Money for Breakfast
FBN (FBN) National Programming, DMA: 0
07:49AM EDT May 07 2008
Programming Type: Bus./financial

we'll be right back. peter: well, social networking sites have come to mean big bucks for advertisers. but what about capitalizing on talent? it's no question that in the age of "american idol", the way musical talent has been discovered now has been totally revolutionized by that show, gone the smoky clubs. now it's about the influential friends list. also in the youtube era as well. joing us for our c-suite sit down is gather founder and ceo. here to change the face of the music business. tell us how gather fits into that. welcome, tom. >> thank you, peter. peter: what is gather.com? >> it's really social networking grown um. -- grown up. we're targeting adults 30 to 50 years old. peter: what do you collect on the site? >> you know, we really don't collect anything. we bring together hundreds of thousands of people every day. and they connect with their friends, their families, their colleagues around, whatever their passions happen to be, in this case music. peter: i mentioned youtube there, which is i guess more of a competitor. at least when it come to the video side of this. and so your members are posting movies. they're posting songs. is this the new way to find talent? >> it really is. we started off a couple years ago with a bok contest called first chapters. we partnered with simon and schuster. we let authors publish the first chapters of their books. a few talented ones did. peter: i remember that. i was trying to remember where i knew gather.com >> an unpublished director got a book published. peter: you have a contest for aspiring musicians. what is that about? >> we've let unrecorded artists come in and hundreds of them did, and compete to win a record album with decca records. we just selected the winner last week. peter: who is the winner? >> tommy wallach from seattle. peter: what does he sing? >> it's really fun. tommy sounds like rufus wainwright. he was influenced by rufus growing up. he's a male vocalist with some terrific original compositions. tommy came to us ironically as a writer. he's one of these multi-talented guys that i can't imagine what they do during the day. peter: let's talk about this evolution. back in the day, talent scouts for records would go out to concerts or clubs and try to find talent. now we have people posting their own music on a web site like yours. what does this mean for the music business? >> you're right to ask that question. the business is going through tremendous transition right now. and i think one of the things that contests like first tracks enable, they can find talent in new ways, they can let the market select the talent for them. tommy got 43,000 peep to vote for him in the contest. so rather than taking a risk on an artist, decca can find an artist that is proven in the marketplace. peter: i guess you could make the same analysis with "american idol". >> exactly. the other advantage which "american idol" provides is you launch the artist with a known base of fans. so tommy went from unknown to having 43,000 people that knows music. peter: so it makes the business less risky. >> exactly. peter: whether "american idol", gather.com or youtube. >> it's hard to get the chris cal mass of first listeners. they've got it. the first listener base spreads through social networks like gather. 40,000 fans talk about tommy's new album. the friends come into the conversation, spreads to their friends and their friends. peter: tell us about your business model. >> we have terrific partners on the site, companies like weston, american express, i have a great relationship with amtrak, charles schwab is the sponsor of the site. we have an adult demographic and they like seeing a social networking experience that is a little more sophisticated where people are talking to each other, having great conversations online, and really talking about things adults talk about. peter: how many members? >> we have 500,000 registered members. you meet new people on the site every day. peter: can you tell us about revenue you did last year? >> we did 4 million last year, hoping to do more than that this year. peter: tom, thanks for coming in. i asked you -- i asked him impolitically about his haircut. i said, are you in the army reserve? he said, no. >> you're geting ready for summer on a sales trip. peter: you yuan today chop it all off. thanks, tom, good luck with your sales tour. thanks for coming in. >> thanks, peter. peter: 23% of hispanics consider themselves republicans. that means republican presidential hopeful john mccain is going to have an uphill battle when it comes to reach thing voter block. we'll tell what you he's doing to reach those voters. "money for breakfast" back after the break.