

You have 404,722 users? Here's what you can do. - hyacinthe
http://makeitslick.tumblr.com/post/21289884923/404-772users-whattodo

======
pud
Thanks for posting these ideas. Here are some thoughts off the top of my head,
train-of-thought.

Band Generator - There's something I love about this. I don't think Fandalism
can just "generate" a band any more than LinkedIn can "generate" a startup.
That said, it seems like musicians are always looking for the equivalent of
marriage (a band) when I think it might be more fun to just have a several
one-off trysts (random jams). The latter isn't really something musicians do
currently. Which is an obstacle. But maybe there's a way to spark this
behavior using a "random person to jam with this wednesday" generator.

Worldwide Music Battles - In theory this sounds really fun. I recently did a
contest with Interscope records to promote the new Van Halen album. Musicians
performed cover versions of the new Van Halen single in exchange for the
possibility of fame and fortune. There weren't as many entries as I was hoping
for. I think it comes down to musicians as artists -- and artists want to be
free to create. They don't want to be told what to play. I think. Or maybe
they think contests are cheesy, and your idea is more legit. I'll experiment.

Collaborative Online Recording - I think indabamusic.com does this. At least,
that's the impression I get (I haven't used that site yet). It's surprisingly
non-trivial to just throw a drumset recording over your bass line. To get a
good drum sound you need a few mics, a mixer, recording software, EQ & mixing
skills... it's really easier (and more fun, for me at least) to just jam with
people in real life. And record it.

Thanks again for these ideas. They got me thinking and I'm sure I'll use them
in some regard as I build new features. Same goes with all the awesome
comments in my original post.

I'll keep blogging as I add new stuff to Fandalism. I plan to add a lot of
stuff that was suggested in HN, in one way or another.

~~~
mtrimpe
Why not add a 'Book me' button?

Plenty of people might be interested in being able to get one of these awesome
people to come and play at your party or have a custom song recorded just for
you.

~~~
mcherm
Yes, THIS! It's the perfect combination of highly valuable to users and
downright trivial to implement.

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fletchowns
Aside from a few neat feature suggestions this blog entry is pretty vague
about how to actually solve the monetization issue.

Instead of going the commercial route, could a site like Fandalism survive as
a registered non-profit? It seems like it would be a nice fit for a site
devoted to connecting independent musicians.

------
Kesty
While some Ideas are good (I love the collaborative online recording studio)
this doesn't address the main point of the other post.

The main idea of this blog is that the answer to "I have lot of users, how can
I generate money ?" is "Get more users and more content !"

It's not. More users and more content means more servers, more bandwidth and
more money you have to spend.

It seem that in this "business" is only about generating users and user-
generated content and don't worry about the money because some "Angel"
investor will save you if you have enough users/content. Let them worry about
how to get money out of it.

Why not start something monetizing it from the beggining. Why not add the
monetizing problem and possible solution (advertising, premium content,...) at
the beginning of the process so that when you grow you will see how it scales.

The main problem is not "How I will I monetize this whitout changing too much
of my site" , the problem is "Why didn't you think about it before starting
this process."

~~~
guynamedloren
> _Why not start something monetizing it from the beggining. Why not add the
> monetizing problem and possible solution (advertising, premium content,...)
> at the beginning of the process so that when you grow you will see how it
> scales._

Because that's not how you sell your 2 year old company to facebook for a
billion dollars :)

------
MicahWedemeyer
Any blog post that ends with a discussion of what "potential acquirers" are
looking for makes me wonder if the author understands the concept of
"monetization".

Ignoring revenue and praying for a buyout is not a business plan any more than
buying lottery tickets is.

~~~
hyacinthe
I agree. I wrote this last sentence thinking about the last point of Pud's
initial post: "Get acquired".

------
daemon13
Don't know, but I think it is not that difficult to monetize this user base -
I think it is much more difficult to gain such user base in the first place.

For starters, I would suggest to throw ideas, listed below, at the wall and
see what will stick:

1\. Kickstarter for albums [where funding is prepayment for goods/services] -
taking into account the state of music industry this shall fly a long way.

2\. Pro account - personalized pages for a band and sample tracks for a
monthly fee, paid by a band.

3\. Events organizer - bands can propose concerts for clubs, bars, etc. Making
money - transactions - either as cut of concert cost (band-club) or as cut
from tickets sold. And this feature is available only to Pro-account holders.

I believe that just doing the above shall easily generate at least $10-50K per
month in 3-6 mths, assuming correct execution.

There are other options to monetize, but the above are the most obvious/simple
to implement.

------
recurser
_> A collaborative online recording studio. Fandalists could create open
projects and see other contributing to their creation._

This is an idea that's been bugging me for a while.

Something like a multi-track SoundCloud, where uploading a song requires
uploading each channel (drums, bass, lead etc) as a separate bounced track.
Hitting play for a particular song plays back all the channels in sync as
intended by the original artist, or the song can be 'forked' by other users,
who can tweak or replace individual channels.

A high-school kid swapping Jimi's solo in 'All Along The Watchtower' for his
own, or an electronic artist forking a classical pianist and adding
breakbeats... karaoke for musicians.

You'd be able to track songs 'forked' from your own ala github, and forks-of-
forks would quickly diverge into something quite unique.

