
My Startup Failed. Fuck. - nemrow
http://nemrow.tumblr.com/post/47728450959/my-startup-failed-fuck
======
cup
Reading about failures can be more illuminating and educational than reading
about success. It's interesting to see how you reached a number of gateways
where you could have terminated but instead continued to pursue your
goals/dreams (despite going against what many would consider the logical
conclusion to close).

I wonder how many other business have adopted that strategy (of ignoring
initial reduced interest in your startup) to only find glory and success down
the line.

Either way you failed but you should be commended for it.

~~~
danenania
I think part of the difficulty of knowing when (or when not) to quit is that
opportunity lurks even inside failure.

My first startup attempt was a coaching marketplace and community for poker
players. My co-founder and I were both successful professional poker players
and coaches at the time, but we were young (20ish) and all but clueless about
technology. I still think the market opportunity was there, but we hired an
agency who outsourced everything, made bad tech choices, took forever, and
gave us a fraction of what we originally agreed on. I learned to program
myself in order to complete a major component of the site (in flash) which
they had just completely botched.

What we ended up with wasn't _terrible_ , but it fell way short of the vision
we had, and our marketing efforts fell mostly flat as well. We were able to
recruit a few smart people to post and discuss hands here and there, and we
wrote a few articles ourselves that showcased the flash hand analysis tool I
had built (the best functioning aspect of the site), but we weren't getting
any other traffic. There were a few bugs and an assortment of minor ux issues
which made the site feel a bit clunky, and people's feedback was pretty
unenthusiastic, so all in all we weren't feeling very good about the direction
of things. It didn't take very long (maybe six weeks or so) before we threw in
the towel.

It wasn't a complete failure--after all, I had learned how to program and
discovered that I quite liked it (certainly much more than grinding poker
online), and both of us had learned a lot of lessons about business and
technology. But there was another lesson that we only discovered with time.

Even after we completely abandoned the site and it went dormant, I would still
check google analytics from time to time to see if there was any traffic, and
an interesting trend started to emerge: a few of the hand posts and articles
we had posted were developing really steady search traffic. One article in
particular was generating something like 20 uniques per day.

At that point, we were both just done with the whole endeavor and had no
motivation to try to pick it up again, but we realized that if we had kept at
it and continued to create more and more quality content, that we probably
could have had an seo goldmine on our hands, developed reputations as poker
strategy bloggers, and leveraged that into the community we had originally
envisioned. Who knows if it would have gone that way, but it seems like there
was at least a relatively unobstructed path to success available to us if we
had been willing to stick it out and let the long tail kick in.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Startups often live on the cusp of 'other people think we should quit but
we're not going to!' I appreciated these sorts of posts because they are
illustrative. The only thing to be bothered by is if you don't find anything
to learn from the experience.

~~~
thisisrobv
I feel like this is a point that is often lost. It's why being an entrepreneur
is such a huge risk.

You have to be stubborn enough to succeed in a world where the majority of
people will tell you you're going to fail, you have to ignore all that.

Often times however, you do fail.

~~~
Retric
I think the opposite problem is also worth considering. No matter how bad the
idea some people you trust will probably say go for it.

~~~
thisisrobv
Good point, it's why it's such a difficult situation to be in. You really do
have to block out everyone EXCEPT the customer that's actually using your
product.

------
onan_barbarian
If there's a common thread between endless startup failure stories, then it is
"we talked to a bunch of people who _said_ they'd spend money on this" and
when push came to shove said people didn't actually spend money.

We're not failing, but even from a (modestly) successful startup perspective,
the vast gulf between "people who like to talk to you as if they will spend
real money" and "people who will actually spend money" is painfully apparent.

~~~
SurfScore
I like to live by the motto:

You never know if someone is willing to pay until you ask them to open their
checkbook.

The same theory can be applied to most investors. (pre-handshake protocol at
least)

~~~
ronyeh
So then... is Kickstarter the only true way to validate a startup idea?

