Built with in sunny San Luis Obispo

A Cal Poly Senior Project

By Chris Oberheide and Aditya Dev

Advised by Sean Anderson & Gregg Erickson

Winter & Spring 2015

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2. The Beginning

5. Senior Project Proposal

9. The Pitch

20. Becoming Legal: Incorporation Process

a. Types & Location of incorporation

b. Method of incorporation & Final Result

c. Unexpected Hurdles and Takeaways

d. Legal Conclusion

31. Street Team: Marketing Efforts

a. Blog Outreach

b. Mustang News

c. Letter from President

d. Card creation and Distribution

e. Playlist Development

f. Classroom pitches

44. Making A Difference: Analytics

a. Dashboards

b. Users & Locations

c. Browsers & Operating Systems

d. Cal Poly Specific Dashboards

e. Metrics we wish to track in the future

54. Right Now & What’s Next

Table of Contents

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The Beginning

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Dear Reader,

This is Chris Oberheide and Aditya Dev. What follows is an introduction to our senior project which we know will give

you a straightforward opening to our efforts from the last six months.

As the pressure stepping into the real world and having to complete a senior project to do so had finally approached

us, we started to stress about how we would complete this task. As two Information Systems students we were

expected to complete both a challenging and technical senior project. Would it be a SQL certification? A 30 page

analytics report on Netflix? Maybe it an attempt at an Android app that would most likely end up untouched. Although

the options were endless, our goal was to take on a project that would capture the entire business scope along with

the experience of working with a growing business. It was Professor Erickson who suggested contacting local small

businesses, and taking his advice is what ultimately ended in fruition. Let’s hear how Aditya ended up meeting Sean in

the first place:

“As I was walking out of Professor Erickson’s BUS 391 class listening to SoundCloud on my iPhone I quickly

remembered Streamus, the online music player that a friend of mine had posted on Facebook months before.

Remembering that Streamus was very small, new and right up our alley of music and technology, I went on the

Streamus web page. Before I could even get to the contact section and shoot their administrator an email, a little chat

box popped up in the bottom right hand corner of the web page stating, “Hi, this is Sean the developer of Streamus! Is

there anything I can help you with?” I quickly explained his situation and what he was looking for.

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The response was as follows, “Do you live in San Luis Obispo?” Of course I was shocked and immediately answered

yes. Moments later, Sean and I set up a time for us to meet for coffee downtown the next day.

Upon meeting Sean I quickly realized that this could be a mutually beneficial relationship. Sean loved the idea of

getting involved with students at Cal Poly. Spreading the word about Streamus and leaving a mark on the university at

the same time, what’s not to love? After introducing Chris and Sean, we knew it would be a great fit. We loved the

ideas and the innovative spirit that Sean brought to his project and together the three of us quickly came up with a

project list for the next two quarters of our senior project.”

The following report shows our six-month journey with Sean, including the key steps that were made in order to help

the software evolve into the legal corporation with a widely known Cal Poly presence that it is today. First you will see

our initial senior project proposal followed by different sections on legalization, marketing and analytics. Of course the

story of Streamus is far from over and only getting more interesting day by day. However, to get to the good stuff,

you’ll have to understand the rest of Streamus as outlined below.

We Hope You Enjoy!

Chris Oberheide and Aditya Dev – Class of 2015

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Senior Project Proposal

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For our senior project we will be working with a Chrome Extension called Streamus, built by a local programmer, Sean

Anderson. Streamus allows the user to pull music from YouTube, bypassing the video and ads. The user can create

playlists using audio from any video/song on YouTube and share them via a link to anyone they so choose. Lawyers

of Google have acknowledged the project; as long as Sean sticks to the plan for complete accordance, he will be able

to continue developing the software. As Sean looks to expand his project, we sat down and came up with a list of

projects that would be a good fit for us while also expanding our Information Systems knowledge. We have split the

tasks up into the two remaining quarters as specified below.

Winter:

Streamus Incorporation: Streamus is currently not a business entity. As it continues to grow, Sean believed it

would be a good idea to incorporate and file as an LLC. This project will consist of some paperwork along with

significant legal research and decision making. From this we will gain the experience of filing a small business

and dealing with the government in the incorporation process.

Marketing and Surveying: Sean believes the software’s target demographic is users age 17-25. As college

students, this gives us a great opportunity to speak with students and see what they think about the product

and how we could make it better. We will look to go to lower division business lectures and offer students a

chance to give input on Streamus. As incentive, we can speak with professors to give extra credit to students

who volunteer to help us.

