

Business idea: Musician's own website as definitive source of all info - sivers
http://sivers.org/mhost

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fnid
This is the future of all websites. People now use facebook or myspace for
_themselves_ , why? Because storing that data on their own website is tough
when trying to incorporate it with everyone else as well. The companies retain
ownership of your data as plan b when the advertising dollars dry up. Once
that happens, they start selling your data, some do it anyway.

It's gross.

But vistaprint doesn't own the data on your business card or the brochures you
create for your company. In the future, we are all going to migrate into
"companies of one" and everyone will have their own personal web page that
isn't owned by myspace or facebook or artistdata.

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cvinson
I built Bandzoogle.com, which is currently the leading band website host.

We have explored this idea at length. The problem is, 9/10 sites for bands
just don't let you share data (some examples: Virb, PureVolume, Reverbnation,
Sonicbids). And they are extremely protective of the data they have.

Derek does mention the idea of customer support logging into Facebook accounts
to update the content manually. That is fine for a few dozen sites, but to
scale that you would need a huge staff. We're not just talking about entering
NEW shows, but also being able to modify them at the last minute when data
changes. That is very hard with 10,000+ bands.

The end result is, until all these sites create an open platform to share
info, it just is not possible to make a cost-effective solution to make one
step entry happen. I wish it was.

In the meantime, we are integrating with all the sites that DO offer open
solutions (Twitter, Eventful, etc)

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abyssknight
I've always wondered why this wasn't already the case. I mean, getting a
unique domain for your band and using that as the storefront for your music,
concerts, and merchandise would make things so much easier. As it stands, half
the time the whole thing is in Flash (which is cool, but barely functional as
an informative medium).

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audionerd
What I like most about this idea is approaching it as a web hosting provider
-- in which the user retains ownership and control over their data -- vs. a
web application, in which the ownership and control of data is ... nebulous.

I'd like to see more web hosts adopt this model of "services-added" for their
customers. In part because I think this could be new market for software
(specifically open source) on web hosts, which has traditionally just been the
nerd-ware ("and you get PHPMyAdmin for free!")

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flooha
We're trying to do something similar at Flooha. Anyone can create a free
website, which they own, using the software of their choosing. We will open it
up very soon so that developers can upload their own apps which users can then
use to create sites. It's only PHP apps right now, but we'll add rails apps
very soon.

Sites like Weebly and Yola are great and really easy to use, but can you move
that site to a different host? Maybe you can export to html (I haven't
checked), but you sure can't keep all the drag and drop / site building
functionality if you want to move to a different host and you can't host it on
your own server.

Also, you're limited to the addons and "apps" (photo gallery, eCommerce,
etc...) that they develop for their platform. If your site is built or hosted
by Flooha, you can take it anywhere at any time and use any app or addon you
want. Even if an app isn't available on Flooha, you can still install it like
you would on any other web host.

We're trying to make apps "user-ware" instead of "nerd-ware".

~~~
teeja
Sounds good ... I got tired fast of sites that insist on 'helping' you with
your HTML.

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flooha
I think the overhead of paying people to manually update stuff is somewhat
under-rated in the article...and what happens when the artist changes their
facebook/twitter/myspace/etc... password and you can't get in? How do you
convince other sites to use your API? How do you convince artists to switch to
your hosting, especially without any existing users?

Not a bad strategy if you are HostBaby or a similar existing site, but there
are big hurdles for a newbie...unless you have some kind of "in" in the music
world.

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sivers
Since I sold HostBaby, and signed a non-compete, I'm not allowed to do this
anymore, but I hope someone does. :-)

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RyanMcGreal
So...

1\. You shouldn't leave it up to some third party to keep your information up
to date across multiple websites. Therefore;

2\. You should delegate your ISP (a third party) to keep your information up
to date across multiple websites.

:/

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nuweborder
Decent idea, but sounds like a music site API dilemma waiting to happen. Will
they mesh? Dont know. And the manual labor aspect posting to social sites like
facebook does not sound fun at all. Tedious and inefficient. Keep it in house.
Build the right site, with rich featues and a great name, and compete directly
with the musician's own site. Make them begin to leave their own and only deal
with you. ie, such as many major label artists have begun to do with using
Myspacemusic instead of their own site. Eventhough it lacks usability, and in
my opinion is worthless. If they can accomplish it, you can demolish what
they've ATTEMPTED to do.

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nuweborder
Garry Tan and YC have come up with something similar to this way of posting
information, with <http://www.posterous.com>. Similar idea, but specific to
music artists and their website info.

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jacquesm
We've tried to get that going with <http://daz.com/> but unfortunately it
seems they can't be bothered. So we ended up turning it loose and now the fans
take care of it, seems to work ok so far.