You throw up a cool pitch with some videos and vague promises, and watch the
cash roll in. If the cash does indeed roll in, then it's a good idea!

Then you get to work, and hope no one remembers in 6 months that you promised
to deliver them some amazing gifts. :-)

~~~
hayksaakian
PPC + Landing page works wonders.

Avoid the confirmation bias of your peers, and target people actively looking
for your idea.

Build a fake checkout that collects no data, and thank your 'paying' users for
signing up to be notified when X goes on sale.

(You should also probably tell them that no financial information was actually
stored.)

~~~
jdaley
If I put my credit card number into a site and the next page said "actually
this isn't real, and we promise we didn't save your card number", my next step
would be to call my bank and cancel the card.

~~~
JonnieCache
Surely the next step for a lot of us would be to devote an afternoon to
bringing public misery upon the site operators. Don't take this advice, kids.

------
mindcrime
I'm sure it's painful, but thanks for sharing. I agree with cup, that reading
about failures can be more valuable than reading about successes.

If anything, your story adds more fuel to the fire for the approach that
@sgblank advocates[1][2]. Get out of the building, talk to customers, validate
customer needs, etc. We've been doing this, but - to be honest - we haven't
done as good a job as we could. Hopefully we will soon start another big round
of Customer Development interviews, much more targeted this time, building on
the feedback we got the first go-round, and moving more into what Steve calls
the "Problem Presentation" phase.

It's a tough slog, but I continue to remain convinced of just how important it
is.

[1]: [http://steveblank.com/category/customer-development-
manifest...](http://steveblank.com/category/customer-development-manifesto/)

[2]: <http://steveblank.com/category/customer-development/>

~~~
sskates
Startups repeatedly make the same mistake of not talking to customers enough
and dying as a result.

One of the most helpful guides is to try to make a mistake in the other
direction. Try to talk to your customers too much. No early stage startup ever
died from talking to their customers too much.

~~~
hobs
I mostly see it as a matter of empathy with existing people, or exposure to
existing problems. I would say one of the best ways to come up with an idea
for a startup is to be working for your potential customer.

I have seen so many people start their own company after breaking off from
some existing company and "doing it better" or realizing some previously un-
claimed niche specifically because they had the industry knowledge.

------
minimaxir
_So we talked to a few artists who said they thought it was a cool idea. BOOM!
Our idea had been validated!_

Why was that sufficient data to justify spending months and months of your
life bringing this startup to fruition?

EDIT: I did not intend to make a sly insult toward the author. I've seen
people do startups with similar justifications and I am confused.

~~~
ajross
This seems unkind. What data would you want? It's easy to jeer in hindsight,
but frankly if focused and professional market research could reliably
determine the existence of new markets _there would be no need for a startup
to find them_. This very web site wouldn't exist.

They played a hunch and lost. The linked post details lots of mistakes, but
this particular one doesn't seem like one to me.

~~~
mikeg8
A cool idea does not equal a business model. That is why I think soooo many
startups fail. They build something awesome, amazing, cool whatever, but they
don;t stop to ask people, "Will you pay for this? Is this something you think
I could charge for?" That is the data I WANT and need.

~~~
locacorten
Ahem... Have you heard of Facebook? Or GMail? Or Hotmail?

These are money-losing businesses. As we speak.

Real life is much more complicated.

~~~
rewind
Those are all examples of outliers, not real life.

~~~
ajross
All successful startups are outliers. "Real life" startups, to first
approximation, fail. This one did too. But frankly it wasn't because of the
lack of market research.

------
mikecane
"Dynamic pricing" -- does anyone really like that? I've seen reports of online
booksellers (no, not Amazon) giving people different prices based on the
account they use. No one really likes to feel like a sucker.