Streamus Social Aspect: Sean wants to add a more social aspect to Streamus. When users go to the

Streamus web page they will be able to see trending music, genres, artists, playlists, users, etc. We will likely

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focus on creating new playlists to share on the website for different events occurring on and off campus. For

now we are considering creating playlists for Coachella Music Festival and Cal Poly specific playlists for finals

week.

Spring:

Analytics: As a way to track our efforts from last quarter, we will be focusing our technical aspect of our

project on Google Analytics and tracking significant events from our marketing push. In addition, this ties in

with our curriculum after taking Bus 491 (Data Analytics) in the fall and applying knowledge from our class to

our senior project. We hope that with help from Sean and knowledge we have gained from class we will be

able to use Google Analytics to track and explain significant changes, trends and other realizations throughout

our project.

Streamus Pitch: After spending so much time working on different aspects of Streamus thus far, we figured it

would make the most sense to build a formal business plan that we hope Sean will be able to use in the future.

The pitch will include a SWOT analysis along with Porter’s Five Forces analysis, we will also use information

and wording from a previous pitch Sean created. As we adapt information from Streamus into this

presentation, we hope this task will be a perfect wrap up involving information from all aspects of business and

multiple classes we have taken.

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Leftover Miscellaneous Projects & the Future of Streamus: The rest of our focus in spring will be to leftover

miscellaneous projects, and likely another marketing/surveying effort to see what students think after making

changes over the previous 6 months. We will be discussing the ups and downs of monetization with the

product, whether or not users should have user ID’s, advertising, and other conversations. These talks will give

us a better understanding of what it is like to start a business and all the implications that must be considered

in the process.

We hope that this project will give us a wide variety of information systems and overall business experience in different

ways. With several projects throughout it we will have a large amount of options to develop our expertise and learn

more throughout the project. Sean has offered to provide us a marketing or development budget if necessary, we are

not yet sure if it is something we will need. We look forward to hearing and addressing suggestions and concerns that

may accompany the project as we continue to work through this process.

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The Pitch

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SWOT Analysis

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Rivalry Amongst Existing Products

Streamus carries a first mover advantage

for music streaming Chrome Extensions

People are going out of their way to use

Streamus by downloading the Google

Chrome Browser

Streamus carries a very simple layout

admired by almost all users.

Streamus needs to focus on mobile

capability and enhanced user base

Bargaining Power of Suppliers Google

YouTube’s API is our source of music

Outside sources might be willing to pay for advertisements on Streamus

Bargaining Power of Buyers Cheaper = Better

Streamus is free

Not enough users as of now to start charging

Need for good features

Different uses for different situations

o Ex: parties, car rides, etc.

Threat of Substitute Products

Spotify/Pandora

YouTube Music Key/Musi

Streamus is the first of its kind used solely as a Chrome Extension.

Many have tried to copy Streamus and have failed.

Threat of New Entrants No patent/trademark

YouTube attempting to create own music streaming application.

Streamus uses open source code

Chrome extensions becoming more popular

Porter’s 5 Forces Model

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Becoming Legal

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Type Pros Cons

Sole Proprietorship ● Easy to set up ● No double taxation ● Income reported on personal income tax return ● Taxes paid on income of the business and not

on the business as an entity

● No personal limited liability protection ● You must pay twice the amount of Social

Security and Medicare tax as you would an employee

● No life insurance deduction and only a partial health insurance deduction

Partnership ● No double taxation ● All income is taxed proportionately to each of

the partners who report it on their personal tax returns

● No personal limited liability protection (unless a limited partner in a limited partnership)

S Corporation ● S Corporation may elect to be treated as a

partnership for federal tax purposes with shareholders reporting their share of the corporation's separately listed items of income, deductions, loss, and credit on their personal tax returns

● S Corporation may not have more than seventy-five shareholders

● Shareholders and those owning 5 percent or more in stock have limited employee benefits

C Corporation ● Shareholders have limited personal liability ● Health insurance premiums and group life

insurance up to $50,000 in benefits are fully deductible by the corporation and not taxable to the employees

● The corporate tax rate doesn't go as high as the individual rate (what a sole proprietor or partner would pay on an individual tax return)

● Double taxation- the corporation pays taxes on its income and the shareholder pays taxes on dividends.

● Shareholders cannot deduct the losses of the corporation.

