261–270 of 319 posts
THANK YOU I cannot believe how much traction this thread has got today, I am blown away. SO. MUCH. GREAT. FEEDBACK. It's going to take me days to process all of this. Thanks so much. I am blown away. If anyone want to follow the process you can subscribe to my blog at https://division77.com THANK YOU!!!
Man, that iPhone photo on the right is a little blurry and way too big.
"The smart way to share music privately." Me and everyone I know uses Dropbox. The majority of us pay for Dropbox accounts that allow you to disable downloads, so it's as private and secure as I need it to be. Beyond that, there are a number of more specific competing services already -- for example, ReelCrafter allows me (a film composer) to host video and audio for less than $17/month, with insights. What are you offering that I don't already have or can't get elsewhere, quite possibly for less?
The "Get Started" button is above "What is SongBox?" Why would I get started when I don't even know what it is?
Profile Page: Feels like social media. That in and of itself kinda feels like friction.
Insights: This is nice. I definitely like this, because I do sometimes get annoyed when I send music to someone and don't hear back, and it'd be nice to know if they listened. This solves a real problem for me.
"Stop Wondering If They Listened." Yup, there it is. I like it.
The photo below this section is unnecessarily huge. This page feels weirdly like it has too much text and too many photos at the same time. Not sure how to solve it but even though the design is clean, it's a little fatiguing.
"What SongBox Users Say" Speaking of too much text, all of these are too long and there's no way I'm reading all of them. Either roll them all up into a "Testimonials" page and link me to it, or choose the biggest name you have a testimonial from and feature it higher up on the page -- and keep it short.
Pricing. In a vacuum, this pricing is nice. But it's one more cloud storage service I'm paying for, and in that light it's suddenly way too expensive for the higher tiers. Highest I'd personally go for Pro is $20/month and that's still pushing it.
"How Does It Work?" This section should be much higher.
"Don't Worry About Sharing Your Music." This page now feels redundant and way too long. Axe this section and merge the unique info elsewhere. Ditto for "Share your tracks anywhere."
All in all: The front page could be condensed to half or even less than half of its current size/info dump. The service seems solid but enough for me to try the free version, which if I'm honest will probably result in me forgetting about it -- paying something no matter what would at least put in my mind a sense of needing to use it.
I know you say in your post that your pricing was wrong, but if it were me (with the little info I currently have -- who knows, maybe you tried this and it was wrong) I'd do the following: -Lose the "Starter" as it is and "Semi Pro" tiers. -Retitle "Hobby" to "Starter" or something similar (though I don't love that -- I think you should entirely focus on professionals, i.e. people willing to pay money long-term; anyone needing these features already has a free Dropbox/Google Drive account that already works just fine, so name your tiers appropriately). -Now you have two tiers (easy, simple, doesn't require too much thought). Allow both to use any file type (that's a frustrating and arbitrary limitation). Price the former Hobby-now-Starter-or-whatever-you-call-it tier at something stupid low, like $2/month. Make Pro $15 month or so. -Allow a 30 day free trial with Pro features -- again, no credit card required. -If someone with a Hobby-or-whatever account tries to cancel, allow them to disable downloading for an extra $1 per month -- a hidden "middle" tier. I guarantee you that lack of disabling downloading will be the #1 reason people cancel their account.
This has the potential to be great and you've clearly put a ton of work into it. Wish you the best and hope this succeeds.
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The reality is that some people can just do more per day than others. It's very common in academia that many professors spend their entire lifetime in 60-80hr work weeks their entire life. I remember going to conferences,especially the really small ones, the professors and students would spend all day listening to extremely draining lectures; this one particular conference started at 8.30 am, went till 1 pm, you get…
> It's very common in academia that many professors spend their entire lifetime in 60-80hr work weeks their entire life. I would take this with a pinch of salt. Socializing by the pool after the talks isn't hard work. Also, most people only listen to some of the talks. It's not uncommon to see the room half empty the last days of the conference. There are also various social events and so on... While it's true that s…
Which is why I explicitly mentioned small conferences. The one I was talking about has 90 attendees total, only one session at a time in the same room, and in snowmass Colorado so if you're outside the conference hotel we can literally see you from up to half a mile away. Almost no one skips a single session in these conferences, especially the professors. For the most part they're paying attention as well, no one's on their laptops or dozing off.