EDIT to add: Some people might bring up airline tickets or hotel rooms.
Limited analog inventory, not infinite digital inventory.

~~~
r00fus
It's also called value-based pricing [1]. You're correct in your edit,
hotels/airline tickets where you're auctioning off a limited value is one
thing, selling a inexhaustible commodity at different rates without any
reasonable factor like location (water in a desert = more valuable) just feels
dishonest.

Amazon and Travelocity rightfully caught a lot of flack when they were caught
trying this (perhaps pricing A/B test?) years ago.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-based_pricing>

------
andrewcooke
_More importantly though, people really didn’t really LIKE anything about our
product. No one that used the service thought it was that cool. In fact, some
people that participated in the sale didn’t even like our “dynamic pricing”
system. They were trying to support the artist, so saving a few dollars didn’t
excite them. They could easily have just gotten his music for free elsewhere._

i am one of those people. why do so many bands have such a minimal online
presence that i cannot even buy a t-shirt? surely these days it should be
trivial for any band to create a store with some basic items generated from a
few uploaded images. there are people out here looking for something cool to
buy to give back money for what we just heard... even stickers are nice.

------
WillThisFly
Man, I feel your pain. I have developed the most awesome products the world
has never seen 4 times now. We had a "build it and they will come" attitude
too :(

We decided to ask ourselves one question: How to we validate an idea before
wasting months on an idea that only we seem to think is cool?

So we are creating WillThisFly? to ask that very question... it's a site that
allows you to try out your ideas and projects, get feedback and refine them
before committing resources to it.

Shameless plug: <http://willthisfly.net> (Just launched last night)

Only thing on there at the moment is WTF? itself.

All I can say is, it has happened to probably everyone at one stage in their
startup career... don't give up, refine your ideas, create MVP's and keep
trying...

~~~
chmike
Excellent initiative. I'll check it. I hope you will also provide some general
talks on strategies we could use to test this as early as possible.

Sometime it just need a few more optimization iterations. Considering the
Facebook example and prior art, this must be really frustrating for those who
missed the gold pot.

~~~
WillThisFly
The main point of WillThisFly? is to test out an idea or project at any stage
of its development before committing too many resources and finding that your
awesome idea isn't so awesome after all.

If we had something like this when we first started out it would have made
life so much easier and we wouldn’t have wasted months on projects that
weren’t going anywhere but may still have been salvageable with the right
feedback.

The iterations and feedback are key: This involves a simple, instant method
(voting) and the more involved approach (comments). With both of these, a
project owner will be able to find out if his project is worth pursuing and if
it is, be able to iterate, change or pivot accordingly until he is happy he
has a product that will work.

We will be adding a blog shortly that will outline strategies and features and
more information about WTF?

At the moment we are using WillThisFly? to develop WillThisFly? and it's early
days but it's coming along nicely and we are always open to suggestions :)

------
kingkawn
A lot of comments have thrown flak, justifiably, at your landing page video;
it is terrible. But the reason is not simply aesthetic, it's because you chose
to present an image of musicians that relies on tropes which could only
possibly be relevant to non-musicians, and even they would probably think it
was not funny. Nobody who is seriously pursuing art thinks of themselves or
their work in the way you portrayed them.

Your problem wasn't amazon payments, or flakey artists jumping ship. It was
that your audience wasn't even on your radar.

~~~
mrtksn
I had a similar impression. the video looks like the founders really don't
know anything about the business they are getting into. The video looks
cheesy, like a corporation trying to speak teen's language to sell them ice
cream, not like somebody who understands artists.

also it was hard to understand what the site does, there is something like a
price slider on the demo page but does not slide. what the hell is going on?
better read some explanation...

the founder probably did many mistakes, good luck next time.

------
rtexal
Your startup may have failed for other reasons. Just saw the promo video on
your website, am not impressed. It actually looked like a parody video. And
the reference to drugs (are you saying that all musicians take drugs?). NOT
impressed. Product with maybe a good idea but seriously poor
execution/marketing. Be more serious when doing a startup (unless your
intention is to be less serious, ala 9gag) or risk being a terrible parody
joke.

