Musicians typically don't have a lot of money, so I wouldn't introduce premium features.
You do have a very niche market, so targeted advertising should work nicely.
That said, you know your market best. Your question is a bit like asking us what kind of pants you should buy. How the heck should we know? If you've got a fat butt, go with cargo pants. You know best.
Starting at 10c CPM, if every user viewed one ad... $405, most sites have 3 ads per page so $1200 if every user logged in during one day.
Better targeting and click through can get that CPM up, most places I know of managed a consistent 40c through automation, through sales teams $20 is achievable (big diff between google and agencies huh).
Now the real trick is how many pages does each user view per visit, and the daily visitor rate. Going off a user visit per month and 3 page visit. (((((400,000 users) * 3 ads)* 3 pages)/1000 cpm) * 40c) = $1440 from basic impressions without including click throughs and targeted spends...
Not much for a month unless you are in an area where the bidding is high like travel, I've seen travel ads going through at $20CPM, at $20CPM the above calculation is $72k.
So a huge range in profits, I would assume music sales would be a highly bid on thing, so maybe $30-50k a month ?
If was doing anything related to music, I would be doing everything I could to build a spotify with a transparent business model that made it easy as possible to get artists music in front of monetizable fans as much possible (both through direct sales and indirect revenue, concert tickets, merchandise etc)
I love spotify, but they have had to make severe concessions to labels and it doesnt look like it will be possible for them to build an app that completely disintermediates labels, I think its inevitable someone will though.
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 friends who are interested in supporting them.
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.
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 that is still something.
What can you offer musicians that they need? Sales. Production. Marketing. How can you make all/some of that software dynamic?
You should try multiple things and see what works. What do you have to lose?
The first thing you need to do right now is put adsense on. Not cover your page, but in a few key places to stop your monthly burn. It will be like magic...watch.
What about adding something like that on? Music distribution, websites, online promotion tools. That site/service doesn't look amazing - but I am sure you can make something a step up.
Sure some time investment and a bit of money. But you have 400k users man! Keep going and good job.
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."
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 (learning, or looking for performers) could be something to provide. A place to find gigs?
- See if there's a way you can help musicians find and take their next step. This could have some sort of value, as nebulous as it sounds. Kind of like Mixergy.
- Group buy deals that you can target to your team. You get to keep a cut of the deals.
- Adding musician tools that would be valuable. I don't want to go all cdbaby, but maybe there's something there to help musicians learn about and manage the business side of their music. I'm not sure if that means courses, a subscription, etc.
- If you can replace existing services musicians pay for, they will probably be open to paying you instead. An example of this might be voicemail, or domain hosting (very basic and cookie cut with their own email address.
I like all these ideas and want to do all of them in one form or another. Most of them I'd want to make free (like the learning stuff). But.. events... that could be a fun one. Specifically, I envision a huge trade show like CES but for musicians. There's currently one called "NAMM" but it's not open to the public. It would be a lot of hard work but I think would be fun. Ideally it would be free or cheap for musicians, and money would be made via sponsors and selling booth/demo space.
You potentially have the ultimate meetup for musicians... Music is as much about creating as connecting.
Some more ideas from the music consumer perspective:
1) I've been listening to music on the site for an hour and I've been struck with how much soulful music there is here... Any thought in helping them publish to iTunes and taking a small cut?
2) If love to be able to make a playlist by genre and share it.
3) Maybe there's a way I can give micro payments for all the stuff I like? Another angle for consumers to maybe sign up for a membership to vote with their wallet to the artists you listen to in a month..and my 10/mo is split among the number of listeners I liked in a month?
4) Could there be sponsors for learning materials?
5) What about a digital music streaming service for businesses? Good music, all original, businesses routinely pay $20-40/month and up for this kind. Put the music into genres, let the community rate it and let it self-rank into playlists.
6) Spawn an online radio station exclusively for the music on the site.
I've been around online music and radio for a while..had lots of potential ideas, just didn't have the content. if you want to bounce ideas if love to.
Forgive any typos or grammar, writing from my phone. :)
Why not a virtual trade show? Let equipment manufacturers sponsor a forum section and require that they participate on the forum to answer questions from users. It's not an in-your-face ad, but gives the mfr exposure and an opportunity to demonstrate their customer service skills (and maybe offer discounts to subscribers?), and you get money. Done right, it would be a fair exchange of value that benefits your users.
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.
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.
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.
Given the huge size of fandalism, Phil would probably be better of hiring an investment banker or business broker to sell the it (not that it's his goal here)... Flippa's specialty is under $250K, once you start approaching 7-figures, the transaction gets more complex, the buyers get bigger, and it makes sense to have a professional involved.
