@Pud can undeniably build products that are laser focused and useful.<p>And his minimalist approach to company building is epic and I am a fan.<p>But it's sort of disingenuous to play David Vs. Goliath here like his line about launching:<p>"I figured only a small number of smart people would somehow find us among the masses."<p>He's just like the rest of us - just build a great product and be lean guys!<p>But oh wait he launched DistroKid on the back of the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of registered musicians already using his other site - Fandalism - founded years before.(1)<p>EDIT - why I am a fan of pud is in the children to this comment he brings a data-gun to a knife fight and sorts out my impression w some facts.<p>(1) <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/06/philip-kaplan-fandalism/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/06/philip-kaplan-fandalism/</a>
I love articles like this it's inspiring...but it really doesn't offer any new insights other than the fact that<p><i>Every one man success story on HN was largely possible due to existing audience from another entity that took years to grow</i><p>It's pretty disheartening once you read the article and it boils down to this very requirement: You Need An Audience First.<p>I'd like more insights and details in <i>how</i> lone entrepreneurs of HN were able to <i>grow</i> their audience.<p>Because when Step 1 is <i>have a big enough audience</i> the rest of the steps are pretty much a no brainer. It's this step that most of us are struggling with.<p>I've spent years in seclusion writing a SaaS that ultimately resulted less than the annual wage of a North Korean factory manager and it was rough both physically and mentally but it all boiled down to the fact that VC funded startups were able to do huge PR and buy ads, write blog posts, increase Adwords bid prices etc while I was not.<p>So yeah, you can succeed with a one-man biz outfit but not without an audience. It makes sense why Linkedin is valuable, why Pinterest, Whatsapp, Oculus, Twitch gets bought out even without revenues.
Really resonated with me, also being a micro-startup with a minimalist customer-centric philosophy, albeit in a completely different market.<p>Steps to reproduce:<p>1. Identify a poorly served professional segment where the business processes are not the primary task,<p>2. Automate their processes with vision and passion and empathy for the customer,<p>3. Make fans for life. Maybe also profit.<p>Minimum requirements to execute: at least one seed customer; wifi; coffee; time.<p>Rock on pud.
I very much like reading this type of stories where founders candidly talk about their business, how well they are doing, what did it take to get where they are (remove a good chunk of the usual BS, add some numbers). Indie Hackers is a great source (<a href="https://www.indiehackers.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.indiehackers.com</a>) for this type of stories.<p>I have a feeling that this is the dream of a lot of people on HN. Having an easy to run business with a couple of people, without crazy competition, not needing to go sell it to VCs, and making a good amount of money while running it. Not judging, just observing.
Met @pud once while he was CEO of Blippy. Very nice guy and great to talk to. I also absolutely love his post: "Why Must You Laugh at My Back End" (<a href="http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back-end" rel="nofollow">http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back...</a>). He's built lots of crazy impressive stuff by himself and DistroKid is no different.
Please correct me if I'm wrong - isn't this a terrible business decision? It took a small team a year to make a product that is apparently taking the market by storm. Their secret sauce is apparently not some special algorithm, but common-sense automation. If the barrier to entry is actually this low, and they advertise the fact widely enough, they will soon be joined by competitors trying to do the same. They may be ahead of the pack, but they lose their selling point and their advantage faster than they would have done otherwise.<p>Why give away your hand like this?
So artist pay $20 per year, and to quote the article "100,000+ artists", he's looking at $2,000,000 gross per year? Three employees. Amazing
Minor complaint / remark: is there <i>complete list of all stores and services</i> that DistroKid supports (directly, or better even indirectly) somewhere?<p>All I was able to find were murky statements about 'dozen mayor services' and "150+ others" [0]. That page links "MediaNet Customers" page [0a] that displays 24 logos and links [0b] that displays list of 286 "MediaNet Content Partners". Is that it?<p>I was particularly interested about Bandcamp and all I've found that DistroKid mentions Bandcamp [1] and Bandcamp mentions DistrokKid [2] but no proof they really talk to each other.<p>[0] <a href="https://distrokid.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1276117-what-stores-will-my-music-appear-in-" rel="nofollow">https://distrokid.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1276117-...</a>
[0a] <a href="http://www.mndigital.com/about-us/customers.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.mndigital.com/about-us/customers.html</a>
[0b] <a href="http://www.mndigital.com/about-us/content-partners.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.mndigital.com/about-us/content-partners.html</a>
[1] <a href="https://distrokid.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1601235" rel="nofollow">https://distrokid.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1601235</a>
[2] <a href="https://bandcamp.com/help/selling" rel="nofollow">https://bandcamp.com/help/selling</a>
Ah yes! The CFML guy - @pud (that's how I always remember him from that one blog post he wrote)!<p>This is really cool, and love hearing about stuff like this. I love the idea of running a small team and scaling a product which doesn't have a huge overhead to make something which beats out the current market by just doing a few things better. Hats off to you man. Great stuff!