------
tptacek
Even the people at the very top of the value chain in the music industry ---
the vanishingly small set of people who produce commercially viable music ---
can't make the business work. So I'm curious as to why you'd have tried to
start a company in music. Did you start before Dalton Caldwell's talk?

I'm just interested in how people pick the ideas they pursue.

~~~
dasil003
I got the feeling there were in college or fresh out of college when they
started this. Probably they were just doing what they had an interest in and
thought they knew something about.

~~~
dpolaske
Exactly the situation.

------
fuddle
"Zillionears | Sell your $h!t with Social Sales!" - Sorry but as soon as I
seen your landing page title, I was put off.

~~~
dpolaske
Understandable, most Christian musicians where not excited about our slogan.

~~~
tiredofcareer
Well, _that's_ a comment that betrays a lot about you and, potentially, why
your startup failed.

~~~
lancer383
That and the landing page video — it was both cheesy, and patronizing to both
musicians and their fans.

And after watching it I still don't understand the "decrease price by a
dollar" pricing scheme.

~~~
nemrow
All of these things I DO agree with. And yes, we are young. We might not use
the word "shit" on our homepage next time. But Hell, I used the word "fuck" on
the title of this article, and it sure turned alot of heads.

~~~
tiredofcareer
I was referring to the dig at Christians. Not the vulgarity.

~~~
dpolaske
Sorry if you took my comment as a dig at Christians, I was merely stating an
observation based on the data we collected. I personally encountered a handful
of Christian musicians who stated our use of vulgarity and drug references
were the reason they were not interested in our product. For example, we also
had some female musicians who were not excited about our video because it was
geared towards guys. _not a dig at female musicians_

~~~
tiredofcareer
"I don't apologize for what I said, merely how you took it."

------
xoail
I see this happen more and more that we talk to our potential customers about
the idea we've been brewing and they say 'heck yeah I would totally use it',
later only to find no interest in it. One thing I learned is, most of our
ideas are pretty cool and most likely all the potential customers would agree
when you try to validate but very few would actually hop on to try it. May be
the implementation wasn't right, or may be its too hard to change the customer
behavior to switch. Sometimes the customer was not serious enough when you
pitched.

~~~
brc
The correct answer is that people don't like being rude and saying no,
particularly when its' easy for them to agree.

If you have no product and are not asking for a sale, saying 'yes' has not
cost to the person. Saying 'no' makes them a grouch, and they would have to
justify why they said no. So lots of people say 'yes' even though they don't
really mean it.

That's why the only data worth talking about is sales and adoption, and why
minimum viable product is the way to go.

------
anigbrowl
Ouch. One thing that leaped out at me was your mention that the first beta was
a disaster because it didn't comply with Amazon's payment-processor
requirements, so you burned a lot of capital making good on your promises.
This sort of thing is why I keep saying more startups need a legal person on
board early on - and with a surplus of underemployed JDs around, now is a
great time to work that into your team plan.

Lawyers are not just there to object to things and make life difficult for
dreamers, they're there to spot major potential pitfalls like this and steer
around them. Far too many entrepreneurially-minded people see contractual and
statutory constraints as some sort of obstacle course designed solely to
prevent competition or enterprise, and react to said constraints by simply
wishing them away. I was impressed that your reaction to this problem was to
pay everyone as promised and retool your application to be compliant with
Amazon's requirements, rather than simply blaming them for your problems. A
hard lesson to learn, but one which will put you ahead of the pack in future.

~~~
seivan
Would they work for equity? Sorry I couldn't help myself :) /developer.

~~~
anigbrowl
Some would. I know quite a few lawyers in startups. That's why I mentioned
'underemployed JDs' who have an incentive to explore other avenues if they
can't get a job at an established law firm or public body. You might not be
aware that there's a major supply-demand imbalance in the legal field right
now.

------
chmike
Maybe it is a marketing problem. The domain name is nice, but what does it
tell about you, about your product, about people sharing the url ? For you it
was probably a matter of being zillionears but for music lovers ? The dynamic
pricing thing looks also fishy in the sense that no one except you are in
control of pricing, or its algorithm. This gives the feeling to be exposed to
be screwed, the artists and the potential buyers.