I believe a taboo has slowly been growing among the entrepreneur community regarding selling startup businesses. I think it started with Mark Z. turning down offers from major tech players and it has continued with Dropbox turning down an acquisition from Apple.
I am not taking sides on whether entrepreneurs should sell their companies. But I think there is a problem when bringing up the subject is frowned upon on. I am unsure whether this is a problem with Hacker News' moderation system or it really is a taboo.
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 player for users to pay for to queue up entire albums/genres/suggestions streaming.
Making a Pandora like music player to discover new music from profiles on your site? You can throw ads all over that, and maybe charge a couple of bucks? Plus have musician eCommerce so people can buy stuff they like.
So I say I like "Nirvana" and your player matches me to undiscovered artists that are similar? I LOVE discovering new music.
I like this idea. People probably have never heard of the artists on your site, but I'm sure there is some incredible talent there already. If you could create a service for listeners, I think you could attract a lot of music fans. And hipsters.
People expect to hear ads in radio streams, as they have been conditioned by Pandora, Spotify, etc.
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!
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. But they get a high out of having lots of people listen to it. So I'd rather just let people give it away for free and optimize for generating lots of plays, which would make them happy. Vs helping them sell it only to be disappointed.
You could sort of go the kick starter route... Raise money for bands, take a small percentage... Raise money for musicians to sign their own label? Raise money for something bands do like maybe equipment? Take small percentages. Do a craigslist for musicians. Sell things like Ebay.
I have an idea that probably doesn't have much revenue generating potential but it could be a cool new feature (to me at least). I spent about 20 seconds on the website so sorry if you already have this, but I didn't notice it. The users could have the ability to do interactive jam sessions, even if they are miles apart. Maybe something like a high fidelity audio only version of Google Hangouts.Each participant would need some headphones and a resonable quality microphone. I guess if you were looking for a way to squeeze some money out of this, perhaps you could sell recorded copies of the jam sessions to the participans or anyone else willing to pay for them I guess. Sorta like a demo mixing service :P I bet a lot of bands could get their start this way. You'd be removing any limitations of proximity between musicians. Can you imagine if every member of the Beatles had been born in different parts of the world?
While the idea sounds good/okay, it wouldn't be ready for prime time yet. That is, because
a) HQ microphones are not a very usual thing to have and they are not cheap and
b) because lag will probably kill the experience, even with a very good connection, a delay of, say, 150ms will be noticeable when playing music relying on reacting to each other.
Microphones aren't that expensive though - maybe a couple hundred for a semi-decent one and a reasonable sound card? Lots of people would spend that on a guitar.
The latency might be an issue live, but there's no reason that the musicians couldn't (eg.) Lay down drum tracks, bass tracks, etc. and mix them up afterwards.
I think any musician that's serious about playing music has at least one decent microphone and some sort of recording setup (M-audio stuff is a low-cost way to get into recording). Hearing yourself play is also invaluable towards learning.
The second issue is real and since I know nothing about how to solve it perhaps the idea is dead in the water for now. But anthonyb's suggestion of recording all the tracks separately and allowing the musicians to mix them in post might be one way of going around this.
Maybe try and get in contact with Derek Sivers, creator of CDBaby.. He may have a few helpful tips, and may even mentor you to success, like Kimo did for him.
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.
That all makes sense. It may not work in this case, but in general I like businesses where the customer is clear. I tend to think there's always a tension when the user, the musicians, aren't also the customer, guitar companies for example. Obviously a hurdle that has been overcome countless times before.
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 (and it's users as free promoters) to build a large reputable production (a la Coachella, Bonnaroo, SXSW). Live like a rock star.
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.
The expectation for entrepreneurs is that they always have this very clear vision of how they are going to change the world when in fact many of them simply get hooked on an idea that then goes on to change the world. Uncertainty is viewed by many as a sign of weakness but if you're being honest then you need to expect that there will be times when you don't know what to do next.
it's time to start betraying your users by making subtle but significant changes to the terms of service in preparation for exploiting their personal info for financial gain
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 is what it is, I'm sure there are music lovers who are enjoying the community's work as well.
All of the monetization solutions suggested thus far does not cover both ends of the users.
I'm more of a coder / developer guy but occasionally I like to play the product guy. So here is my suggestion so let me know what you think especially you, Philip, if you are reading:
KickStarter for Musicians. Be the online version of American Idol or British's Got Talent. You have musicians and also they have their audiences on Fandalism.
First mission is to scout or fund the first internet musician superstar. Get the winner into a professional studio, get a few singles out. Backers get singles free, the rest gets to buy the singles fr a price. Fandalism gets a cut of the sales. The rest should be history.
