Thursday, April 28, 2011

Startup NuevoStage nabs $50K in music business plan contest

By Rodney H. Brown

Startup NuevoStage has won the Music Business Model Competition at the Rethink Music conference that was held in Boston this week. NuevoStage won for its system that allows performing artists and their fans to work together to book venues on nights that are currently empty.

For being chosen as the winner, NuevoStage will receive a $50,000 cash prize provided by conference co-sponsor Berklee College of Music. In addition, it will also get $10,000 worth of in-kind legal services through a donation by Duane Morris LLP.

NuevoStage was co-founded by Harvard MBA candidate Maxwell Wessel and Dartmouth College graduate Chris Allen. The company says its model will help artists by providing them more performance venues, help the venues by filling up otherwise unused space and help the fans by giving them more access to their favorite bands.

Like Chelmsford company OurStage Inc., NuevoStage has a social music community aspect to its business model, but adds to that the ability to work with the community to set live show dates at music venues. OurStage, which was founded in 2006, has won support of advertisers and venture capitalists, taking in a $3 million funding round in 2009 that brought the company’s total equity financing to $20 million.

First runner-up in the competition was Eliot Hunt, a Berklee grad who founded BigLife Labs Inc. to facilitate the online collaboration of music performances. He won a $5,000 cash prize. Also named as a finalist was Ian Kwon, who created Fanatic.fm, an album publishing platform connecting bands with brand sponsorships. According to conference officials, the judges received nearly 200 entries.

Rethink Music, which was held at the Hynes Convention Center, was co-sponsored by the music business website MIDEM, along with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and the Harvard Business School.

As part of the conference, artists Ben Folds, Damian Kulash of OK Go, Amanda Palmer and her husband, author Neil Gaiman wrote and recorded eight songs in eight hours at Mad Oak Studios in Allston Monday night, the results of which were put on sale Tuesday at the Rethink Music conference.