Portada: You mentioned that Cyloop is powering Telefonica in Spain. What can you say about how that agreement is structured?
Demian Bellumio: Well, Hoodiny(Parent company of Cyloop) and Terra.es(Owned by Telefonica) entered into a joint-venture in November of last year to create a powerful music platform. The result is a co-branded site, accessible from both cyloop.terra.es and terra.cyloop.es.
Portada: What is Cyloop doing in Latin America, and what advertisers/Media partners are involved with your efforts there?
Bellumio: We are announcing our launch in Argentina at the end of the month. Our plan is to be in every market in Latin America within the first half of the year.
The way we are growing Cyloop as a music service is by being very flexible. Cyloop does not only exist as Cyloop, but also all Warner music properties in LatAm are powered by Cylolop. We leverage all of our technology to deploy our platform for given labels. We are not selling advertising right now in Latin America. Instead, we are partnering with ISPs, media companies, music retailers and wireless companies, providing them with branded Cyloop platforms that they can build their communities around. We take care of all tech and back-end systems.
We are launching Warner Brothers’ Spanish music site in Beta version this week.
Portada: What is your revenue generation model?
Bellumio: It’s very diverse. We like to be flexible in how we structure our partnerships because different markets have different circumstances that govern them. In Latin America, for example, the model we are deploying will be a hybrid of advertising and subscription-based revenues.
We also have a mobile version with a strong commerce component, which covers ringtones, digital downloads, wallpapers, etc. In other instances we are open to simply licensing the technology.
Portada: What is Cyloop’s relationship with Billboard?
Bellumio: We have licensed Billboard content to go into Spanish and Portuguese markets. Also, Billboard handles all of our U.S. advertising.
Portada: Is Cyloop doing any event or grass roots marketing? What does that consist of and who is sponsoring or co-sponsoring it?
Bellumio: We’re doing the huge 2nd annual “Rumbo al Exito” in Miami as part of the with Coca Cola, WalMart and SBS (rumboalexito2008.com—blasted on radio) doing an American Idol type of event. Winner will sing on-stage.