Up vote if you think this will work or comment if you have more to add.
@pud What do you think? If you really want to venture out this way, I'm available for a ride. ;) That would be fun.
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.
This idea is awesome and will make Fandalism something different than just another marketplace. It's also a nice time to show that not only do we not need the RIAA for distribution, we don't need them for promotion. Your site's design is also beautiful enough to do it.
I'm all for finding the "best musicians in the world", but what really shits me about Idol and similar shows is that they find technically brilliant singers, but they can't write a song if their life depended on it. The same with many brilliant musicians I know - they have the technical chops, but have no basic idea how to structure a song other than chorus-verse or maybe AABA.
There's got to be a market for musicians who know how to write.
I'm well aware of Lady Gaga's songwriting ability and talent as a piano player. However, the Gaga persona seems to be her of her own creation, and I'm quite sure that at least for her first album, she wrote most of her own material.
I'm not blaming anyone - the music industry is a strange beast. But the true rarities are people like Gaga (as much as her I dislike her music), who can write and perform their own material well.
She wanted to be a pop star and she became one of the greatest of all time—decades after the height of the pop star era when labels actually had the capability to manufacture them.
Frank Zappa made a career of playing rock music instead of jazz or classical which many people consider a greater art form. It never was really "pop" music but still there are many that criticize him for it.
I'd be very careful to avoid derision on the basis of popularity. That fact that you have distaste for Lady Gaga's genre doesn't mean she's not a valid artist. There's a difference between relying on autotune because you're a talentless hack and an artistic decision.
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.
Wouldn't http://www.pledgemusic.com be the Kickstarter for musicians? I didn't think Kickstarter involved themselves much in projects beyond the screening process.
For the record, most artists, including winners (I personally know one of them), say it's a double-edged sword: it gives you exposure, money and a foot in the biz, but in the end it's all about marketing and getting viral rather than concentrating on making music.
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.
I think this is the best idea so far. It's clear that the ethos of the site is about musicians supporting and learning from each other. At this scale, voluntary contributions would easily make the thing self-sustaining, and it would help keep the focus on the community.
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.
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.
If Pud just started out with one high margin product (T-Shirts?), and focused on getting a really good system in place to print/sell/ship them it could make a ton of money.
The issue he will have though is inventory management. T-shirts have a (sort of) high fixed cost and you have to sell a bunch of shirts to break even. He would need to collect a deposit from the bands to make sure they were in it to sell the merchandise.
I've made some suggestions for monetization below, but I also have a suggestion for improving user engagement and stickiness:
Have a ranking system page for the most popular artists. It can be based on both views or a more explicit voting system by other artist peers. One of the first things I looked for was a popular tab.
Also, by having such a ranking system you can identify who are the most influential users on the site, and do all sorts of other projects with them to further increase site engagement.
You even have the potential to either start your own record label or feed other record labels with up-and-coming artists. You'd have perhaps the best metrics-based system to find who the next great superstar musician will be; Even more so than Youtube as you'll be using a system of fellow musicians to determine talent/popularity.
Remember the old adage, if you're on a site and you can't figure out what the product is, the product is probably you.
I would start polling your users to find out what they find valuable about your site, what they would like to see, and what features they would be willing to pay for. Why ask the lot of us who don't have a stake in your success?
Your users will vote with their dollar, or their logins, and will have the most powerful opinions of what paid features will be most valuable to them.
Best of luck, musicians are a hard lot to monetize.
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 the least amount of Adwords you can to pay for it. Or just ask your users to donate. Or come up with some premium features that are just compelling enough to keep the lights on. Or raise money from angels. Again, keep the lights on while you improve the product and grow your userbase.
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.
'Engagement' is overrated. Some sites , e.g Google and Wikipedia probably have super high bounce rates, because they solve your problem on the first page you see. What if people start entering his site mainly from band pages, get all the necessary info and leave? That wouldn't be a bad thing for users.
Actually, that would be a bad thing for his site. If he gets one-time visitors, he will need to keep growing to offset the churn rate. That means he'll probably need to rely a lot on search engine traffic, and for the viral growth to continue. If both go away, his site is dead.
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.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 242 ms ] threadYou do have a very niche market, so targeted advertising should work nicely.
That said, you know your market best. Your question is a bit like asking us what kind of pants you should buy. How the heck should we know? If you've got a fat butt, go with cargo pants. You know best.
Better targeting and click through can get that CPM up, most places I know of managed a consistent 40c through automation, through sales teams $20 is achievable (big diff between google and agencies huh).
