Nonprofit Recording Co-op Business Plan

Gamehenge Tapers Co-op is a not for profit organization designed to serve the individual members of the co-op.  These members come from the Portland tapers community, a group of people who attend specific live performances and tape them for their personal consumption as well as for personal trading purposes. This is a very active community and intimate community.

Gamehenge Tapers Co-op will grow its membership through word of mouth promotions at the events.  Because it is an intimate community where most people know each other, it will be relatively easy to build up membership.  In addition to word of mouth advertising, Gamehenge Tapers Co-op will also have a web site that provides prospective members about the organization and its goals.

4.1 Market Segmentation

Gamehenge Tapers Co-op will be addressing the tapers community in the Portland area.  The taping community is made up of individuals that legally tape live concerts.  There are a handful of bands that allow taping of their live performances.  Generally, record labels discourage or ban taping of live performances because they believe that it infringes on profits from record sales.  On the contrary however, it tends to promote the band as there is an entire community that trades these shows, attends the concerts, and buys the records after they hear live performances of the band.

From a legal standpoint, the live performances are copyrighted, but the band nonetheless allows the taping.  The vast majority of bands to do not allow taping, it is only a few select bands that allow tapings. These bands are representative by the fact that they are very good live performers, they have a loyal following of people that tour with them and consequently these bands tend to play entirely different set lists each night recognizing the fact that there are people seeing several to many different shows in a row.

The bands that allow recording of live concerts are the remnants of the Grateful Dead (Phil Lesh & Friends, The Other Ones) remnants of Phish (Trey Anastatio and the Giant Country Horns), String Cheese Incident, moe., Blues Traveler, Dave Matthews Band, Medeski Martin & Wood, Tony Furtado, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Widespread Panic, Galactic, Government Mule, Greyboy Allstars, Karl Denson and the Tiny Universe, etc.

These bands have a loyal following, a very close knit community. This element lends itself to word of mouth promotion.

4.2 Target Market Segment Strategy

The strategy behind the market segmentation is solely based on word of mouth and web site visibility.  Because the taping community is so close knit, if you end up going to a couple of shows to tape, you will run into a large portion of tapers.  Everyone knows each other, and everyone trades show from their collection. Growing the membership list through word of mouth will be no problem.

Additionally, Gamehenge Tapers Co-op will operate a web site to  which will be used to attract new members.  The site however, will have far more content including ordering which is password protected for members only.

4.3 Service Providers Analysis

The industry of tapers is a relatively unregulated, free formed industry. As long as the bands allow taping (there is a select varied group of bands that encourage taping of their live performances) then the taping community is allowed to do what they want.  In essence it is a self formed group that police themselves.

4.3.1 Alternatives and Usage Patterns

The competition is regular retail outlets.  These take the form of mail order places, retail outlets, and e-commerce sites.  These competitors might offer a better selection, however, they will rarely compete on price because they are for profit organizations and Gamehenge Tapers Co-op is a not-for-profit.

The buying patterns of tapers are typically price sensitive.  Because the tapers are constantly using their equipment and tons of media, they are generally looking for the best price.