I visited a music buisness called pulse music where I learnt a lot about how the buisness runs and how difficult it really is to be successful in the music buisness.I talked to Andy Pickering who gave me a tour around the Pulse and I also learnt how the company itself functions.
(pictures of the studio).Pulse does a number of things. It in total does four things which are:
- Rehearsals where any band can book one of the two rooms and practice a new song or just jam. There are also a few other seperate rooms which bands who are a bit more serious about their music by producing records and singles. These rooms are where the bands can drop in any time they want and practice. These bands pay monthly for renting these rooms unlike the bands who go inthe other rooms who have to pay each time they practice.
- Teaching which is pretty self explanatory where people who want to learn a musical instrument are taught by people in pulse. E.g. Andy teaches people how to play the drums.
- Popstar parties where people book a party and produce a record while they're there. For this there are a three different packages you can get for this. They are Bronze, Silver and Gold. Bronze is for a group of 4, Silver is 6 and Gold is 8. The price goes up each time with Gold going up to around £120. This is the new thing that pulse is trying to introduce.
- Community Projects Which are when pulse with big organisations and they provide equipment and sometimes the venue. These are a good source of income for the company. Unfortunately though, these have taken a bit of a knock because of the current economic situation.
All of this information is clearly layed out into four sections on their brand new website which I got a glimpse of as it has not officially put on the web yet.
Like any company Pulse has to make a profit. It costs a lot before you can even open the doors. You hve to pay to rent the buildng where it all happens, you have to pay for the electricity, the equipment and the furniture for the reception. The list goes on and on. This has to broken even through income. This is acheived through all the things in the section above E.g. Rehearsals. The company also has to make gambles to make profit E.g. because the community projects have had a little knock the company create these popstar parties to produce a new way in which income enters the company.
(Andy, my tour guide and head of pulse)