Limited Liability Company

● Personal limited liability of members ● No double taxation ● May have more than seventy-five members ● Under IRS “check-the-box” rules a limited

liability company may choose whether to be taxed like a partnership or corporation

● Active members are subject to self- employed tax for Social Security and Medicare

● Limited liability companies are a relatively new business form and the laws are still evolving

Options for Incorporation

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At first, Streamus was not yet a legal entity. We all wanted to change that. Research was done to compare and

contrast the different types of legalization as seen above. In addition, information on location to file in and paperwork

involved will be compared below as tax information will be different depending on the state we incorporate in. Lastly,

we will look into information regarding a home office and the possibilities of tax write-offs. For each section above we

will provide a suggested decision on how to move forward.

With Streamus, we initially believed the best opportunity was incorporation as an LLC. With flexibility, tax benefits, and

options for additional members or employees, it makes the most sense to file as an LLC. In regards to location:

Delaware has some of the most developed, flexible and pro-business statutes in the country and Nevada has become

a popular choice due to its low filing fees and the lack of state corporate income, franchise and personal income taxes.

However, these benefits are more advantageous to larger companies. As Streamus is small and Sean may choose to

keep it that way and continue to develop it himself, filing in California is likely the best idea. There are hoops to jump

through and fees for operating out-of-state, including difficulty opening a business bank account, appointing a

mandatory registered agent, and fees for operating as a ‘foreign entity’ in your own state.

The process of forming as an LLC in California is listed out below:

1. Check that Streamus is an available name on the California Business Name Database (there is currently no record

of an organization named Streamus in California, it is currently available)

2. File articles of organization with the state using the LLC-1 form which can be mailed or delivered to the California

secretary of state's office. The form costs $70 to submit.

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3. Appoint a registered legal agent. All California LLC’s must have an appointed agent to accept legal paperwork and

in the event of the LLC being sued. A list of private organizations can be found here. We will also be researching

agents in SLO to compare and contrast the best possible agent for Streamus.

4. Create an operating agreement for Streamus. Though one is not required and does not need to be filed in

California, it is highly suggested to create one upon formation.

5. After the LLC1 form has been processed, we must file a Statement of Information (LLC-12) with the state. The form

can be found and filed online and costs $20. The Statement of Information must include:

● The LLC’s name and California Secretary of State file number

● The name and address of the LLC’s agent for service of process

● The street address of the LLC’s principal executive office

● The LLC’s mailing address, if different from the street address of its principal executive office

● The name and complete business or residence addresses of any manager or managers and chief executive

officer, if any; if no manager has been elected or appointed, the name and business or residence address of

each member

● A valid email address, if the LLC chooses to receive renewal notices and any other notifications from the

secretary of state by electronic mail instead of by United States mail

● The general type of business that is the LLC’s principal business activity (for example, manufacturer of aircraft

wholesale liquor distributor, or retail department store).

6. After the above step the business has been formed, and Streamus must continue to comply with regulation and pay

taxes.

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Excluding the cost of a registered agent, filing paperwork for incorporation will cost $90.

For an LLC, A home office that takes 15 percent of the space of a home, for instance, can deduct 15 percent of the

costs of maintaining the home. You will be able to write of $5/square foot with a maximum of $1500. In addition you

will be able to write-off 100% of costs associated specifically with your home office as direct costs, a good example of

this would be a new work computer, speakers, equipment, etc.

Incorporation as a C Corporation

After further discussion and consideration of the direction Streamus is going, it seemed clear that a C Corporation

would make the most sense in regards to incorporation. A C corporation will give Streamus to the opportunity to

accept investments, grow rapidly, and involve an increasing number of shareholders if necessary. The conversation of

location also plays a big role in formation of a C Corp as forming in Delaware or California could heavily affect the way

Steamus is run in the future. Below we will outline steps of how to incorporate in each state and we will discuss tax

information for each.

Filing as a C Corporation in California

1. Check that Streamus is an available name on the California Business Name Database (there is currently no record

of an organization named Streamus in California, it is currently available). Trademark the business name as a federal

and/or start trademark if needed (not a required step in any way).

2. Appoint directors to be on your board. Under California law, unless there are fewer than three shareholders a

corporation must have at least three directors. There is no minimum age or residency requirement for directors in

California.

