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I have 404,772 users. Now what?

pud.com

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Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#31

Post by pud »

khangtoh wrote: post #29

All of the suggestions or what Philip had been thinking of are pretty "generic" solutions to the "problem". I spent 5 mins on the site, clicking around and my first impression of the Fandalism is the community and Fandalism's tag line is "Use Fandalism to show your work and meet other musicians". The community is most likely a mix of musicians AND music lovers. So even Fandalism's original goal of serving musicians i…

I love the idea of American Idol for guitarists/drummers/etc. I really could find the best musicians in the world. That would be fun.

From a business perspective, if I wanted to make money doing that, I could imagine sponsors like guitar companies paying. Fender (maker of the famous Stratocaster guitar, for you non musicians) just filed IPO paperwork and had something like $700M in sales last year.

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#32

Post by imjk »

pud wrote: post #27
imjk wrote: post #20

Build another site aimed at musicians with an clear revenue stream from the start (i.e. the Zappos of Music or the Groupon of Music) and use Fandalism site as a free traffic source/advertising platform. Continue to grow Fandalism as a social network which in effect will grow your revenue site. Another Idea: - Use your platform among musicians to build a music festival and again use Fandalism as a free traffic source…

This is an interesting idea. On one hand, I think my users like the Fandalism brand so I'd want to launch new stuff on Fandalism.com. On the other hand, you have a good point. Maybe I should keep Fandalism.com (the site) pure and launch experimental businesses on different domains.

Yeah, this way you don't have to worry about ruining the Fandalism brand or the user experience.

You're in an awesome position Philip. More than anything, enjoy the experience.

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#33

Post by pud »

ccoggins wrote: post #19
j45 wrote: post #9

Some (random) thoughts / ideas. They might or might not hit what you're looking for but they're some types of connections that came to mind when surfing the site: - On first sight, I get the impression that it's a profile site. The musician in me wants to find others like me, or that complement what I'm doing to connect, relate, share music with, maybe collaborate with.. - Events - Maybe music related events (learnin…

Going along with the idea of helping musicians find gigs, make the venues pay a membership fee to get connected with musicians. I would think venues more likely to be able to pay for a service over an aspiring musician. Also, I enjoy seeing such an honest response from someone in charge of a business :)

I think the supply/demand is backwards here. Most amateur musicians gig for free. Many actually pay to perform (by pre-paying the venue for x number of tickets, then hoping to recoup costs by selling those tickets on their own directly to fans).

Big touring acts pay to play too, by renting out the venue.

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#34

Post by SeoxyS »

What about a voluntary small-fee subscription, something like $3/mo to remove ads and support the community. Works for Instapaper, and even for writers (eg., shawnblanc.net).

Often, asking users you've treated well to chip in works fantastically.

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#35

Post by josscrowcroft »

pud wrote: post #30
gregable wrote: post #7

Agreed that premium probably won't net you all that much. I would guesstimate that to make enough to cover your costs with ads, you'd end up putting more ads up than your aesthetic sense would prefer. I have no experience going this route, but what about helping the artists to make money off of their music and taking a share along the way. Something akin to etsy perhaps. You'd go from 400k musicians to ~4M musician's…

You mentioned Etsy. I don't think selling music would work (for reasons I've outlined in another HN comment here) but oddly there are several people on Fandalism who make their own instruments and have contacted me about helping them sell them. Custom guitars and so on. I wonder if there are enough of them to warrant building an Etsy-like platform for them.

That is excellent - I'd love to buy instruments hand-made by people I can connect with.

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#36

Post by pud »

ForrestN wrote: post #17

What about sponsored content? Pay a per-day fee to get promoted in the listings and therefor be a more visible part of the network?

That's an interesting idea. Kind of like how you can pay Ebay to give your posting a yellow background, making it more noticeable.

There's something slightly icky about charging my users for visibility though. Who I consider "starving artists" (even though plenty are probably doing fine...). There's something nice about Fandalism currently being a level playing field for everyone.

By the way, Fandalism uses a version of the Hacker News algorithm to determine which posts get featured.

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#37

Post by pheelicks »

From what I gather, a lot of artists make the bulk of their income from concert tickets and merchandise, as a large slice of the income from music sales goes to a label.

Two suggestions:

- Make it real easy for artists to sell merchandise through the site. E.g they just upload a couple of logo's and you deal with printing T-shirts, mailing them etc...

- Organising concerts. You could take a cue from Kickstarter and have a system where the fans of an artist commit to going to see them play. Once say, 50 people have committed, the gig goes ahead.

In both the above scenarios you handle all of payments, naturally taking your cut.

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#38

Post by sivers »

pud wrote: post #23
bryanh wrote: post #16

Why not go the CDBaby, Bandcamp.com or Threaded route? You have musicians, they have music, why not create a marketplace around their persona and talent? Feature them, give them exposure. Get them sales . Just take your modest cut. 400k users is an awesome sandbox, don't waste it!

Three thoughts about selling music on Fandalism: 1) The site is setup for individual musicians, not bands or acts. I'm really targeting the high school kid who sits on his bed and plays lightening-fast guitar solos. He doesn't have anything to sell. 2) If I promised that kid he'd make significant (to him) $$ selling his music, I'd probably be lying. 3) Most musicians aren't going to make money selling their music. Bu…

hey Philip - I agree with these 3 points. I lost your email address since we met at TED but email me at derek@sivers.org - glad to help.

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#39

Post by pud »

mtjl79 wrote: post #8

Depending on how many impressions you have, and how active your users are - putting a FEW adsense banners will almost certainly cover your costs. What about a way to get musicians to sell their music through you? You make a small % cut on sales? Why not try a premium profile? Musicians don't have money, correct - but some will spend a bit if you provide value, right? You have 400k users, even if 1% converts a $xx/m t…

You mentioned music distribution tools. Currently it's a huge pain in ass getting your music on iTunes or Amazon. There are services that help with this but it's still a pain in the ass (you need to register for an RIAA permit, get a barcode for your music.. srsly it's ridiculous).

It would be fun if I just made a simple "Get your music on iTunes for $20 per song."

Hmm.

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#40

Post by jQueryIsAwesome »

khangtoh wrote: post #29

All of the suggestions or what Philip had been thinking of are pretty "generic" solutions to the "problem". I spent 5 mins on the site, clicking around and my first impression of the Fandalism is the community and Fandalism's tag line is "Use Fandalism to show your work and meet other musicians". The community is most likely a mix of musicians AND music lovers. So even Fandalism's original goal of serving musicians i…

Really good idea; and then just focus on smart targeting, e.g. show Spanish metal bands -raising money for their new album- to Spanish people who follow metal bands.
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