommended 4 seconds as the maximum webpage loading time. Working on the loading time issue should be a task designated in the action plan of the company, since it encompasses the whole design and the quality of the service in terms of applications and graphics definition (www.philosophe.com). However, the overall website content, is effectively delivered, and matched with the target audience computer literacy, taste, scopes and inclinations. The contemporary creative challenge of web designers is to apply the universal principles of web usability and web design, and shape them after the exploration of the cultural background they are targeting, as stated by Lupton (in Armstrong, 2009) 'we are developing our particular voices as people - as men and women, as members of a generation, as participants in local communities and institutions, but also practitioners of a global design discourse (Armstrong, 2009). In this framework the choice of color scheme is essential: the influence of colors on

human perception is outstanding to cultural and physical patterns of associations. In the web design context, the color selection affects the responsiveness of the customers to the communication strategy (www.colormatters.com). The Trackitdown color configuration appears appealing, in particular the selection of the 'hot pink' for the music session. Pink is normally associate with the female sphere, while the audience of the website is predominately male. Historically, the pink had a different connotation, as a derivate of red it was associated with power and activity, hence masculine. In addition, the color has often been associated with good fortune and liberality (www.colormatters.com). These historical and cultural connotations could have subconsciously leaded the team in the selection of this color; they are all men, after all. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: This case study presented music business incorporated in the framework of electronic commerce and promotion, the experience of the company examined consented and effective and complete exploration of the matters in question. The core nodes of the online strategy are the continuous updating of contents and service in order to mirror the clients expectations and create with them long time commitment and willingness to purchase and making positive reviews. The marketers ability to cluster and follow the continuous evolutions of demands is triggered and constantly challenged by the interactive power of consumers; therefore a good practice is a flexible and coherent strategic approach of CRM (Bilton, 2007). Trackitdown orientation reflects this perspective and offers a complete online dance music experience, their efforts are well targeted to the creation of an enduring bond of trust with new and affectionate costumers. The brand evolution could address the endeavours in the promptness of page loading, which seems to be the weak spot in the valuable content delivery.

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marketing communication: combining the power of IMC, the new media and database marketing. International Journal of Advertising, 22(1), 93116. Presenting. Available at: http://www.effectivemeetings.com/presenting/index.asp [Accessed April 8, 2010]. Rubin, J., 2008. Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests 2nd ed., Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Pub. Rubinoff, R., How To Quantify The User Experience. Available at: http://articles.sitepoint.com/print/quantify-user-experience [Accessed April 30, 2010]. Schulze, B., Hess, T. & Eggers, B., 2004b. The Internets Impact on Content Utilization Chains: An Exploratory Case Study on Leading Publishers in Germany. International Journal on Media Management, 6(1), 1221. Sisson, D., Trust & Trustworthiness philosophe. Available at: http://philosophe.com/ecommerce/trust/ [Accessed April 28, 2010]. Vaccaro, V.L. & Cohn, D.Y., 2004. The evolution of business models and marketing strategies in the music industry. International Journal on Media Management, 6(1), 4658. White, E.B., Contents | Web Style Guide 3. Available at: http://www.webstyleguide.com/wsg3/index.html [Accessed April 30, 2010]. Wodtke, C., Information Architecture Defined. Available at: http://articles.sitepoint.com/print/architecture-defined [Accessed April 30, 2010]. Yin, R.K., 2009. Case Study Research: Design and Methods 4th ed., Los Angeles, Calif: Sage Publications.