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3. Create and file articles of incorporation with the Secretary of State, this costs $100. The form for this can be found

here. Articles of incorporation must include Company Name, Name and Address of the registered agent, Legal

address of the company, Incorporators, Directors, Business purpose, Number of authorized shares of stock, and

information on par value or preferred shares if that is something that is being considered. There are several sample

templates for articles of incorporation which can be found online.

4. Create the bylaws of the corporation. This is required by the state of California, however, there is no set information

on the content of the bylaws. Usually, bylaws establish internal rules and procedures, discuss responsibilities, the size

of the board and how it will be run, shareholder meetings, etc. This will be filed with the state and a copy must be held

at the primary place of business.

5. File a statement of Information with the Secretary of state, this step costs $25. This form must be completed within

90 days of filing the articles of incorporation. This form must also be filed yearly after the original one and costs $25

each year.

6. Hold an organizational meeting for stakeholders involved and issue stock certificates to the initial owners of the

corporation.

7. Determine tax and regulatory responsibilities and complete any necessary registrations involved.

a) Request an Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS which can be done online here for free. This

number is important as it will be involved with a company bank account and is used for tax purposes. To open

a bank account for your corporation you will need the EIN, a copy of the articles of incorporation and

information on authorized signers if they are not included in the articles.

b) If employees are being paid over $100 in a quarter, the corporation is subject to California employment taxes

and must register for a California employer account number within 15 days of that payment. These taxes are

paid quarterly and registration can be completed here.

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c) Inform the IRS and State of California any time you hire an employee in California. This process is important

and will include verifying eligibility to work and withholding allowances. I-9 or W-2 Forms are often involved in

this process.

d) Worker’s compensation insurance will have to be carried for employees in California.

e) Make sure to file a minimum of $800 franchise tax each year. This is separate from income, payroll etc. taxes.

f) If the corporation has more than 100 shareholders, it must send an annual report to shareholders within 120

days of the end of the fiscal year. If it has less than 100 shareholders and this step is not included or specified

that it will not be completed in the articles of incorporation then it can be avoided.

Filing as a C Corporation in Delaware

1. Check that Streamus is an available name on the Delaware Business Name Database (there is currently no record

of an organization named Streamus in Delaware, it is currently available). Trademark the business name as a federal

and/or start trademark if needed (not a required step in any way).

2. Create and file articles of incorporation with the Secretary of State, this costs $89. The form for this can be found

here. Articles of incorporation must include Company Name, Name and Address of the registered agent, Legal

address of the company, Incorporators, Directors, Business purpose, Number of authorized shares of stock, and

information on par value or preferred shares if that is something that is being considered. There are several sample

templates for articles of incorporation which can be found online.

3. Appoint a registered agent. Every Delaware corporation must have a registered agent to accept legal papers on the

corporation's behalf.

4. Create the bylaws of the corporation. In Delaware, bylaws are an internal corporate document for operating the

corporation, they are not filed with the state, the corporation is not even legally required to have corporate by laws.

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5. Appoint directors to be on your board. In Delaware the incorporator must fill out an “Incorporator’s Statement”

including information on each of the appointed directors. This document must be kept in the corporate record books

however it does not need to be filed with the state.

6. File a statement of Information with the Secretary of state, this step costs $25. This form must be completed within

90 days of filing the articles of incorporation. This form must also be filed yearly after the original one and costs $25

each year.

7. Hold an organizational meeting for stakeholders involved and issue stock certificates to the initial owners of the

corporation.

8. Determine tax and regulatory responsibilities and complete any yearly necessary registrations involved.

a) The annual report filing fee for foreign corporations is $125.

b) The minimum franchise tax is $75 while the maximum is $180,000. Corporations owing more than $5000 will

pay quarterly installments.

c) There is a penalty of $125 for foreign corporations who do not file their annual report by June 30th each year.

d) Streamus must also obtain a federal employer identification number (EIN) along with local business license.

e) Lastly, Foreign corporations must file a State of Delaware Qualification Certificate of a Foreign Corporation,

which has a $245 filing fee for foreign corporations doing business in Delaware.

Method of incorporation & Final Result

After much consideration, Sean decided that it made the most sense to incorporate Streamus as a C Corporation in

Delaware. This decision will give Sean the opportunity to accept investment, issue stock, continue growing etc.

To actually file as a C Corporation, the three of us sat down one morning and walked through LegalZoom together,

using their website to help Streamus incorporate. LegalZoom is a website that allows online incorporation for a set rate

on top of filing fees. LegalZoom also offers several services including registered agents, meeting minutes recording,

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etc. However, the majority of these services are unnecessary and expensive so we decided to stray away from

everything other than the basic package of incorporation.