Now the real trick is how many pages does each user view per visit, and the daily visitor rate. Going off a user visit per month and 3 page visit. (((((400,000 users) * 3 ads)* 3 pages)/1000 cpm) * 40c) = $1440 from basic impressions without including click throughs and targeted spends...
Not much for a month unless you are in an area where the bidding is high like travel, I've seen travel ads going through at $20CPM, at $20CPM the above calculation is $72k.
So a huge range in profits, I would assume music sales would be a highly bid on thing, so maybe $30-50k a month ?
I love spotify, but they have had to make severe concessions to labels and it doesnt look like it will be possible for them to build an app that completely disintermediates labels, I think its inevitable someone will though.
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 friends who are interested in supporting them.
http://www.etsy.com/search_results.php?search_query=guitars&...
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 that is still something.
What can you offer musicians that they need? Sales. Production. Marketing. How can you make all/some of that software dynamic?
You should try multiple things and see what works. What do you have to lose?
The first thing you need to do right now is put adsense on. Not cover your page, but in a few key places to stop your monthly burn. It will be like magic...watch.
Edit: I just googled and found these guys: http://www.hostbaby.com/
What about adding something like that on? Music distribution, websites, online promotion tools. That site/service doesn't look amazing - but I am sure you can make something a step up.
Sure some time investment and a bit of money. But you have 400k users man! Keep going and good job.
It would be fun if I just made a simple "Get your music on iTunes for $20 per song."
Hmm.
- 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 (learning, or looking for performers) could be something to provide. A place to find gigs?
- See if there's a way you can help musicians find and take their next step. This could have some sort of value, as nebulous as it sounds. Kind of like Mixergy.
- Group buy deals that you can target to your team. You get to keep a cut of the deals.
- Adding musician tools that would be valuable. I don't want to go all cdbaby, but maybe there's something there to help musicians learn about and manage the business side of their music. I'm not sure if that means courses, a subscription, etc.
- If you can replace existing services musicians pay for, they will probably be open to paying you instead. An example of this might be voicemail, or domain hosting (very basic and cookie cut with their own email address.
Some more ideas from the music consumer perspective:
1) I've been listening to music on the site for an hour and I've been struck with how much soulful music there is here... Any thought in helping them publish to iTunes and taking a small cut?
2) If love to be able to make a playlist by genre and share it.
3) Maybe there's a way I can give micro payments for all the stuff I like? Another angle for consumers to maybe sign up for a membership to vote with their wallet to the artists you listen to in a month..and my 10/mo is split among the number of listeners I liked in a month?
4) Could there be sponsors for learning materials?
5) What about a digital music streaming service for businesses? Good music, all original, businesses routinely pay $20-40/month and up for this kind. Put the music into genres, let the community rate it and let it self-rank into playlists.
6) Spawn an online radio station exclusively for the music on the site.
I've been around online music and radio for a while..had lots of potential ideas, just didn't have the content. if you want to bounce ideas if love to.
Forgive any typos or grammar, writing from my phone. :)
Big touring acts pay to play too, by renting out the venue.
You have a growing successful website and you wonder what to do with it, would your answer be: I should sell it on flippa?
I think this is a poor advice, especially in an entrepreneur community.
It did answer the original question. I wouldn't have downvoted it, but I wouldn't have upvoted it either.
That said, I do believe it's not the best suggestion (especially since pud seems engaged and interested in growing the site).
Maybe I have misused downvoting here. Can't downvoting be used to express disagreement instead of just reporting a misbehaviour?
(Actually I think it is the first time I use this downvote feature on HN so the damage is fairly limited so far).
pg: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
Given the huge size of fandalism, Phil would probably be better of hiring an investment banker or business broker to sell the it (not that it's his goal here)... Flippa's specialty is under $250K, once you start approaching 7-figures, the transaction gets more complex, the buyers get bigger, and it makes sense to have a professional involved.
I am not taking sides on whether entrepreneurs should sell their companies. But I think there is a problem when bringing up the subject is frowned upon on. I am unsure whether this is a problem with Hacker News' moderation system or it really is a taboo.
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 player for users to pay for to queue up entire albums/genres/suggestions streaming.
Making a Pandora like music player to discover new music from profiles on your site? You can throw ads all over that, and maybe charge a couple of bucks? Plus have musician eCommerce so people can buy stuff they like.
So I say I like "Nirvana" and your player matches me to undiscovered artists that are similar? I LOVE discovering new music.
People expect to hear ads in radio streams, as they have been conditioned by Pandora, Spotify, etc.
Feature them, give them exposure. Get them sales. Just take your modest cut. 400k users is an awesome sandbox, don't waste it!
