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Our Mission
The mission of InstantEncore.com is to be the world’s leading resource for delivering
and enjoying live classical music anywhere and anytime. Classical music is presented
with a unique opportunity ~ to embrace the power of the Internet in order to revitalize
the classical music industry while maintaining the highest artistic integrity. InstantEncore.com’s
dynamic classical music site provides tools for the classical music lover, concert
presenter, ensemble, artist, composer, and educator to connect, enhance and extend
the concert experience. We are committed to keeping classical music vital and accessible
to the audience of today and tomorrow while providing organizations with the opportunity
to utilize the media model of our time, the Internet.
For The Classical Music Lover
InstantEncore.com is a free community designed to enhance and extend the concert
experience in every way. Join today! InstantEncore.com makes it simple for you to
find concert information, read news and reviews, download music, enjoy concert audio
streaming (video coming soon…), hear Podcasts, explore our learning annex and share
your concert reviews. Customize your homepage to follow your favorite cities, venues,
artists, ensembles, conductors, and composers, news, blogs and more. Sign up for
Inside Scoop: email alerts about new digital content and concert promos. If you
attend a concert with one of our featured Partners and you receive an InstantEncore
Music Card, you will be able to download the concert after the event on our site
for free.
For The Concert Presenter / Organization
This may include a Chamber Series, Competition, Conservatory, Orchestra (Professional
and Youth), Summer Festival, University, or Other.
InstantEncore.com harnesses technology to add value to your performances, your brand,
your sponsors and your target audience. Our free digital distribution platform gets
your live concert recordings online for download or streaming:
We create your own InstantEncore.com “Boutique” to house your material and give
you a secured control panel to easily update and maintain your space. Fans search
your Boutique to explore your concert schedule, purchase or redeem free downloads,
enjoy public or private streaming, read program notes and reviews, sign-up for news
alerts from you, add you to their home page and more. As part of our extensive search
engine, new audience members will discover you and loyal fans can follow you.
- Take the Concert Home: Increase the value of concert
seats by having your audience “take the concert home”. Entering your hall, each
audience member will receive one InstantEncore Music Card: A different code will
be on each Card, allowing them to go home and download the concert they attended
one time only. Going online to redeem their free download, they may browse your
Boutique, find upcoming concerts and purchase other music you have available. Sell
the concert to a worldwide audience and/or stream it publicly or privately if you
wish.
- A New Paradigm for Obtaining Corporate Sponsors: Motivate
corporate giving. InstantEncore.com gives you click-through ad space in your concert
listings and details page, and in your download store. You may also place an embedded
streaming announcement recognizing your sponsor. On the back of your InstantEncore
Music Card, your sponsor can be prominently featured as the underwriter. Their dollars
reach a global audience, a high value proposition as opposed to just having their
name in a program.
- A Personal Thank-You for Your Friends & Donors: Custom
create digital packages with pre-selected music for your Friends & Donors. Design
different packages at various donor levels, giving each level unique access to concert
music available for download and/or streaming. Each Donor’s personal code may be
presented on a custom designed InstantEncore Music Card or sent via email: you determine
the length of time the code is active. Encourage your corporate sponsors to send
Music Cards out to their customers.
- Conservatories/Universities: Provide parents, alumni
and board members with personal Codes to access private streaming of student recitals,
orchestral or opera performances.
- Business Cards for Your Organization: Custom design
your Business Cards through InstantEncore. Each card features a code (a different
code for each card) that gives the client/fan access to free music you have preselected.
Distribute these cards in your music stores, at nearby coffee shops, restaurants
or hotels.
- Quality: You’re in control on InstantEncore. Make your
music free to a pre-selected audience OR set the price for each music track for
sale. Set the duration of time the music is to be available, control upload any
file music, and/or make streaming available publicly or privately through secured
code access.
For the Artists, Ensembles & Composers
This is also valuable to Managers and Publicists.
Connect with the widest possible audience. We are a free platform to get recordings
you own from live concert events into worldwide digital distribution. You maintain
control of content. We create your InstantEncore.com “Boutique” to house your material
and give you a secured control panel to easily update and maintain your space. Fans
may search within your Boutique to explore your concert schedule, purchase or redeem
free downloads, enjoy public or private streaming, read program notes and reviews,
sign-up for news alerts from you, add you to their home page and more. As a part
of our extensive search engine, a new audience discovers you and your loyal fans
can follow you.
- Get Your Live Music Online: You’re in Control: Seek
to distribute your live concert events on your InstantEncore Boutique. Music you
own the right to distribute may be uploaded, sold, given away as a promo or streamed
(publicly or privately). Set the duration of time the music is to be available;
upload any file compression format.
- Encourage Presenters! Take the Concert Home: Contact
us to speak with a presenter about having the audience be able to “Take the concert
home with them” with InstantEncore Music Cards. Each concertgoer receives a card
with a different code on each Card. This enables them to go home and download the
concert they heard, one time, for free.
- Business Cards: Custom design your own Business Cards
through InstantEncore. Each Card features a code (a different code for each card)
allowing your fan to go home and download the music you have chosen to be associated
with that code (free or sold). Have these at CD signings as a promo!
