Excerpt from our business plan

Business Idea

What is the purpose of the project?

The Jelly Roll Factory has two main objectives:

Firstly to create awareness of PUBLIC DOMAIN blues and jazz of the 1920s and 1930s. The artist, their lives and stories and their music. We wish to bring back some of this truly great era of music through releasing 7 inch vinyl versions of the original shellac 78 rpm songs, which have never been released on the later vinyl format. We also wish to see these songs sung by artists and for the history of the music to live on. Breathing life into the memory of the who paved the way for the music world as we know it today.

The second part is to invest in hard up local artists and street musicians in the greater Hamburg area. Helping those who don't have cash for demo recordings to get their music onto cd so that they can use this to make their own luck to get gigs or sell cds on the street. To this end, we intend to build and run a budget demo recording studio.

Importantly no style of music is off limits. We want to support artist if they are bluesmen or hip hop artist or singer song-writers of ballads. We ask only that their music is their own and that they cover one public domain track in their own style and make it their own. We believe it is vital that thier is a link between the old and the new and that each musician honours that as part of working with us.

What is special about our idea?

Music is a driving force in the lives of all involved in the Jelly Roll Factory. We have all gained immense pleasure from playing and we all understand the hardships and pitfalls involved in a life of music.
We would like to give back to our fellow musicians, bring back the sounds and words of yesteryear's titans and move forward in the fellowship and rewards that playing and networking with the local community can bring.
The Jelly Roll Factory is about then and now. Looking to fill the cracks where commercial music companies would never go. It it about joining our shared music history and grassroots community support.

What are our short-term goals?

Release one single of public domain music in a limited edition run of 100 records.
Website with a live MS Access database of 20s and 30s shellac recordings. At present we have over 14000 titles and 1200 artists in the offline beta version
Deutsch version
Set up an event for local musicians to play
Begin feasability studies for a practice room we can utilise as a budget recording studio.
Networking with street musicians and other artists to find specific common needs beyond the music.

What are our long-term goals?

The Jelly Roll Factory - Public Domain Music & Community Recording studio