"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." — Albert Einstein

Earful.info (Earful for short) provides strategic marketing and risk management solutions for the recording industry.  We believe the following:

The music industry can improve its profits on less risk and a lower capital investment

We developed cutting edge strategies to improve the reward-to-risk ratio of the music industry.  Among our risk management projects is an approach that reduces the capital tied up in artist and repertoire (A&R) and music publishing, and provides a more rational approach to executive performance and corporate acquisitions.

For more information, please read Quantitative Portfolio Optimization for Record Labels & Music Publishers.  It shows how quantitative finance can be applied to music industry assets to increase profits with less risk.

Profits follow customer satisfaction.  If your profits are declining, so is your customer satisfaction!

As Peter Drucker observed, customer satisfaction is the only business goal and profit is the reward for this single-mindedness.  If sales are going down, you are not satisfying your customer as well as another company or industry.  The solution is to improve your marketing.

The customer is never wrong, even if what they are doing is illegal.  Marketing is the solution to piracy!

Customers are always right, and they are blunt.  They tell an industry what they want by how they spend or don't spend.  Customers vote at the cash register.  If your business is serving them well, sales go up.  If you ignore what the customer wants, they take their money elsewhere.  A black market is still a market; it just isn't yours.  Therefore, piracy is a marketing problem requiring a change in the marketing mix to improve positioning.  We have cost effective solutions to eradicate the blight of illegal file sharing.

It starts with solid research

Solid research uncovers strengths and weaknesses, and opportunities and threats.  Earful relies on time-tested peer-reviewed marketing, economics and consumer behavior research as the basis of its conclusions.  We don't jump on or create the latest fads.  We create solutions based on reason, not conjecture.  We equip our clients with the tools to avoid threats and exploit opportunities.

Barry Sosnick is the president and founder of Earful.info, a provider of strategic marketing and risk management solutions to the recorded music industry.  He is also a professor at Five Towns College, teaching classes in music marketing, public opinion research, small business management and entrepreneurship.  Mr. Sosnick was an equity analyst, most recently with Fahnestock & Co. (now Oppenheimer & Co.), where he provided research on the home entertainment and consumer electronics retailers, and assisted mergers and acquisitions, and public and private financings.  Barry was a senior project leader with the prestigious political polling and market research firm Luntz Research Companies, where he guided political, legal and marketing strategies for Fortune 500 companies and elected officials. 

Barry Sosnick presented "How the RIAA’s Legal Strategy Decreased Music Industry Efficiency" with Krystal Yoniak at the Music and Entertainment Industry Educators Association (MEIEA) conference in 2006 at the University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA).  MEIEA is the association for entertainment industry academics.  He presented at the University of Miami at the 2005 MEIEA conference a paper entitled, "A Capital Budgeting Approach to Understanding Artist-Label Relationships," co-authored with Peter Alhadeff, an economics professor at the Berklee School of Music.  He co-authored research with music business graduate students from the University of Miami entitled, "The Changing Recorded Music Industry," presented at Loyola University New Orleans MEIEA conference in 2003.  Barry is also a frequent speaker and panel member at universities and industry conferences, including the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM).

Mr. Sosnick also serves on the MEIEA advisory board and the MEIEA Journal Reviewer and Editorial Committee.  The Music and Entertainment Industry Student Association (MEISA) honored Barry with its "Outstanding Service Award" in 2006.

October 2006    Universal Acquires BMG: Concern for EMI & WMG
                              A review of consolidation theory and how Universal may benefit by acquiring BMG Music Publishing.  This is based on an October 2006 MEIEA eZine article.

August 2006       Long Tail Will End in Heartbreak
                              A link to an article published on The Register: a British IT online publication.  It questions whether the long tail is something revolutionary and profitable.

February 2006   Surviving a Consolidating Music Industry: Education
                              Consolidating industries―such as the music industry―hire better educated employees.  This is based on an February 2006 MEIEA eZine article.

June 2005          College Music Subscriptions Threaten the Music Industry
                              Low-price college subscriptions can reduce purchases, hurt brand equity and increase commoditization

May 2005           Quantitative Portfolio Optimization for Record Labels & Music Publishers
                              Higher profits, with less risk and a smaller capital investment by applying quantitative finance to music assets

April 2005           Record Labels, Artists and Finance
                              A letter in response to an academic study on equitable recoupment of artist advances

October 2004    View from the Top: Record Distribution in the Digital Age
                              A review of a distribution panel hosted by the National Association of Record Industry Professionals (NARIP)

Fall 2004             Healthier Music Industry: Consolidation to Lead to Needed Improvements in Marketing
                              This was the basis of the Opinion article in the October 30 Billboard (p. 10)

Summer 2004    Music: An Inferior Good...Why the Economy and Price Cuts Can Hurt Music Sales

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