I love what you're doing! But have to observe disparity between:<p>> beating VC-backed startups<p>and<p>> DistroKid intentionally has a small team and no investors. We’re here to make the world a better place for musicians — not to make billions from them. We’d make ludicrously more money if we charged what the other distributors do.<p>It sounds like you're coexisting quite nicely with different objectives.
@Pud<p>There are many people who want to know about your tech stack. I think the thinking goes: with one developer, it must be an insanely productive stack.<p><a href="http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back-end" rel="nofollow">http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back...</a><p>is old, do you still use the same set up?
@Pud, would be great to hear your take on what it has been like dealing with the record companies. According to YC:<p>> Because the alumni network is so large and tightly knit, investors or companies who try to maltreat a YC-funded startup can usually be made to stop. [--> footnote] Except for the record labels, which are effectively a rogue state with nuclear weapons. There is nothing we or anyone else can do to protect you from them, except warn you not to start startups that touch label music. [0]<p>Your service does various tasks such as cover song licensing which are record label-facing. What has that been like?<p>And, congratulations on getting engaged.<p>[0]: <a href="http://www.ycombinator.com/atyc/#n3" rel="nofollow">http://www.ycombinator.com/atyc/#n3</a>
Eh, I go with CDBaby because the math doesn't work out for me as a small artist. I'd rather pay $50 and just have my album up forever. 9% doesn't matter much to me because I'm making peanuts anyway. Maybe if I get bigger I'll consider switching over.<p>It would be really slick if DistroKid had some kind of conversion process for CDBaby / Tunecore customers.
PUD has a well deserved reputation among solo entrepreneurs. I think Distro Kid is his fifth startup.<p>All but one of his companies (the one unsuccessful one) were powered by CFML.
<i>I started a one-man biz that's beating VC-backed startups</i><p>Click-bait title in my opinion. It's not because you don't need VCs to satisfy your customers that VCs are bad. They are good when you need them to satisfy your customers. Now distrokid-competitors' problem is not that they have VCs money, it's that they "hired" bad ones. Now, I grant you, good VCs for startups, those who gonna understand whats good and not for your customers may be rare... But look at google and facebook, they did right by taking VCs' money don't you think.
<a href="https://distrokid.com/" rel="nofollow">https://distrokid.com/</a> is a near-perfect landing page for this kind of service. Well done!<p>Anyone know if there is an equivalent for independent films?
Fandalism launch in January 2012. Distrokid in mid-2013. Considering it took @Pud near 4 years to reach these numbers with DistroKid, the year and a half of building a user base with Fandalism is not that big a deal.<p>This basically would be the same as all the freemium companies out there that offer everything they do for free for a while till they build their product enough to start charging for it later.<p>My favorite line is in the original DistroKid TC article where @Pud says the goal wasn't to make money with this but to get more people to the social network.
I've been watching DistroKid since it spawned out of Fandalism. Awesome to see how successful it's become.<p>Just curious, what % of artists gross over $19.99 a year?
This is pretty darn cool and the first I've heard of it. I thought there'd be a cheaper way to do what your competitors have and here you've done it. What your success also confirms is that reducing your workload with bots and cronjobs are one of the keys to succeeding with a small team.<p>How do you handle support?<p>How are you able to find infringing music?
I think it's great that you have found great success as a pipeline service.<p>I also think it may be disingenuous to suggest this can or should work for every type of business. While I happen to agree that services that simply do a pipeline, aggregation, or intermediary service are A) not something I feel VCs should usually spend their money on in great quantities if at all and B) are often the most ripe for disruption, I disagree that finding scaled efficiency for all types of businessses in this manner is possible.<p>I do however think it's wonderful you are promoting the more traditional idea of a business with this product at least which is the more canonical bootstrapping or self funding/ side job till you make it/ type thing that doesn't need tons of employees to be a good value for those that are a part of that business.<p>That's just my opinions though I'm glad it's been a success
Having quickly looked at the audience for DistroKid, then see what happens with artists by major labels, no wonder the product is sought after by upcoming artists. [0] Bandcamp is another company that uses technology to squeeze out the middle man. [1] The first page is really well designed. You can easily see what the product does, "let artists make music, then distribute it for a fixed cost".<p>Reference<p>[0] "52 Ways to Screw an Artist, by Warner Bros. Records" <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13648245" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13648245</a><p>[1] "Is Bandcamp the Holy Grail of Online Record Stores?"
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12324350" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12324350</a>
This is another example that it's a misconception that you have to have a big team and lots of cash to get to the next level<p>Stories like this hearken to people like Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram's Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger.