Again, I spent a decade in academia, and if you're in fields such as biology and in some top institution, it's very rare that professors up to doing something meaningful have anything less than 60 hour weeks at any point in their career. This is more or less what me and my roommates actively discussed most of the time all through a decade, so I'm not just talking about anecdotal evidence. From what I understand, academia in other fields especially tech related can be less stressful than this. Being a oroefssor in a competitive field is really back breaking - You have to juggle a large number of roles and are constantly responsible for the lives of numerous people and lack many of the protections one would normally expect from any regular job in some ways.
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The trick is that if coding is your passion it doesn't feel like work, more like oxygen...
Unfortunately for some of us, passions fade. I still love coding, but it's not the kind of thing I'm likely to enjoy spending 16 hours a day doing anymore. I've been there, done that, seen it all (server, web, mobile, firmware, games). It's routine now, but not something I can lose myself into like I used to be able to. I get bored far faster.
My dad has been a developer for 40+ years and he stills get excited about random, incredibly complicated projects (that don't even pay that well) or new technologies.
Maybe you just need to find something else you enjoy coding.
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The reality is that some people can just do more per day than others. It's very common in academia that many professors spend their entire lifetime in 60-80hr work weeks their entire life. I remember going to conferences,especially the really small ones, the professors and students would spend all day listening to extremely draining lectures; this one particular conference started at 8.30 am, went till 1 pm, you get…
> The reality is that some people can just do more per day than others. Is that really the reality? As far as I can tell, the reality is quite the opposite -- that sustainable levels of work across all knowledge work industries drop off a cliff past 8 hours a day, and for deep work 4 hours a day. Working on a side project after work possible for short sprints at a time, but somewhat impossible if you have an engaging…
Sure, you may not do your finest work, but you can get a lot done. If you're happy trading off your health for a shot at success, it's something that's on the table.
It gets harder when you start having a family or if you have other obligations.
You make a great point that just doing tasks is not necessarily going to make or break a company, there are tons of other factors.
Jokes aside, congrats on your results.
Have you ever considered dropping your really hard project to work on something easier to monetise?
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I love these stories also but I am genuinely curious how you were able to work 8 hours a day on it and also work your regular job. I assume you don't work a full time job, otherwise it seems unhealthy. I put a lot of time into my side projects but that is mostly the whole saturday and sunday, but even then I obviously don't feel so well rested on monday.
The reality is that some people can just do more per day than others. It's very common in academia that many professors spend their entire lifetime in 60-80hr work weeks their entire life. I remember going to conferences,especially the really small ones, the professors and students would spend all day listening to extremely draining lectures; this one particular conference started at 8.30 am, went till 1 pm, you get…
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No it is not an ignorant comment. 1) If you missed my quotes around "work" it is because some people describe certain tasks as work equivalent to other tasks. The effort of digesting vs. producing material is about 2 orders of magnitudes for me. I took 60 hours of lectures (time spent in class) during one of my semesters of undergrad. 12 hours of lecture everyday. That is completely sustainable because all you have t…
I disagree with your idea that, because something can be done for 12 hours, it should not count as “work”. You also say reading is important, and yet seem to omit it when asserting that a grad student’s day of work can be compressed into 1-2 hours of useful work. I think the problem with what you’re saying is that it relies on a very abstract notion of “useful work”. I certainly can bust my ass for 12 hours at a prob…
Look at Fall 2015 where I had 10 courses worth 32 units not counting the project course where the credits are awarded the following semester. call it 35 units. Roughly, a 3 credit course consists of 3 hours of lecture and a 1.5 hour tutorial. The courses I took that have more than 3 credits typically have a lab component that adds an extra hour.
You are correct that I didn't "attend" every single hour of those. But it just further proves my point that just because you're sitting in a room designated in your time table, it doesn't mean that you are inherently working. Instead of going to those classes, I used my time effectively and studied (not necessarily in the classroom) for a normal 8 hour day. When I say useful work, I don't necessarily mean that something is produced. Like you say, sometimes you need to find dead ends before finding the correct path. That's useful. Yes, you can work for 12 hours in one day. It's just not sustainable. A 80 hour work week implies one of two things:
1) You aren't working as much as you think. Go to the gym. Hang out with friends. Enjoy life.
2) You are about to burnout. Stop. Go to the gym. Hang out with friends. Enjoy life.
If you want to keep perpetuating that you need to be in your building for 60-80 hours to be a good grad student, you are directly contributing to the mental health issues seen among grad students.