NJIT Training Helps Undergrad and Parents Open New Music Business
Tapyoca, offering a new twist on music distribution for independent and small artists and brands, is finding its way around the startup world with guidance from New Jersey Institute of Technology’s entrepreneurship experts.
The company is family-led. Jordan-River Samuel is a sophomore in NJIT’s Martin Tuchman School of Management, studying business with an entrepreneurship concentration. He focuses on Tapyoca’s marketing and social media. His parents Felicia Palmer and Steven Samuel are the CEO and CTO, respectively, focusing on business development and innovation. All three participated in the university’s National Science Foundation Innovation Corps regional training as a community-oriented new business, and the younger Samuel won an NJIT New Business Model competition.
Their first product is an NFC card, called the Tapyoca FanCard, that musicians sell to fans. Tapping the card against a phone gives fans access to exclusive content. The younger Samuel said he learned from NJIT training that fans appreciate the cards as something physical to collect, unlike virtual products. Artists can sell their cards to fans during performances, just like they already sell apparel and stickers.
The company expects 1,000 active users by the end of this year. A card for Newark Tech Week this year gave fans music and video to take home. Looking forward, “We have a lot of plans for what's next, I will say different forms of our distribution model. But currently, we're just doing the card. Right now we're focused on the rollout. We have some ambassadors that we're working with,” including rapper Money B, known for the group Digital Underground and their affiliation with deceased star Tupac Shakur. Smaller artists already sold out their limited-run cards, Samuel said.
Samuel’s parents ran a successful hip-hop music publication for several decades, while his own shot at entrepreneurship began with a lemonade stand outside the family home in Jersey City when he was just 7. He attended Norfolk State University, a historically black college, and transferred to NJIT for its lesser cost and greater diversity.
“Me and my father are both musical artists ourselves and producers. So we've always had a propensity and interest in, how do we make this a better situation for artists? How do we make just becoming a musician sustainable?,” Samuel explained. “So with that mission, my dad found an NFC card producer in Korea. And it kind of started us down this long road of trying to figure out the best solution for artists to get invested fans, and an invested fan base that wants to support them so that they can support themselves instead of living gig-to-gig. Right now, artists, they're funneling into the algorithm, and they're hoping that they become famous because of it, or that they sign a deal. [But] I feel like it's almost obvious now that 360 deals are not a very good deal for the artist,” he said, referring to all-inclusive contracts where artists get a large advance but surrender all control and ownership. “We found that fans are loyal to the artist and not to the form of distribution.”
“The NSF has encouraged the I-Corps Northeast Hub to strengthen regional entrepreneurship, so we are delighted to support Tapyoca as a community team and extend our reach beyond the traditional academic teams we've supported in the past,” said MTSM’s Michael Ehrlich, associate professor of finance.
“They were able to conduct significant customer discovery, interview potential customers and develop their business model to strengthen their go-to-market strategy. Through their outreach, they were able to test their minimum viable product, their Tapyoca tap card,” Ehrlich noted. “They were able to identify their beachhead market where they can solve an urgent problem of independent professional musicians who struggle to connect with their fans and monetize their art, unlike traditional streaming solutions.”
Though he’s still in school, Samuel said growing Tapyoca is a dream job. “I feel like I'm doing it right now. I always wanted to start a company, and I had the perfect opportunity when I came back home to come to school at NJIT,” he said. “I do want my degree. My mom graduated from Cornell. She values education, that’s no joke. She's not playing about that,” he said. He hasn’t yet released his own music, but said if Tapyoca goes well then he just might.