Though LegalZoom was very convenient and affordable, it did take a significant amount of time to walk through and

felt as though the entire web page was trying to sell nonstop legal services. However, at the end of the day it was the

best option to use when incorporating for a small size start up.

Our final result from LegalZoom was having Streamus incorporated as a foreign C Corporation in Delaware!

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Unexpected result and takeaways

When we started this process we really did not have much of an idea of what it would entail. First of all, the time involved in this

whole thing was much more than we expected. From beginning to end there was a significant amount of research that needed to

be done. From understanding different types of legal entities or the different advantages each location could give, Sean needed to

know everything possible surrounding the incorporation so as to not make the wrong decision and face the repercussions.

Once a decision was made, the actual process of filing also gave us a lot to consider when it came to taxes, shares and registered

agents. The three of us had to fully consider the implications of each decision we made through the many steps of LegalZoom. If

we had 1 million shares of stock issued initially, what would that mean when Sean is offered an investment and the venture

capitalist involved takes 10% of the company? What would that mean when Sean hires new employees and wants to offer them

equity as part of their offer? All of these and many more questions had to be considered before making any final decisions each

step of the way. If we made wrong decisions at any of the steps along the way it would likely result in expensive paperwork in

order to change these choices with the state of Delaware.

After the entire process there is still a lot of leftover paperwork and legal obligations to tend to. Just because Streamus Inc. is

officially incorporated in Delaware doesn’t really mean too much unless Sean and Streamus keep following legal obligations. Sean

must file for incorporation in California as well so Streamus can conduct business as a foreign entity in Delaware. For tax

purposes, Sean needs to obtain an Employee Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS in order to hire new employees to work for

him. Streamus also needs its own bank account where money for shares and other operating expenses can be stored. There are

endless legal issues to take into account when forming an organization; though many of them will not need to be addressed until

late stages in the development of Streamus, they are all extremely important to consider from the start.

With so many legal decisions and their repercussions to consider, this process was fairly difficult yet extremely important. Now

that Streamus is a legal entity, Sean can accept investments, offer shares to new employees, along with several other benefits

gained from filing. There is definitely still more legal work and responsibilities to keep an eye on, but Streamus Inc. is off to the

right start.

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Street Team

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Chris here, Director of Streamus Marketing Operations.

I have a question for you:

When it comes to marketing for senior projects, what comes to mind?

Surveymonkey.com?

Booth on Dexter Lawn?

Passing out flyers?

Free pizza in the UU?

Facebook event?

I don't know about you, but every time I see a senior project marketing attempt I decide to take the long way to class.

Aditya and I see this style of marketing often, and nine times out of ten we are extremely turned off by the product or

service. Our goal with Streamus was to spread the word around campus in a more effective and enthusiastic way.

With Streamus, our goal is to target both male and female music lovers age 17-25. We found the average music

listener to be loyal to their current music streaming service, the majority being Spotify. In fact, the Cal Poly campus is

ranked 4th in the country in the amount of people streaming Spotify music. Although some pay the $8.99/month for

premium services, most prefer the free version. Because of this we saw an immediate opportunity for Streamus to

make its way into the Cal Poly community…let’s take a look how!

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Blog Outreach

We figured those who are interested in music blogs are more likely to try out new music streaming services to discover new

artists (this is how SoundCloud earned its success).That being said, we decided to draft an email template and send it to 40+

music blogs to gauge interest in writing an article about Streamus, which you will see below.

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How’d it work?

Well, awful. We got zero responses.

What we learned here is that the internet is a tough place. We learned that wording and timing were crucial to this

outreach phase, which Sean pointed out after researching articles on this process. Many bloggers and media outlets

have a very small time window in which they are able to respond to emails, especially from someone who they think is

a random. These bloggers are quick to throw out emails that don’t immediately catch their interest and attention. If

able to do this process a second time around, we would be sure to make the following changes:

1. Send the email early in the morning when the recipient will be fresh at work.

2. Grasp the reader’s attention using an exciting subject line that is also clear and concise.

3. Follow up the emails with phone calls to the different bloggers.

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Mustang News

A big accomplishment for Streamus was our feature in the Mustang news. We met with the writer/editor Kelly Trom at

a local café to discuss how the idea of Streamus came along, what its functions are, and how the entire Cal Poly

campus can benefit from the Chrome Extension. Not only was Kelly eager to write about the actual product, but also

about our senior project as a whole. Many questions were asked as to how we got in contact with Sean and what we

were doing to help Streamus in the long run. After about an hour of chatting, Kelly came up with more than enough

content to draft up the following article.

http://mustangnews.net/streamus-fights-spotify-for-music-streaming-spotlight/

Shortly after the article was released, we immediately noticed a spike in users. The article ended up on Facebook for

thousands of people to see, which then led to recognition from Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong. Both our feature

in the Mustang News and letter from the President not only sparked curiosity of the product, but also left us with a

strong sense of credibility in the Cal Poly community.

