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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?

#181

Post by wallawe »

raldi wrote: post #178
wallawe wrote: post #169

Disclaimer: this one's out there. Think stock market for music meets Kickstarter. As you mentioned, most musicians are strapped for cash. Most also have plans for bigger and better things, need new equipment, and want to get the word out about their music. Let each musician set a value on their musical worth (market cap). Let friends, family, and fans contribute to the musician for a percentage stake in that musician…

Tweeted. It's a fantastic idea -- it turns listening to indie music into a game. With rewards. I hope that do you it, or if you don't, I hope someone steals your idea.

I think that Mr. Pud is in a great position to do something like this. It requires intricate, thorough exploration and thought and likely a lot of legal help, but it's interesting how often I hear an indie musician and think, "God if I could buy stock in that musician, because he/she's going to the top..." and sometimes they do.

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

#182

Post by chrisbroadfoot »

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…

Can I offer a slightly differing opinion and say that curated content would also add value and trust?

Marketplaces are great and scale well, but it's often hard (as it is on YouTube or any other UGC site) to find quality content.

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

#183

Post by DrJokepu »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #142
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…

> A tonne of people would pay $1.99 to learn a Radiohead song on piano // Sounds like a rights management nightmare as the location of delivery (assuming the location of production is the US) is likely to have particular rights groups that you have to handle. In the UK you'd need to get rights from the PRS, the artist (if you play a clip) the production company for trademarks and what have you and probably a few othe…

Not to mention that he would need a deal with the collection societies in each territory he wants to have business in, e.g. to serve UK users he needs a deal with PRS, in the US he needs to deal with ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, in Germany with GEMA and so forth. He would need to block the service in any territory where he doesn't have a deal with whoever is representing the publisher of the work in the given territory.

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

#185

Post by kennywinker »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #112
alexchamberlain wrote: post #109

Pud, don't forget there are 2 sides to profit. Income and costs. Monetisation is important and there have been loads of ideas here. However, can you drive down costs? Have you investigated a dedicated server instead of EC2?

At $2,500/month in costs, even if he drives it down to $1/month, the site still isnt generating any money. Generating money is the problem, not cutting costs. At least that's the problem at hand, at the moment.

No, but 2.5k/month is a friggin' mortgage... if he brings the cost down he can sustain it for longer while he tries out various ways of generating money.

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

#186

Post by syedkarim »

wallawe wrote: post #169

Disclaimer: this one's out there. Think stock market for music meets Kickstarter. As you mentioned, most musicians are strapped for cash. Most also have plans for bigger and better things, need new equipment, and want to get the word out about their music. Let each musician set a value on their musical worth (market cap). Let friends, family, and fans contribute to the musician for a percentage stake in that musician…

I don't think this is at all out there. As a matter of fact, I'm working on something similar, but for a different vertical (which is why I don't think it's out there). Are you familiar with any other equity or revenue-futures markets of this nature? CrowdCube in the UK is the only thing that I've been able to come up with. Slated out of LA is similar, but it's not a real market, just an introduction and tracking service, like AngelList.

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

#187

Post by wallawe »

syedkarim wrote: post #186
wallawe wrote: post #169

Disclaimer: this one's out there. Think stock market for music meets Kickstarter. As you mentioned, most musicians are strapped for cash. Most also have plans for bigger and better things, need new equipment, and want to get the word out about their music. Let each musician set a value on their musical worth (market cap). Let friends, family, and fans contribute to the musician for a percentage stake in that musician…

I don't think this is at all out there. As a matter of fact, I'm working on something similar, but for a different vertical (which is why I don't think it's out there). Are you familiar with any other equity or revenue-futures markets of this nature? CrowdCube in the UK is the only thing that I've been able to come up with. Slated out of LA is similar, but it's not a real market, just an introduction and tracking ser…

I had not previously checked out CrowdCube or Slated but these do seem to be promising models that could certainly be replicated in other realms. If you feel like chatting more, I'd love to hear more about what you have in the works and would be glad to share some more ideas in private. Feel free to shoot me an email.

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

#188

Post by chaddyar »

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…

=˜=ourstage

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

#189

Post by chaddyar »

@khangtoh - American Idol online - Isn't that just Ourstage? won't fandalism already capture this with the "props" feature that already exists on the site?

@mladenkovacevic- Re: A Discovery engine for Musicians to find one another and "jam" over the internet - +1 Others have pitched this, but not with @pud 's vibrant user base. As far as monetization worries, a cool tool of this kind is just as much a sound business model as any site fueled by display ads. Here's why in my opinion...at this stage in the development of the consumer web every product's success is a function of its ability to capture the waking hours of the consumers' disposable leisure time (this isn't the 90s when every web site was supposed to have the same business model as the new york times). Consider this assumption. Musicians spend a lot of time playing music alone and with each other, possibly more than instagramers spend taking pictures. Ultimately, especially if the bull market for venture backed companies continues, someone will create a way to capture these disposable leisure hours from the wide user base of musicians. but @pud it would be a lot easier with half a million users...

@replax Mic Quality Problem a) A fair point, but its worth considering the fact that most musicians would cede a high quality mic for the ability to interact with one another. Also, lets not forget that the barriers to entry for a powerful microphone have come down considerably in the last ten years. Today, a Blue Snowball (Also check out the iRig. The possibilities are endless and could tie back into the mobile platform @cruso (building a quick mobile app) and the online @mladenkovacevic jam session idea.

P.s. its interesting that crusso's was the only post that mentioned mobile

@replax again Bandwidth Problem b) key problem that every video chat service has been able to overcome, and if we can't solve it now we will be able to solve it shortly as bandwidth improves...

Thanks for the opening up the dialogue pud. This is an exciting space. Excited to see where people take this, but you have a one up with your years of experience and rock solid user base (don't leave them hanging!) :)

P.S. ur servers were down temporarily last night ;)

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

#190

Post by xiaomei »

aymeric wrote: post #176
xiaomei wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be poor advice but it is an option nevertheless. pud asked for what to do next and selling the site is a potential road to take. I'm disappointed that some people have down voted this to death. I am following the rules of the site. I feel bullied after expressing an opinion.

You are right. You were not off-topic and the fact it is poor advice is only a judgement, not the absolute truth. Maybe I have misused downvoting here. Can't downvoting be used to express disagreement instead of just reporting a misbehaviour?

I believe downvoting is only available to users with high karma. This makes me believe that downvoting is meant to fight misbehavior. Unfortunately there is no way to report misbehavior of downvoting. If you already have high karma you have a conflict of interest in reporting downvoting misbehavior.
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