My feeling is that you conceived the startup guided mainly by your desires
than the one of the artists, visitors and clients. Unfortunately your desires
where not attractive for them.

Mistake n° 1 is the domain name which is the first message you give about your
business and service.

------
mikeg8
Thank you for sharing your experience but to me, the whole post is about how
you didn't _really_ listen at all and built something that people didn't want,
which ended up failing, yet you still learned _a ton_. I bet you learned
something but did this experience really teach you a LOT? You don't mention
any _other_ learning experience in this post (you say you'll write more later)
but somehow in the end, this failure was super insightful. I just don't see
how... Sorry if that sounds negative. I wish all entrepreneurs success but the
end of this article just fell flat for me.

~~~
nemrow
I hear what you are saying. I have tons of pages of lessons I learned that I
will touch on in later posts. I tried to summarize the whole experience in to
one page. My experiences took me to business meeting after business meeting,
and opened my eyes to the entire tech / music startup scene. The main lesson I
learned was not listening to feedback early on, but I also have insight on co-
founder issues, legal issues, budgeting issues, personal/work dilemmas, etc.

~~~
learningram
Can I ask how much money this whole thing cost ? Or is that rude ?

------
adamnemecek
Out of curiosity, what did you do wrong originally that was against Amazon's
terms?

~~~
nemrow
We were a middle-man to the artists. We had it setup so when a fan bought
their music all of the money went directly to us, and then we paid out the
artist. That is where we went wrong. You need to use "recipient tokens" so the
money is split by Amazon. This way the money goes directly to the artist and
we get sent a cut directly from amazon.

~~~
adamnemecek
Ah, thanks for the response.

------
brendanborginc
I wish you had read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. It stresses the fact of
build a Mean Viable Product very early on and testing hypothesis like "will
artists pay for this service" in a real life scenario with an ok product.
Aardvark did this in a really cool way (check Aardvark out).

Also, there is a notion amongst us entrepreneurs to persevere amongst all
odds. This might be dangerous at times. There might be a massive market for
your product yet you have approached it in the wrong way. The thing is, if you
have no data, it is very difficult to know what REALLY went wrong. For
example: Drew Houston from Dropbox early on stated that selling Dropbox
through adwords was costing them something like 300 dollars per acquisition,
once they introduced their double-sided referral scheme Dropbox started
selling like mad. It was what Eric Ries calls a Pivot.

------
pbreit
Reminds me of Pud's Fandalism which he created pretty quickly and ramped up
traffic also quickly: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3559081>

When it comes to commerce, I'm liking the model of first building an audience
and then adding commerce.

------
flaktrak
Good post and you had me all the way up until you said "journey". I hate that
word. Pre-internet Journey meant something now every man and his cat uses it
to talk about the incites they had while doing something, it has lost its
impact. However like I said I enjoyed the post until then.

------
tedchs
Sorry to hear it didn't work out. I might just share two thoughts that
occurred to me:

1\. The site's tagline is "Sell your $h!t with Social Sales!" which I would
think is kind of off-putting in the context of a vendor relationship

2\. Your sales model appears to be in contrast to how supply and demand work.
Your model is that as more buyers sign up, the per-unit price goes down. I
understand your theory is this causes people to share it with their friends.
But, people who are buying indie music not only don't want to screw the artist
-- they're also not going to bother talking their friends into something just
to save a nickel.

3\. I think this would have made more sense for the artist if the price went
_up_ (slightly, like from $4 to $5) as sales went up, with the early people
locking in their price.

------
iamjonlee
I've been there done that, so I get the frustration you went through. Lesson #
1 What people say is cool doesn't mean that it's something that they'd use.
Just because you say you're building the next Facebook will get you some
"that's cool" responses but doesn't mean they'd actually use it.