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Letter from President Jeffrey Armstrong

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Business Cards

All the time during winter quarter Aditya and I would get asked the same question, “What are you guys doing for your

Senior Project?” After explaining Streamus and what we were doing to help, we decided it would be helpful to have a

takeaway for the person to increase the chance of actually downloading the service. At first we thought business

cards, but later found that because Streamus was not a legal entity, this was not the best route. With business cards it

might also be difficult to grab the attention of our target market of 17-25 year old music lovers. We then came up with

the idea of “party cards,” a fun twist on the traditional business card.

Our goal here was to have the marketing material be engaging at first and spark curiosity, which would later lead to an

actual download of the software. We decided to have the party cards consist of a common scenario facing up; one

which illustrated the frustration of using a music service such as YouTube. The viewer relates, turns the card over, and

boom! The solution is right in front of them: https://streamus.com.

What were the cards used for? In general it was nice to have the cards on us at all times in case somebody asked

about the product, or even our senior project. The cards were also strategically placed around campus in places like

library tables and classroom keyboards. We believed that putting these cards in places where students would be on a

computer makes perfect sense in reaching our goal of the user eventually downloading the product.

The cost of the cards ended up being $50 dollars for 500 cards. It is hard to tell our customer acquisition cost that

came from these cards due to the fact that we could not tell exactly how many users had downloaded because of the

cards. However, having these cards deemed beneficial in the fact that people now recognize the name Streamus. We

found from conversation many people ran into a card at some point and it sparked curiosity to the product. Even if it

did not result in an actual download, at least we got the name out there.

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Party Cards

The wording on the card is not like your traditional business card, and that’s because Streamus is not your traditional music

streaming service. Our goal was to reach out to our target market using a bit more casual language to engage the viewer. This

is why we included words like “bumpin” and “rando” and used the popular emoji’s often seen in text messaging today. As for

the back, we kept the simple approach of having the Streamus Logo take up the majority of the space. In the corner we have a

friendly reminder that Streamus was developed in San Luis Obispo; yet another huge selling point of ours when introducing the

product to the Cal Poly community.

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Playlist Development:

We realized that some sort of incentive would be extremely beneficial in gaining a strong user base. Around finals

week of winter quarter is when Aditya and I got the idea of creating playlists specifically for Cal Poly students. Due to

the wide array of popular genres spread throughout campus, we decided to create three different playlists: Hip-hop,

EDM, and Country. After conducting a survey using about 100 Cal Poly Students, we generated playlists of some of

the most popular songs from each genre that are available to stream right from your computer.

It was also brought to our attention that the infamous Coachella Art and Music Festival was two weeks into spring

quarter. This festival features around 150 artists, many of whom are not well known to the general population. We

came up with the idea to make three different Coachella playlists for those attending the festival in order to get more

familiar with the artists. Because Coachella is a three day music festival we generated a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

playlist, each containing a couple songs from each artist performing that weekend. The sharing of playlists is a feature

that all successful music streaming services have, and these Coachella playlists were a great first step for Streamus in

the sharing playlists to a mass user base.

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Featured Playlists: Coachella

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Classroom Pitches

One fine afternoon, Aditya and I were given the opportunity to present in the largest lecture hall in the college of

Business: Professor Chris Carr’s Business Law class. This was our first attempt at a pitch in front of a large format

audience, and was very much a spur of the moment experience. Though we were unprepared, our knowledge and

excitement of Streamus got us through the pitch with ease.

A link to the pitch can be found here:

http://polyplayback01.ceng.calpoly.edu/Mediasite/Play/1a871c76392e42e1b3f2e005621340ff1d

We received class feedback from our pitch, where the professor asked the following questions with the students

answering yes or no.