- Managers and Publicists: Create InstantEncore Boutiques
for each member of your roster. Create digital packages for each artist and create
InstantEncore Business Cards for prospective presenters to have special access to
pre-selected tracks from your artists for download or private streaming. This cost
efficient and time saving alternative to sending out physical compact discs is perfect
for conferences.
Meet Our Team
Bill Stensrud
President/CEO
Bill Stensrud graduated from MIT in 1971 majoring in Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science. He held a variety of technical, marketing and executive positions
in the communications industry. He was a founder of StrataCom (acquired by Cisco),
the CEO of Primary Access (acquired by 3Com) and an early investor and Director
of Juniper Networks. He was a partner with a major venture capital firm in San Diego
and ranked by Forbes Magazine as one of the top 25 “Movers and Shakers” in the venture
capital industry. Bill is now a private investor and mentor to entrepreneurs.
Bill has been a philanthropist and an active supporter of the arts for many years.
He has served on the boards of Scripps Health, the Neurosciences Institute, the
San Diego Telecom Council, the University of California at San Diego Foundation,
the National Venture Capital Association. He is a past President of the San Diego
Opera and is a passionate lover of classical music in all of its many forms.
Margo Tatgenhorst Drakos
Chief Operating Officer
A 1999 graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Margo comes to
InstantEncore as one of the most recognized young cellists in America. She has performed
as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician throughout Asia, Europe, South America,
and the US, and has collaborated with the world's leading artists including members
of the Emerson, Guarneri, Miami, Orion, and Tokyo Quartets, the Beaux Arts and KLR
Trios, Jonathan Biss, Yefim Bronfman, and Ida Kavafian. Ms. Drakos currently serves
on the cello faculty of the Manhattan School of Music.
This season Margo is performing sextets throughout the US with “Curtis on Tour”
with Curtis President Roberto Diaz and current students. As the cellist of the American
String Quartet from 2002-2006, Margo served as artist-in-residence at the Aspen
Music Festival and recorded Richard Danielpour’s String Quartets for Arabesque Records.
Ms. Drakos has also served as Associate Principal Cellist of the Pittsburgh Symphony
and Principal Cellist of the San Diego and Oregon Symphonies. Deeply committed to
contemporary music, Margo has premiered many works including David Ludwig’s Cello
Concerto for the Vermont Symphony’s 70th birthday, Jaime Laredo conducting. Margo
has spent multiple summers at the Marlboro Music Festival and has toured with “Musicians
from Marlboro”.
Margo received her Masters degree in 2008 from Columbia University in Human Rights.
Margo's publications include Extracting Corporate Responsibility: Towards an HRIA
in the Cornell International Law Journal, Spring 2007 and Getting Human Rights Right
in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, December 2007. She has presented her articles
at the Yale Law School's Young Scholars Conference and the Netherland's International
Human Rights Conference on Business and Human Rights, November 2007.
Evan Schumacher
Chief Technical Officer
Evan Schumacher is InstantEncore’s Chief Technical Officer. He was introduced to
classical music in college when he was part of a summer project (with then roommate
Ross Stensrud) to build a media player designed for classical music for InstantEncore
CEO Bill Stensrud. The technology born in that project has formed the foundation
for InstantEncore’s classical music focused technologies. These technologies are
driven by a need to organize the world of classical music with the end goal of allowing
people to access the music and information at anytime, anywhere. Evan went to the
University of California, San Diego and received his B.S. and Masters in Electrical
Engineering, with a focus in Computer Vision.
Ross Stensrud
Chief Product Development Officer
While studying mechanical engineering at the University of California at San Diego,
Ross Stensrud began developing websites for friends and family as a hobby. During
his studies, Ross was commissioned along with roommate Evan Schumacher (CTO) to
build a digital music system to catalog the classical music CD collection of InstantEncore
founder and CEO, Bill Stensrud. Through the early stages of InstantEncore, at the
time known as Fortuna Classical Music, Ross discovered his passion for programming
and quickly taught himself the languages of Visual Basic, ColdFusion, ASP.net and
C#. Upon graduation Ross pursued a career in his field of study before becoming
the Director of Product Management in 2005 for Fortuna Classical Music. Currently
Ross is addressing the challenges of creating a classical music destination complex
enough to engage all who are interested, yet simple enough to be navigated by an
octogenarian classical music enthusiast.
Steven Carlson
Director of Music & Media
Steven Carlson is the Director of Music and Media at InstantEncore.com. In 2005,
Steven joined Fortuna Classical Music, the parent company of InstantEncore, where
he helped create a database of classical music recordings for the MAESTRO music
player. From there, he moved into his current duties with InstantEncore where he
currently oversees the expansion of InstantEncore's concert listings. Steven's passion
for classical music began in his early school days while learning to play numerous
wind instruments. He soon landed his first job as a classical music radio announcer,
and eventually served as music director, program director, and senior manager for
several radio stations including Minnesota Public Radio and Classical Public Radio
Network. Steven also created the Fine Arts News Service in 1997, an arts news website
for classical music broadcasters.
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