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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?

#71

Post by snowwrestler »

pud wrote: post #43
zpk wrote: post #11

Coldfusion? You built this with ColdFusion? Damn PUD, you're advice back in the day was to use CF for version 0.1 And still using it, impressive! Maybe you can advertise the hell out of this, and make a threadless or kickstarter for musicians and take a haircut every month for some sort of product the consumer would pay for, downloadable mp4 at a certain quality? Or maybe add video ads like youtube, or maybe a radio…

For more about ColdFusion and my ridiculous stack, see: http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back...

Site is not loading, which seems apt given the topic. :-)

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

#72

Post by redguava »

rufugee wrote: post #70

I'm sorry, but $2,500 a month to run this site just seems high...I'm not sure what technology pud used to create the site, but it'd be interesting to know. I'd love to see my own sites get this much traffic, but damned if I could really afford to carry the success for too many months. This is where I really think the whole Rails (not saying he used rails...just using it as an example) argument of cheaper development…

builtwith.com is showing fandalism to be running on IIS. It was quite a rant you had about rails before even checking.

You can write a resource hog application in any language just like you can write an efficient app in any language. Don't blame the tools. This isn't to say different languages are all the same with performance levels, I just think it's negligible compared to the different performance levels of developers.

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

#73

Post by redguava »

mattmaroon wrote: post #50

For now I'd focus 100% on improving the product. You're building a social network of sorts, which means the network effect is your big hurdle. You're in a land rush. Forget about anything other than winning that land rush right now. Build a network so populous and engaged that even if someone builds a better site (and if your growth keeps going, they will) it won't matter. If the server bill gets too high, toss in th…

I think it is sad that this is probably the correct answer.

I would love to refute it and say "no, you need to monetize it, don't just get users and hope". However, recent history has shown that gaining traction and losing money every month is enough to earn yourself a heavy payout later.

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

#74

Post by colmmacc »

pheelicks wrote: post #37

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 h…

As a touring (folk!) musician, here's what I'd love to add to the platforms that BandCamp and CD baby already provide;

1. A salesforce for managing fan and venue relationships; I'd love it to be easier to build simple lists of invitations for events by location. Facebook events on their own don't cut it.

It would also be great to have some simple reminders and calendaring with mapping integration to manage booking. When did I last nag that venue? Who from our band is available on that day? What other venues are within 300 km?

2. Digital autographs! Autographs are kinda lame - but people still like them, and it makes a connection. I'd love to be able to write something on a piece of paper, snap a photo of it with my iphone, and have an app extract the message and signature - then put it on top of a promo photo before sending it to someone in a form they can use on their facebook page (ideally with links back to our band page).

3. An online platform for music lessons. Many musicians now make an income from remote instrument lessons via skype - especially in niche music categories. Skype and google chat and so on all optimise audio codecs for speech - not music, so there's one thing that could be different. But how useful would it also be to have a collabedit-like guitar, mandolin, violin, piano .. etc? The teacher could share hints and notes with the student. The teacher might also be able to select from some pre-saved sets of tunes or songs, or chord charts and so on.

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

#75

Post by rufugee »

redguava wrote: post #72
rufugee wrote: post #70

I'm sorry, but $2,500 a month to run this site just seems high...I'm not sure what technology pud used to create the site, but it'd be interesting to know. I'd love to see my own sites get this much traffic, but damned if I could really afford to carry the success for too many months. This is where I really think the whole Rails (not saying he used rails...just using it as an example) argument of cheaper development…

builtwith.com is showing fandalism to be running on IIS. It was quite a rant you had about rails before even checking. You can write a resource hog application in any language just like you can write an efficient app in any language. Don't blame the tools. This isn't to say different languages are all the same with performance levels, I just think it's negligible compared to the different performance levels of develo…

Quite the rant? Really? Could've sworn I said I'm not sure what technology pud used to create the site, but it'd be interesting to know, and not saying he used rails...just using it as an example.

Regardless, thanks for the builtwith.com tip. I haven't seen that before. It's a little odd though...if I'm reading it right, it says he's running IIS, but using java and cold fusion?