No idea how you'd monetize it (pay-to-fork?), attract users (would the the
separate-channel thing be a pretty large barrier to entry for the average
musician?), more than likely a legal minefield, and probably not particularly
useful to Pud, but I'd love to see it happen :)

------
josscrowcroft
> _A collaborative online recording studio. Fandalists could create open
> projects and see other contributing to their creation. Like a colossal music
> Dropbox on a certain tempo. I start a project with a line of guitar and some
> info (mood, tempo, chord structure). A bassist comes to the site and drops
> its line of bass. Later, a drummer adds a beat. Another drummer comes and
> offers a different beat version. In a sense, it would be a cloud-based Babel
> tower on which thousands would create together._

This is just fantastic.

~~~
fauldsh
Just wanted to add that I've been craving something akin to this system for a
fair few years now, the amount of reasonable little bits and bobs I've come up
with that I just can't think of what to do with frustrates me.

As for monetisation, tip jars seems the obvious short term solution to me.

------
hartror
Huh?

1\. Build website 2\. Acquire users 3\. ... 4\. Profit!

I don't see where this post fills the #3 at all. The last thing he needs is to
build out an unproven set of new features.

~~~
hyacinthe
Indeed, I have been vague on number 3. My take-away was more like: "Here's a
cool user base, let's see what else we can do with it", thinking also that
these new features could open up the spectrum of monetization possibilities.

------
smattiso
Here is an idea of how you could change the site.

* Content discovery pretty close to how you have it but with a better way to find local acts. I.e. a big read "Find Local" button.

* Have an admin interface for musicians to put concert dates, iTunes links, etc.

* Eventually you could become the one-stop shop for discovering new local acts as and figuring out who is playing in your town on a given night.

As an example you view some guitar video of a dude shredding a Metallica song.
You click on it and you see what band he is in, where/when it is playing,
songs from the band that you can stream for free(with user ratings), download
for a price (or free if they want). That kind of thing.

The reverse of this is also true. You can see a calendar of all of the local
acts playing near you. You can click on any act and see all of their fandalism
videos as well as all the information I described above.

You should be able to purchase tickets and songs through fandalism.

Monetization

* Take a cut of said ticket and song purchases.

* Very subtle premium ads on the main page advertising shows in your area based on your tastes. Personally I would actually be interested in reading these ads.

EDIT:

Just had another idea which is an addon to my previous idea. A lot of people
are coming up with ideas related to Kickstarter. This is a cool concept. I
think it would be excellent if Fandalism partnered with music venues so that
you have a list of a bunch of different acceptable venues and their seating
capacity.

Bands or users could initiate Fandalism campaigns to have a band play a live
concert. E.g. I'm willing to put $10 to see this band play live on one of
these dates. Turns out 1000 other people were willing to do so as well. Fans
vote on which of the 1000 person venue they want to go to. Band gets 5k, venue
gets 4.5k, fandalism gets 500 bucks.

I think this plays to peoples' want to be ahead of the curve. How cool would
it be to say "Yeah I funded the Red Hot Chili Peppers first concert way before
they became famous".

------
peteforde
I don't mean to be cruel, but the ideas in this post are a strong argument
against feature creep.

Politely, each one of those could be their own startup. However, are these
burning need concerns? Is someone currently being held back by an absence of
these ideas, or are they just distractions from the core value proposition?

~~~
egiva
I understand what you're saying, but PUD has a lot of experience building
startups and I think he has the right mix of know-how and resources to launch
any of the ideas listed in the article as part of Fandalism.

My first thought after reading PUD's original post was the "band generator"
idea too. It seems in line with the idea of exposing and building on musical
talent in a community-building atmosphere, which I think(?) is in-line with
his core goals for the site...

------
sparknlaunch12
This typically raises the growth versus revenue debate. Do you continue as is,
adding users or try and monetise, risking alienating users.

There have been some smart sponsorship/advertising concepts that have worked
well on free sites.

Kaggle comes to mind. They hold competitions for members. Usually sponsors
throw in cash prizes and job offers.

So an American Idol YouTube competition with a prize to headline a big concert
may work. Drives traffic and maybe some revenue from companies rather than
users.

------
vasco
"sleek UX + great content/data = magic sauce for user stickiness and
monetization."

Even if it would make them stick around more, how would that monetize the
site? Magically?

~~~
hyacinthe
Sure, you always need a money-spinner at the end.

As I was trying to say in the last paragraph of my post: when you get people
stick to your service, it broadens the realm of possibilites for monetization.
For instance, the online collaborative studio could have some premium features
(specific editing tools, extra storage... I am thinking out loud). Another
example: when you get half-million users coming back every week, music labels
or festival organizers might be ready to pay to get their advertising to the
right audience (musicians, music fans) - see Pitchfork or Rollingstone.com.

~~~
vasco
He already has a big realm of possibilites for monetization. He just doesn't
know what to choose. And you told him, hey you know what, you could get even
MORE possibilities and then everything will solve itself and money and stuff.
Reminiscent of the "2. ????" before "3. profit".

------
alexchamberlain
This made me think... Twitter and Facebook exposed APIs, charge for high
use(?) and then buy up the really successful ones.

Could be an interesting direction to take?

~~~
mwill
For that to really work I'd imagine the people using your API would need to be
able to monetize? So you're basically shifting the challenge of turning users
into value to a 3rd party.

I don't have anything to back this up other than a gut feeling, but to pull it
off I think you'd need another order of magnitude worth of users, or some data
that's exceptionally compelling to 3rd party developers.

(Maybe fandalism does have this? Alot of people seem to have interesting ideas
on what to do with that many bands and fans in one place)

------
deadlysyntax
I'd love to be involved in this project. If you want some free contributions
with the coding, hit me up.

------
egiva
Really love the band generator idea - PUD, if you're listening in, make it
happen! I'd use it...

------
AznHisoka
It'd be nice if this article was generic enough it could be applied to almost
anyone.

------
thenomad
Knowing-how-to-use-HN fail - anyone have a link to the article he's replying
to?

~~~
jgeralnik
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3850739>

------
kbronson
Do what most sites end up doing:

1\. Add musician-specific ads.

2\. Sell your user data to spammers.

3\. Wait for Facebook to buy you.

------
dutchbrit
Genius :)