Interesting related statistics:<p>"The blockbuster effect has been even more striking on the digital platforms that were supposed to demonstrate the benefits of the long tail. On iTunes or Amazon, the marginal cost of “stocking” another item is essentially zero, so supply has grown. But the rewards of this model have become increasingly skewed towards the hits. Anita Elberse, of the Harvard Business School, working with data from Nielsen, notes that in 2007, 91% of the 3.9m different music tracks sold in America notched up fewer than 100 sales, and 24% only one each. Just 36 best-selling tracks accounted for 7% of all sales. By last year the tail had become yet longer but even thinner: of 8.7m different tracks that sold at least one copy, 96% sold fewer than 100 copies and 40%—3.5m songs—were purchased just once. And that does not include the many songs on offer that have never sold a single copy. Spotify said in 2013 that of its 20m-strong song catalogue at the time, 80% had been played—in other words, the remaining 4m songs had generated no interest at all."<p><a href="http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21716467-technology-has-given-billions-people-access-vast-range-entertainment-gady" rel="nofollow">http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21716467-techno...</a>
Hey, does (or can) Distrokid offer an API? I've been dying to find a distributor that would let me programmatically submit/replace releases. It would only be used for my label, no bulk stuff, reasonable per-call fees or adjusting balances on a pre-paid account would be fine. Sale statistics API - even better.
> By contrast, our competitors largely have millions in funding ... And they’re owned by venture capitalists and/or private equity firms who are banking on a large exit.<p>Disincentives of the startup model at work!<p>These days it feels like you if your startup doesn't have polarized outcomes you're "doing it wrong".
This is very motivating. I am also running a site in the indie music industry as a one-man biz. (<a href="http://www.synthshare.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.synthshare.com</a>) It has been a challenge to build up the community, I'm sure leveraging Fandalism helped you kickstart your growth. Do you have any advice about user acquisition? Recently I've been getting feedback from music production communities which has all been positive and converted to users; however, it sometimes feels like the site isn't growing as fast as it should be considering all the positive feedback I've received.
I see the comments where you started running with a sea of clients who trusted you to give them a fair shake.
I see so many of the others where the music makers suck hind tit.
Looking at your competitors, you have a clear advantage in your lean and efficient structure. In time your method will spread and and drive many others out.
The problem I see is labels tied to the big companies may have restrictive agreements that exclude you. Couple this with the wish of many people to feel they are complete when they have bought into spotify/Apple/etc.<p>In any event, I wish you well, live long and prosper
I am surprised that the development time of 1 year was considered a long time by him compared with his 1-2 month initial estimate.<p>If only projects I / we had been working on for 2 years became so successful!
Is this a digital-only endeavor? I don't see any mention of physical product services such as pressing CDs & DVDs, printing covers/liner notes/etc. And what about marketing materials like posters, flyers and so on. There's still a market for that stuff, and it could be another revenue stream. Merch is also pretty big for some artists, you could explore getting t-shirts and hats and stuff printed. (just an idea, i've no idea if it's profitable, or more trouble than it might be worth)
This is amazing. How does one person build so many successful startups while everyone else struggles to just do one?<p>Maybe there was some momentum from his previous successes? If you're already a famous startup founder, then I guess it's easier to get users for your next startups. I've heard that this was the case for Slack, but I don't know how much truth there is in that.
Great to see this. Stoked to hear that it is the same guy who started Fandalism. I used to use Fandalism years ago to post my clips but just kind of stopped. I never got any emails or communication from them and just assumed that they faded away. Spurred by this article, I checked, and am amazed that it is still going strong. Must remember to get back to posting on there again.
Previous connections aside this is still very inspiring. Scaling this well with only three employees (and resisting the urge to add more people just to be bigger) is an amazing feat. I'd be very interested in more details. How focused were you on being profitable and reinvesting profits vs. taking venture money? My guess is profit was one of the key metrics?
I'd be interested how you arrived at this particular pricing. $20 per year seems crazy low to me, have you experimented at all with raising the price. Intuitively, I'd think that the next cut-off point is at $49, but that in the range below that the demand is fairly inelastic.
...and please count me in among the users for the past 4 years who have seen the value, enjoyed the service, had a lot of fun playing with metrics, and feel inspired to continue my 100% rights ownership in music pursuit for 2017 and beyond.<p>Great product. Great support. Great example.
Does DistroKid track the usage/consumption details of the songs for artists to look at or analyze? If so, what is the probability that they will expand to also have a recommendation system for indie music based on these aggregated stats?
It's awesome to hear about a swarm of bots replacing millions of dollars worth of labor overhead. Are you worried about the maintenance and QA at all? Is there anything about the problem that lends itself especially to automation?
>thought it would take 1–2 months to build DistroKid. It’s just plugging into some APIs and moving files around, right?
I underestimated.
It took a year.<p>Wow. I would like to understand more about this.
Great! I would like to tap your brains. But now you have captured/conquered the music world wouldn't it be wise to disrupt movies/films distributions?
You have dozens of bots, written by one dude ?<p>Really interested to know about your stack and your deployment methodology. Did you build a bit/async infrastructure because of scale issues...Or is it inherently a mental model that is easy to grok easily?