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APPENDIX 1 Interview with Nolan Shadbot, Trackitdown Director Friday, 19th March 2010

Q: How did you come up with the idea of the virtual dance music and associate products store and community? A: At the end of the 90's in the clubs there were both the vinyl players, but also the CD players, the thing was that you could not buy music on a CD, just on a records. We (Nolan is a former DJ, the Trackitdown staff includes DJs) were sending files to each other, music producers were sending us mp3s of tracks they had written, and then we put them on CDs and played them. And I said 'this is crazy, why don't we just sell all these files...' and then Itunes came along and start doing it for pop music and we decided to do it for dance music. That's why our slogan is 'Time to burn'. Q: Trackitdown offers to the customers a complete branding around music: sugenres, Dj kit, merchandising, info and news. The target audience is well defined: expert, professional. Do you plan to widen you audience maybe with more synergies with other industries branches or by promoting side areas of entertainment: clubbing or live performances? A: The merchandising is really an effort to target more the clubbers, rather than just the DJs: there are far more people in front of the decks, dancing on the dancefloor, so that's why we have all the t- shirts. Typically the fan don't like to buy digital products, so if they want to buy an album they would still much rather have the CD than buying the download, so every year we sponsor a big project for the Dj Mag Top 100 and we receive about 35000 votes from around the world from fans who are voting for their favourites DJs, we've go to this enormous database of fans, so we need to find more products to sell for them. So we are planning to introduce ticketing in the near future, clubs and promoters will be able to add their events to the site, and all the music will be linked trough it, so fans can listen to the artist and also buy

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the tickets for their gigs. Q: The online promotion of Trackitdown works with the sharing, linking to social media: Facebook app, Twitter profile...Is a good tactic to involve and attract more audience? Which of these tools is generating the best feedback? A: Facebook, Facebook, Facebook! We have a member of the staff dedicated to Facebook, we don't care for Myspace anymore, and its dead. Everything we do is 99% Facebook and 1% Twitter, because Twitter is so quick and easy to do, but we really invest a lot of time and energy in to Facebook. I think 10% of our traffic comes via Facebook, it is a network of information exchange and it's free, without paying anything extra we can reach anyone within this space. Teenagers probably are spending more time on Facebook than watching TV; I read that communication via Facebook email has overtaken actual email, which is incredible. This tendency will probably continue for the next two or three years, but, as I always said to people when Myspace was massive you would never believe that a new site will come along, somebody could arrive with a new crazy idea that just seem to work and people will get interested in that, so we wait and see. We heavily focus on what's going on between other social networks. Q: The website membership includes a wide range of possible customizations and facilities to find tunes. What has been your strategy to get this high quality service together with the bond of trust with consumers in the transactions? And are there more features in program? A: Yes, we are building a brand new application. Sometimes people buy 200 tracks in one order, or an album that has 50 tracks, with this application you click just one to complete the order. We are generally developing new features all day every day, we have two in house team members, and one who's out in Canada, who does the graphical interfaces. We work on the site everyday we see all the pitfalls and improvements needed. Also the email from the fans, ask us for new features or changes, and when we can we do that. Building new features is always exciting but is also very difficult, because our website now is so huge that even making a small change somewhere actually affects a lot of things. We also have the affiliate system, so we run stores for other websites, so when we make a change on our store, we have to consider how it impacts on their stores. We have a set of standardized set of tools, so a part from the ticket selling for the moment we are not adding anything else.

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Q: Describing Trackitdown design in terms of web usability, what is your philosophy in terms of the choice of tools, session and colours? A: This is actually our second revision, before it looked completely different: dark background, the colours were blue, black and grey. It was 2006 when we changed it, I had an album out and its cover had white pink, gray and black on it and we thought looked fantastic, so that's how we chose our colours. Because they were nice, simple and fresh colours, but the pink had some kind of jazz taste, that gave us soft feel, easy on the eye and land. The merchandise session is white, yellow and gray; the Dj kit has green. We previously have a game session; it all was black, with blue, instead of pink. We really liked that, and I'm still tempted to change the whole website again, but is quite difficult when you get this level, costumers expect a certain thing. Is very important to choose the colour scheme and layout. Some people prefer to shop with us purely because we are a better looking website. It's all about building tools and interfaces that people can use: packaging is very important, the better a site looks, the more people will like it. Q: You mentioned a game session... A: It just ended: it wasn't very popular. When were building it we were doing a customer survey at the moment, and we asked with which platform people played games. Most people played on their computers, according to our survey, but our game session just werent very popular; it didnt sold enough to work out. We are trying to focus on what we know well and it is dance music. The merchandising is working so well, even if we don't know anything about making t- shirts. Q: What do you think is the orientation of the music industry in terms of copyrights, patents, DRM, moral rights? A: I think that all of that is pretty much over now, I think it's pointless to try to stop piracy by applying DRM: it doesn't work, it frustrates the people that are paying to being legal. A still major problem is with government legislations are trying to make the Internet providers to chop people off when they are caught three times downloading illegal files. We are introducing a new service, which is called 'Trackitdown protect' where we will actually represent record labels and protect their copyrights online. On a title-by-title basis, we will ensure that any link to the file online for the legal download. We have relations with all of the major hosting such as Rapid Share, so this is another service we provide to labels to help control the amount of piracy that is the main issue. Going back to DRM the problem are computer crashes

