By JERRY BARMASH
Douglas Hoppe has been intrigued by music since he was a youngster. Now, at age 25, the Oceanside man has taken his love for world music and other cultures and brought it to the United States.
Out of an office in Budapest, Hungary, where he is able to learn about musicians from Central and Eastern Europe, Hoppe runs the Web site xenomusic.com, offering music from more than 30 countries that can be downloaded for listening pleasure. On the phone from his parents home in Oceanside, he said the site provides a service not available anywhere else on the Internet.
Hoppes resume shows how important music has been in his life. While attending Yale University, the 1993 Oceanside High School graduate founded and conducted the schools chamber orchestra. He went on to work as the principal clarinetist for the Long Island Youth Orchestra. And in 1997, Hoppe returned to Oceanside High and spent two years as a music teacher.
His Web site makes perfect sense, because more than 35 million Americans have ties to central and eastern European ancestry. Everyone passed through Ellis Island, he said, adding that regardless where a person descended from, his site allows people to learn about their homeland. My Web site uses music to help out. You can also see how each country develops. From early medieval times through rock and techno, you can compare different countries to each other.
In the three months since he went on-line, using as start-up money $100,000 he inherited from his father, Hoppe said his site has gotten, on average, a modest 500 hits a day. Although it is cheap and easy to gather the music overseas, he cant afford to advertise in the U.S. to let people know his site exists.
Revenue may be hard to generate, but paying his staff is not a problem, he said. Running a company based in Eastern Europe, wages he must pay are low by U.S. standards. His staff includes a secretary in the Budapest office, tech people responsible for uploading information and an editor-in-chief.
Now that Hoppe has his staff in place, he seeks a deal with Verizon or Optimum Online, or both, so that site visitors might be billed through their cable or DSL provider for songs they download. Right now, visitors must use a credit card to purchase any of his audio. The music costs around 25 cents a megabyte or $1 per song, although samples are available at no charge. In the near future, Hoppe expects to have subscription services in place that will entitle customers to greatly reduced rates.
As for the future of xenomusic.com, which comes from the Greek word xeno, meaning foreign or strange, Hoppe said he and his employees are talking with potential investors. He hopes that someday, soon, deep pockets will be opened. Weve had meetings with several interested people. They all come up to the plate but dont take the swing. Yet. Were still growing, and we will soon be big enough to attract serious attention.
To get his business moving fast forward, Hoppe would like at least $500,000 from investors. But if we had six million dollars, I could make
