Wharton Journal

Issue date: 3/26/07 Section: Insider

Recently, a team of five Wharton students traveled to Austin, Texas, to compete in the 2nd Annual MBA Open MIC (Music Industry Challenge), a national case competition hosted by the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas. Set against the backdrop of the South By Southwest Music Festival, the country's largest independent music conference, the competition poses questions facing the music industry today.

Besting teams from seven other business schools, the Wharton team (nicknamed the "Moondogs") brought home the blue ribbon, not to mention a giant, styrofoam check. Representing Wharton were Nitin "Like Nathan" Chopra (WG'08), Vivek "NASCAR" Garg (WG'08), Neel "KETCAR" Ketkar (WG'08), Francis "Appleboy" Kim (WG'08), and Elizabeth "Bird Dung" Ko (WG'07). The Wharton team's participation in the challenge was co-funded by the Media & Entertainment Club and the Wharton Media & Entertainment Initiative.

Seattle-based RealNetworks®, a software outfit focused on digital media products, sponsored the challenge. RealNetworks has won numerous accolades for its online subscription music service, Rhapsody, which gives consumers on-demand access to its deep catalog of more than 2.5 million songs. Unlike iTunes and many other digital music stores, where users purchase music on a song-by-song or album-by-album basis, Rhapsody subscribers download but do not own their music-they "rent" it via a monthly subscription fee. While iTunes has a demonstrable lead in the digital music space, it remains a hotly contested question in the industry as to which model is superior: ownership or subscription.

RealNetworks asked one question of the eight teams competing: how will Rhapsody quadruple its subscriber base over the next three years? The challenge drew competitors from around the country, including Haas (UC Berkeley), Anderson (UCLA), Stern (NYU), Owen (Vanderbilt), Goizueta (Emory), Jones (Rice) and McCombs (UT Austin).

The case was distributed on a Sunday and was presented that Friday at McCombs' facilities. The Wharton team met early in the week to discuss strategies and get a jumpstart on the case, but mainly they just ate pizza. A scheduled meeting later in the week with the Professor Peter Fader of the Marketing Department, Wharton's resident digital music industry expert, helped focus the team (i.e., they stopped eating pizza).

On Thursday morning and with less than 24 hours to go, the team began constructing a strategy to save the music industry, solve the world's energy crisis and cure world hunger. Transforming G56 into their war-room, Vivek, Neel, Francis, and Elizabeth worked furiously to structure a presentation worthy of their Omnicom pedigrees. Meanwhile, Nitin retouched icons in MS Paint. When asked to comment, his parents said they were proud of him.

Continued...

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