One of the most useful things I do to validate an idea is to actually use YC's
application- if you can't answer all the questions about your idea without any
doubts, you're don't have a solid idea yet. And validating your idea means to
follow up at the very least with the people that said it was "cool". Forget
the stealth startups, be completely transparent in what you're building and
have beta users follow you from day 1.

Good luck with your next thing!

------
orangethirty
Now that you have learned how _not_ to build product, I suggest you take a one
month break, and go build something else.Don't build the product without
knowing what the market wants. In your case, people wanted an easy way to
support their artists.Don't market a product in such way. In your case, learn
the basics of online marketing, and pay someone to build a good landing page
for the product.Don't take it so personally. Shit happens. It failed. Who
cares? The more value you put on failure, the less value you put on iterating.
That's where success comes from.I do have to say that your landing page is
pretty crummy. That contributed in a huge way towards the failure.

------
dakrisht
Keep Moving Forward. Pick up the pieces, mend the broken bones, take a
vacation, regroup, do something else that you love and are passionate about.
Failure is part of life. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take, right?
Just keep at it.

------
eah13
I love the honesty and the spot on diagnosis.

For a site that resonates with artists, check out Reverb Nation:

<http://www.reverbnation.com/>

A sample artist page here:

<http://www.reverbnation.com/evangibb>

Instead of buying their music, the site is focused on you listening to it via
the embedded player and then going to see them live. You can even buy them a
gift card so that they can buy advertising. They're growing like crazy with a
marketing budget close to zero.

Thanks for sharing your hard learned lesson. It reminds us all to get out of
the building and talk to users.

------
salemh
I would be interested in:

 _Once he found out about the dynamic pricing he tells us “I think I am just
going to release with another platform.” FUCK! Are you serious????_

What other platform(s)? What were differentiating factors between those, and
your service? Do artists suffer any particular trending pain-points in
alternate services?

1,700 or so artists could probably provide great feedback into what they
actually want in a platform, vs building it in a vacuum.

Thank you for sharing!

~~~
popopje
i realise you want the actual answer here, but if i was going to sell my own
stuff, i would be using bandcamp <http://bandcamp.com/> and have as a buyer
many times. it's simple to set up and purchase from, is the main selling
point.

------
at-fates-hands
Music is probably one of the hardest, if not the hardest industries to be
successful in. Props to them for continuing to press on, hoping for a break
and smart enough to throw in the towel and move on.

Also, happy to hear you didn't mortgage your life savings and burn out in
grand fashion. You're wise beyond your years.

------
locacorten
I'm sorry but let me offer a different perspective.

Your startup failure was good. It hit quick. You learned. You moved on.

If I had more time I'd tell you about all those failed startups that suffer a
really slow death. Like the YC startups. Pretty much all of them are failed.
They haven't seen the light yet. You have. Be grateful.

------
cmos
You done good. It's not supposed to be easy. You get an A for effort, and next
time when you place your 120% into something you'll thank your younger self
for getting the early learning phase out of the way when you were young and
had unlimited energy.

Do take a break. A year sounds about right.

------
jfb
So did mine, largely because I was not able to commit to it for a variety of
reasons that wouldn't be unfamiliar. I like reading the success stories, but I
get pretty down thinking about my experience -- not the doing, but the way it
ended up going down.

------
rexreed
"we felt like we had already gone too far to quit" -- the bane of many a
startup that should just pack it up / pivot / rethink things the moment this
thought crosses their minds. If you're already thinking you've gone too far,
you've gone too far.

~~~
matehat
I think part of the problem is that there is so many credible sources to draw
from when faced with this sort of thoughts. The Lean crowd will tell you to
pivot, but others will tell you to never give up, that big ideas are often
brought to life by stubborn entrepreneurs. Many early entrepreneurs are often
inspired by such stories and so that's probably quite natural for them to
react that way.