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. But they get a high out of having lots of people listen to it. So I'd rather just let people give it away for free and optimize for generating lots of plays, which would make them happy. Vs helping them sell it only to be disappointed.
Sorry for the sporatic, it was a brain dump...
a) HQ microphones are not a very usual thing to have and they are not cheap and
b) because lag will probably kill the experience, even with a very good connection, a delay of, say, 150ms will be noticeable when playing music relying on reacting to each other.
The latency might be an issue live, but there's no reason that the musicians couldn't (eg.) Lay down drum tracks, bass tracks, etc. and mix them up afterwards.
The second issue is real and since I know nothing about how to solve it perhaps the idea is dead in the water for now. But anthonyb's suggestion of recording all the tracks separately and allowing the musicians to mix them in post might be one way of going around this.
https://sivers.org/kimo
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.
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 (and it's users as free promoters) to build a large reputable production (a la Coachella, Bonnaroo, SXSW). Live like a rock star.
You're in an awesome position Philip. More than anything, enjoy the experience.
The man has worked hard and built something amazing. Why can't he make money? What is wrong with that.
how may of these users are actually active?
The community is most likely a mix of musicians AND music lovers. So even Fandalism's original goal of serving musicians is what it is, I'm sure there are music lovers who are enjoying the community's work as well.
All of the monetization solutions suggested thus far does not cover both ends of the users.
I'm more of a coder / developer guy but occasionally I like to play the product guy. So here is my suggestion so let me know what you think especially you, Philip, if you are reading:
KickStarter for Musicians. Be the online version of American Idol or British's Got Talent. You have musicians and also they have their audiences on Fandalism.
First mission is to scout or fund the first internet musician superstar. Get the winner into a professional studio, get a few singles out. Backers get singles free, the rest gets to buy the singles fr a price. Fandalism gets a cut of the sales. The rest should be history.
Up vote if you think this will work or comment if you have more to add.
@pud What do you think? If you really want to venture out this way, I'm available for a ride. ;) 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.
There's got to be a market for musicians who know how to write.
That beauty transformed into this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY-vXcmpZIw
Please, don't blame the musicians.
I'm not blaming anyone - the music industry is a strange beast. But the true rarities are people like Gaga (as much as her I dislike her music), who can write and perform their own material well.
Frank Zappa made a career of playing rock music instead of jazz or classical which many people consider a greater art form. It never was really "pop" music but still there are many that criticize him for it.
I'd be very careful to avoid derision on the basis of popularity. That fact that you have distaste for Lady Gaga's genre doesn't mean she's not a valid artist. There's a difference between relying on autotune because you're a talentless hack and an artistic decision.
www.wearelistening.org
For the record, most artists, including winners (I personally know one of them), say it's a double-edged sword: it gives you exposure, money and a foot in the biz, but in the end it's all about marketing and getting viral rather than concentrating on making music.
Often, asking users you've treated well to chip in works fantastically.
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.
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.
If Pud just started out with one high margin product (T-Shirts?), and focused on getting a really good system in place to print/sell/ship them it could make a ton of money.
The issue he will have though is inventory management. T-shirts have a (sort of) high fixed cost and you have to sell a bunch of shirts to break even. He would need to collect a deposit from the bands to make sure they were in it to sell the merchandise.
Have a ranking system page for the most popular artists. It can be based on both views or a more explicit voting system by other artist peers. One of the first things I looked for was a popular tab.
Also, by having such a ranking system you can identify who are the most influential users on the site, and do all sorts of other projects with them to further increase site engagement.
You even have the potential to either start your own record label or feed other record labels with up-and-coming artists. You'd have perhaps the best metrics-based system to find who the next great superstar musician will be; Even more so than Youtube as you'll be using a system of fellow musicians to determine talent/popularity.
I would start polling your users to find out what they find valuable about your site, what they would like to see, and what features they would be willing to pay for. Why ask the lot of us who don't have a stake in your success?
Your users will vote with their dollar, or their logins, and will have the most powerful opinions of what paid features will be most valuable to them.
Best of luck, musicians are a hard lot to monetize.
Well done.
If the server bill gets too high, toss in the least amount of Adwords you can to pay for it. Or just ask your users to donate. Or come up with some premium features that are just compelling enough to keep the lights on. Or raise money from angels. Again, keep the lights on while you improve the product and grow your userbase.
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.
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.
However when I first built the site, I envisioned more of a LinkedIn-type thing where engagement is relatively low but the value is in the database.
In other words, I don't use LinkedIn very often. But when I need to, it's a godsend (or at least, better than anything else that does what it does.)
Interesting.
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.