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and all your licenses stop to work when you reload your hard drive. Especially in the dance music perspective, once you purchased the file you probably want to edit it within a sound editor, to enable you to manipulate your DJ performances, you definably want to put on CD on Ipod...so being flexible with the format is what is required. And DRM didn't allow people to be flexible. I think an effective business against piracy is offering a better service to the customers. If it's cheap, easy and safe to buy they're happy. If they are downloading illegally, they don't know if they are getting a virus, so it's very important to buy music cheaply, safely and conveniently. We offer the opportunity to be part of the community of Trackitdown, rather than someone that just download the music and doesn't get involved and doesn't have the features or the news. Q: Could you explain the affiliate program more in detail? A: The affiliate program runs from 2005, it allows any other website to present either the hole of our catalogue or selected parts of it. So, if a record label website has a lot of traffic, they can put our store's data but it will look like their website. People don't think to be sent somewhere else. We run stores for Mix Max, for Kiss FM; we probably have five major earning stores at the moment, and they are pretty much communities for specific styles of music, so the main could be Dogsonacid, that is a Drum'n'Bass website, they have an incredible traffic, a massive blog. For the users it's easier to buy the music from that website, the host website also makes money and helps Dogsonacid to provide music to their community. Q: So Drum'n'Bass is still huge? A: Yes, massive: it's bigger now than in the last couple of years, it had a couple of years being quite, now it's returning. We are really strong in Drum'n'Bass, my business partner is a hardcore fan, and we sell a lot of it. Q: How would you describe your working philosophy? A: Well, essentially my job is to understand how people work, how they shop and feel about things. Just like we talked about the colour scheme of the website, I have to understand how people are going to think about the pink. It is a girlie colour, and maybe they see it in different way...or if they are going to understand ho the layout works. When we build a product, we know how it works, because we built it, bur when we give it to our customers, it may be very complicated to use. We have to show them the best way to use it. We are doing a customer survey and some

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questions sound like 'do you know about this feature?' or 'are you following us on Twitter or Facebook?' and it's amazing how someone use the website either every day or every week but don't know about its features. For us those are great information, because we know where we need improvements, how we can help the users understand all the features and make their shopping easier. I used to say content is king, now I say content is important, but, the costumer need to know how to find the content and how to navigate them. How sites work and how people feel about them largely depends on whom you are selling to; how invested they are in the product you are selling. We are selling most to 18-30 years old: they're very computer savvy, they know how the Internet works, they write music: they know how to use the technology. But they are also very passionate about the product that we sell, sometimes in a positive way, sometimes in a negative way, for example some people like only specific Techno, and if the session has other kind of Techno in it, they don't want it. They only want what they think is the best, and so we have to design system to enable them to find just what they want. Q: Yes, Hardcore Techno I know there's a lot of people crazy for this kind... A: I was a huge fan too, when I was younger...(laughs) Q: It's too hard for me. Ok, I'm done with questions, thank you... A: You're more than welcome. Anytime.

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