1. Are you clear of what the product is and how it works?

2. Did they clearly differentiate themselves from the competition?

3. Was it clear what they were asking for from their audience?

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The votes ended up nearly unanimous in the yes category, and about 50 downloads of Streamus happened right there

on the spot. Our first pitch was a fantastic experience that taught us live demonstrations of Streamus are the best

approach for gaining users instantly. As we would have loved to do more, time, money, and logistics ultimately held us

back.

All of our marketing efforts have been tracked over time using Google Analytics and are explained in the next section.

Although not all of our efforts deemed successful, we learned that a more direct, face to face marketing approach is

directly correlated with increased users on the spot. Both the presentation and the Mustang News article proved to be

our most powerful marketing technique, which will be taken into consideration in our future marketing endeavors.

Had this been a 12 month long project, our goal would have been to hold more demonstrations in large meetings.

Whether it be in San Luis Obispo or other parts of the state, hiring ambassadors for Streamus to hold demonstrations

on other college campuses would have been great to help grow our user base significantly. Overall, Aditya and I were

proud of our efforts in introducing a brand new way to stream music across Cal Poly without the use of surveys,

booths, and other typical marketing strategies used by other Senior Projects.

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Making a Difference

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Aditya here, head of Streamus Business Analytics:

After spending a significant amount of time on marketing outlets, we knew it would be extremely important to see if our Marketing

efforts had even been successful in the first place! This is where the Google Analytics comes in to play. We used Google

Analytics to track and view several different metrics on both the website and the app which included users, locations, dates and

times, etc. Google Analytics gives us the opportunity to track trends and create campaigns, allowing us to understand what

marketing outlets are successful, what articles are giving Streamus more users, etc. Below we will run through our analysis of

stats provided to us by Google Analytics.

General Streamus

Dashboards When you first open

Google Analytics it shows

two dashboards that have

been created. One for the

Streamus.com website,

and one for the actual

extension that you

download into chrome.

Each dashboard gives an

overview homepage as

seen below that shows

mainly user and new user

data for the entire

application

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When first starting to learn about Google Analytics, Sean pointed out some interesting trends that could be seen and tracked

using the application. One interesting trend that he pointed out to us was the fact that the app has lower use over the weekend.

If we look at a chart for use in the month of March below, we can see that there are dips in use on Saturday and Sundays. This

seemed interesting to us as we had been marketing the application as a weekend gathering music player, yet it seems that

many users seem to be using it while doing work or homework, giving us an insight on potentially pivoting on-campus

marketing for the future.

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New Users

From the website aspect we have significantly more new users visiting the website as seen in the dashboard below. This is strong

for us as we hope that many new users are coming to the site each day, however between both of these dashboards we can likely

assume that many of the new users coming to the web page aren’t in fact downloading the application.

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For the month of March we also took a look at our users of the application and average session lengths, which you can see in

the graph below. About 96% percent of our users are returning which is important to us as it shows that many of our users are

in fact loyal to Streamus. This also tells us though that we could get a larger amount of new users signing up daily than we

currently have. The dashboard below also shows us that the average session duration for March was only 5:05 which is fairly

short when considering what we hope users use Streamus for. Some questions we considered were if these users were

logging on to check our Streamus again after seeing some marketing asset on the internet, or if they really did just need to

pull up a song for 5 minutes.

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Looking at more data on the website, we can see that over 10% of our web viewers in March are coming from Firefox and

Safari. This likely explains the fact that we have many new web viewers that are not downloading the application. We hope as

Spartan (Internet Explorer’s new web browser) gets rolled out and Streamus is modified for Firefox, we will be able to convert

such users even more easily in the future.

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Cal Poly Dashboards

To get more specific we created Cal Poly specific dashboards for both the App and the Website. Each of these dashboards narrow down metrics on

downloads, views, etc. to just the San Luis Obispo area. An example of the App dashboard can be seen below..

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.

Our Cal Poly dashboards allowed us

to look at specific dates for large

events that had happened. For

example, our Mustang News article

came out on February 21st, 2015. On

the next page you can see how that

article directly affected the amount of

new users and users on Streamus.

In addition to our article, we spoke in

Professor Chris Carr’s large BUS

207 class in the business silo,

pitching Streamus and trying to get

students to download. Below you

can see a spike in the month of

March for new users in San Luis

Obispo, which is the day we

presented.

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User Networks

After further toying with Google Analytics, Sean informed us that we could look at users based on what network they were using. This was

important to us as it was maybe the only way we could track users on campus as the campus network was categorized separately. This was

important to us as we did most of our marketing on campus and were curious to see if younger students were reacting as we hoped they were.