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

#76

Post by covercash »

A while back someone posted a "digital busking" project he made for his father, a musician. Maybe give fans a way to throw a few coins into their favorite artist's digital guitar case? You sell the coins, artists can then use them to buy promoted listings and such on your site.

(if anyone can find a link to the Show HN post I'm referring to, I'd appreciate it... something about mp3busking I think)

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

#77

Post by staunch »

pud wrote: post #56
mattmaroon wrote: post #50

For now I'd focus 100% on improving the product. You're building a social network of sorts, which means the network effect is your big hurdle. You're in a land rush. Forget about anything other than winning that land rush right now. Build a network so populous and engaged that even if someone builds a better site (and if your growth keeps going, they will) it won't matter. If the server bill gets too high, toss in th…

This is probably the correct answer (focus 100% on improving the product). The product is at a state where people like the idea of it so they sign up en masse -- but I'm not sure the site lives up to the expectation yet.

Focus on engagement. Sign ups are almost meaningless if the users bounce and never return. The reason Facebook is so amazing is not just that they have a billion users, it's that they have 80% of them checking the site 5x per week (or whatever).

See how many users you can get into the habit of coming back to your site on a regular basis. That's the number that ultimately will drive everything: revenue, long term network effects, etc.

BTW, there's no reason in hell it should cost you $2500/mo already. Obviously you can afford it to some extent but that's just a waste of money. You should be able to run it for < $500/mo easily.

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

#79

Post by alanwells »

If you really like the site & community you have built and are in it for the long term, here's an idea: build a stock market for buying a share of an individual musician's or song's future revenue.

With crowdfunding legislation passed, you could wait the 9 months for the SEC to determine the regulations for crowdfunding brokers and become one of the first brokers, with a focus on building a marketplace for investing in undiscovered musical talent. You could also, in the same platform, provide a secondary marketplace for reselling those shares so there is liquidity for early investors.

If musicians are better equipped than most to recognize the talent in other musicians, your site provides the perfect community in which to build this marketplace. The high school kid who can really jam on the guitar today might be tomorrow's superstar, and perhaps a community of musicians could recognize that, invest in him, and eventually earn a return on their investment. With the crowdfunding model, the minimum investment could be quite small and within reach for many on the site.

Your business model could be as a traditional broker - taking a fee for the stock purchase, or as a flat monthly fee for active traders. Or you could have your fee be in equity in every musician that sells their shares on the market, but that seems like it could generate conflicts of interest.

If the $2500/month burn is an immediate issue or might force a shutdown, ask your users to donate and try to get enough to cover 18 months of expenses ("personal appeal from jimmy wales"-inspired banner might work), giving the the time needed to wait for the SEC and build the marketplace.

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

#80

Post by te_chris »

pud wrote: post #62
DanI-S wrote: post #58

Pud - when I look at your site, I see a marketplace for video music lessons. A tonne of people would pay $1.99 to learn a Radiohead song on piano, or get that perfect 'wub wub' sound in Reason. There's similar stuff on YouTube, but it's low quality and unreliable, and discovery is hard. Create a marketplace and you'll attract the best of the best. Prerecorded video would be perfect at first, but you could happily exp…

That's a good idea. There are people on Fandalism who are unbelievably good musicians, better than pros. I should ask them to do online lessons or whatnot. (of course, just because they're a good musician doesn't mean they're a good teacher. but i could come up with guidelines to help them teach..)

This could be very cool. I'm quite a good musician myself (varsity educated and all that), but lately I've really been wanting to learn some more solo production techniques (basically I want to make music that sounds like purity ring: http://soundcloud.com/purity-ring) as, despite all my education and experience, I don't really know squat about how to produce a good dance track. I would be really interested in somewhere where I could post a lesson request like "I want to make a beat that sounds like the one from Belispeak" and tag it with say "Ableton, production, purity ring, EDM" and someone answer it. Wouldn't even need to be paid - though perhaps you could do like a reward system: if the person who responds is awesome, you could tip them?

Sorry, typing/thinking out loud here.

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