------
donnfelker
Best advise I can give here is to do what Steve Blank, Martel, and many other
advisers/founders/etc say - If you can get a check for the product. Then
you've sold it. Then there is demand. Until that money is in your hand, you
just have an idea.

~~~
donnfelker
NOTE: This doesn't mean you'll be a success. You may have found a market, but
you need to do more customer development in order to really figure out if the
market is large enough to sustain.

------
astrojams
It was a very successful failure. You are much more likely to succeed given
what you learned from it. I'd say that it is a blessing in disguise and very
much appreciate that you shared the experience with us.

------
skeoh
You have a tangible yet unmarketable product. Rather than abandon it
completely, would you consider open-sourcing it? Any contribution to the open
source community is a positive use of time (in my opinion).

~~~
nemrow
I did want to open source it, but the problem is all of our passwords and keys
for amazon and everything are in the code. Is there a way to get around that?

~~~
skeoh
There was a discussion on storing passwords in source control here:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5178914>, Although if you plan to
discontinue development entirely you could just substitute keys with
placeholders (YOUR_KEY_HERE) and make a note of it in your README.

------
cybernomad99
You actually have spoken to 1700+ artists? See if you could learn a few things
about the market, and do a "pivot" as so many start ups have done. AirBNB
started out selling air mattress...

------
joeblau
Welcome... do it again.

------
arbuge
Great story & thanks for sharing this. I was curious about why you chose to go
with Amazon Payments... why not PayPal, or your own merchant account?

~~~
dpolaske
Billing info was authorized, but not captured until the end of the sale
period. Similar to what Kickstarter does. Amazon is really the only option
(that we could find) that would allow that type of flow.

------
espadagroup
Someone should make a new Amiestreet. The business model worked (dynamic
pricing) and the company was acquired, then it went away...

------
jchulani
Fast iteration is cool assuming you have customer validation plans. In this
case, it didn't sound like one existed.

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jimmaswell
Really seems like this was a great idea but somewhat poorly executed with the
presentation on the site.

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smackfu
>Hit me up on twitter! I just got on there.

This is not something I would be telling tech-savvy people.

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wellboy
Knowing when to quit is like trading with bitcoins, you never know when to
sell.

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ausjke
Hate the F word in the title, that word is for your mouth, not for writing on
the public network so all can see(including my kids), unless, you have a
18-year-old warning on your homepage.

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D9u
"Fall down seven times, get up eight times..."

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greyfox
seems like it shoulda really taken off for independent artists.

~~~
therobotking
Mmm, if you look at the site it's really not that surprising it didn't take
off.

<http://zillionears.com/>

Landing on that site and seeing the big 'Create Sale' button is pretty
confusing. I don't think 'oh this is a site for musicians to sell their music
directly to fans'. It also claims I can use 'social sales' but is that a
meaningful term? I've never heard it before and it sounds pretty buzzwordy.

edit: Just watched the video on the front page and I can easily believe that
only 1 out of 1700 people thought it was worth bothering with.

The execution just seems awful.

~~~
notimetorelax
Maybe I didn't have my morning coffee yet, but the video seemed to be too
disrespectful of musicians.

~~~
human_error
That was my interpretation as well and I didn't like "sell your sh!t" thing. I
don't think a musician would like his art to be called shit.

~~~
stereosky
Also, a small baggie of drugs or something from McDonalds is not the
recommended way to generalise how musicians spend their distribution cheques
:p

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ssw1n
gg go next

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yoster
Definitely a great learning experience. I myself had my own business. Made
enough to live comfortably, but in the end, the IRS made me pay back every red
cent in back taxes, and then some when it came to a screeching halt.

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workbench
Read the whole thing… still no idea what "dynamic pricing" is.

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escaped_hn
Can you go indept about what you did wrong that allowed payment processors to
freeze your accounts? What about your software didn't comply with their terms
that it had to be rewritten?

~~~
nemrow
We were a middle-man to the artists. We had to setup so when a fan bought
their music all of the money went directly to us, and then we paid out the
artist. That is where we went wrong. You need to use "recipient tokens" so the
money is split by Amazon. This was the money goes directly to the artist and
we get send a cut directly from amazon