From the data below, we can see that we had a very significant amount of users on campus compared to users using charter.

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Streamus Analytics in the Future:

In the future there are many more metrics we hope to be able to track in Google Analytics. Tracking other new metrics

will give Streamus the insights it will need to focus marketing techniques and efforts along with deciding what new

features to release and what locations to focus on. We wish to track the number of playlists created, shared, etc. as

playlists and social aspects will likely become a big and important component of the Streamus user experience. We

also wish to do more web and application interaction tracking to help us understand users who are visiting the website

and downloading the application immediately or not downloading the application at all. How can we convert these

users? Why aren’t these users downloading? Why are some playlists more popular to others? Which artist is the most

listened to on a certain day at a certain time? There are many questions and information that we hope to track and

answer in the future using Google Analytics. This could likely develop into a full time job or an entire department as

many companies have large teams and budgets for data analytics and data science demands.

Analytics Conclusion:

Overall our discussion on Google Analytics has been very insightful for us. Our time with this project gave us a great

understanding on how companies can use Google Analytics as neither of us had used it before. We quickly learned

about the endless amounts of potential insights, campaigns, etc. that can be accomplished using Google Analytics.

We also learned how our specific marketing attempts such as the business cards, Mustang News article and

classroom pitch had affected overall user count and website viewership for Streamus. If provided further time and

resources we would hope to set up more metrics and dashboards within Google Analytics to further understand how,

where, when and why people are using and enjoying Streamus.

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Right Now & What’s Next

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As we started to wrap things up with Sean,

We were confident that our marketing efforts, analytics tracking, and incorporation research helped Streamus come

closer to its goal of becoming a worldwide music streaming application. However, Streamus still has a long way to go.

Had this been a 12 month project, we would have pursued more long term marketing efforts, such as statewide

presentations of Streamus to other college campuses. This would include presenting in fraternity/sorority meetings,

local bars, and any other club or organization looking for a new way to stream music.

As of now, Streamus is headed in the right direction. Since working with Sean, Streamus has gained 10,000+ users

along with exposure on the 4th highest music streaming campus in the nation according to Spotify. Within the past six

months Sean has been contacted by both Google and BBDO, an ad agency based in New York who expressed

interest investing in Streamus. Being the first music streaming Chrome Extension gives Streamus a huge leg up from

other services trying to make a name for themselves. What Streamus lacks right now is users, exposure, and a mobile

aspect. Once Streamus is able to be used on the go, users will finally be able to rely solely on Streamus’ services no

matter where they are in the world.

We are also keeping a close eye on other music streaming services, mainly the newly introduced Tidal. Much like

Streamus, Tidal is focused on giving back to the artists. Good for them, but not so good for the users considering it’s

costing them $20/month to subscribe. Sean’s vision with Streamus is to get rid of the subscription and motivate people

to donate to a greater cause using the “tip jar” approach. When users genuinely like a song, the goal is to donate a

dollar or two to that artist with Streamus taking a very small percentage of all donations. With our product offering a

much larger selection of music, it encourages users to select our service as opposed to others.

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In an ideal world, tipping through Streamus would provide us with enough revenue to run a large corporation.

However, we can’t ignore the fact that most music streamers prefer to stream in the cheapest way possible. We are

still brainstorming ways to monetize in the fairest way possible to both users and artists. Even if we went the

subscription route, Streamus is not yet large enough to charge users and would not consider doing so until our user

base and exposure has reached significantly higher levels. Similar to that, advertisements would turn users off at this

point in time. Although Streamus is ad free, we are trying our best to advertise Streamus in different ways in case we

end up using advertisements in the future. The last thing we want is to betray our users who use Streamus solely

because it is ad free. Having said that, we hope to fulfill the dream of building the largest music community in the

world, where users will be motivated and inspired to donate small increments through Streamus that will benefit both

the company and the artists.

Working with Streamus has been a fantastic experience. The real life start up experience and facing real business

problems were great opportunities that will serve us both well in the future. From the incorporation process to

exposure on campus, working with Sean has led us to achieve things that we thought would never happen with our

senior project.

We hope you enjoyed learning about our experience with Sean as much as we loved working with him.

Thank you!

Chris Oberheide & Aditya Dev

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Wait, one more thing….

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Loving music is simple, let’s keep it that way.

Go download Streamus!

https://streamus.com