This message informs you very frankly about the current situation of our music department and the "Danza y Movimiento" webshop. You will learn something about why it has been impossible to earn money with selling CDs for years now- in case you didn’t know that already. I am going to inform you about the consequences for “Danza y Movimiento”. I will tell you about my personal attitude towards “money” and towards the “Danza y Movimiento” music shop. And if you had the impuls to want to make this music catalogue (which is unique throughout the world, by the way) survive, you could find our bank details at the bottom of this message...
But I would like to tell you some things before you reach our bank details. And please don’t think that I am in any way interested in your money personally. But maybe the music shop “Danza y Movimiento” is of some importance to you...
My name is Matthias Möbius and I have been the managing director of “Danza y Movimiento GmbH” since 1995. It is fun to work in this company! Being specialised in Latin American music, DyM has two serious trade competitors after having experienced a drastic clearing up of the market. One of them sells Tango and is located in Buenos Aires, the other one sells Salsa and is situated in New York. We keep an excellent relation with both companies. We are talking about the last three companies worldwide, which try to offer a wide variety within their special segment. All other suppliers have vanished into thin air in the past seven years. No matter if talking about actual shops or internet shops: specialist shops for Salsa or Tango have become rare.
I haven’t earned a single Cent during the last seven years working for “Danza y Movimiento” . I am a managing director without a salary. Because “Danza y Movimiento” does not have the money for paying a manager’s salary. (Don’t worry, I earn my money elsewhere and I am fine...) I haven’t received any money and plus I even lent money to the company. You want to know exactly how stupid I am? Well, at the moment we are talking about approximately 60,000 Euro. Again, please don’t misunderstand me, you don’t have to worry about my financial or mental situation. I am fine.
The music business has always been a challenge to me. In 2004, I calculated in a Newsletter*, which afterwards was even discussed at Spiegel -Online, that a CD would have to cost about 60 Euro in order to work cost-effectively in the independent area. You know, that the price for a CD is still below 20 Euro, although even smaller numbers of each CD are produced than in 2004.
Our CD department had become more and more in deficit, so we had to make an important decision: Do we close or do we start something new? Something nobody else has done. Being a person who likes taking a risk, I decided to go for the project “download shop” after having analysed it thoroughly together with our software engineer. If you were a recipient of our Newsletter back then you might remember that we asked for the financial support of our customers and that the start of the project depended on your loans. We received your support and the project was started. Everybody involved has really tried hard, but the downloads hop was not finished in autumn 2006 according to schedule. The project had more unknown factors than expected. And thus, we - almost a year later - are about to finish step 1 (of three steps) of this project.
To make a long story short - under the prevailing ciscumstances I am not motivated to continue the project. At the moment, the costs are already twice the estimated amount for the entire project. The time delay also made us maintain the unprofitable CD department, without the expected download gainings being within a range of vision. The following result became evident after an analysis of the figures during the last days: Provided that I hadn’t started the new project and that I had stopped the CD business a year ago, I would have 100,000 Euro more at my disposal.
And because I am keeping calculating and because some of you might consider me a lunatic anyway for working without earning any money for seven years and for even investing money in such a company, I simply decided that I want to invest my energy and my money in different projects from now on.
So now it is up to you. Money only has the value one attaches to it anyway. To some people, 1 million is the dream of a lifetime, to others it is the daily budget. If you have any money, if you are interested in supporting the “Danza y Movimieto” music catalogue, if you are also able to let go of money - which is an even bigger challenge than “making” money - you can find our bank details below. We need an interest-free loan of 175,000 Euro in order to continue. And there is no real hope to get back the money. Please keep in mind - this is about music! And music is a cultural treasure, only a few true aficionados are willing to spend any money for nowadays. We can set you a monument or you can stay anonymous - we cannot offer you anything else.
You would like to know my plans for the 175,000 Euro? I would pay me back a part of my loan, I would finish the download shop and the music info shop, and I would pay myself a modest manager’s gross salary of 3333.33 Euro per month. And I would do everything I can in order to keep up our Latin American music catalogue for another three years for you. For you and many others, because, after all, there are more than 100,000 visitors to our websites daily...
Here, we would like to point out something else. Everybody who supported us with a finacial loan last year does not have to worry. I try to make my decisions before it is too late...
Many regards
Matthias Möbius
P.S. Our bank details are:
Danza y Movimiento GmbH
Konto Nr. 796 170-202
bei der Postbank HH
BLZ 200 100 20
or from countries outside Germany
Danza y Movimiento GmbH
IBAN-Nr. DE54 2001 0020 0796 1702 02
Postbank Hamburg
BIC-Nr. (Swift-Code): PBNKDEFF
* Link to the Newsletter
"How high should the expenses for music be?"
