I have 404,772 users. Now what?

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".<p>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.<p>All of the monetization solutions suggested thus far does not cover both ends of the users.<p>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:<p>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.<p>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.<p>Up vote if you think this will work or comment if you have more to add.<p>@pud What do you think? If you really want to venture out this way, I'm available for a ride. ;) <i></i> That would be fun. <i></i>

A few months ago I did a post[1] where I promoted a page I made for my dad Nick Dooley[2] which was basically to test whether a simple "online busking" model has legs.<p>The results were that about 4000 people downloaded the 1st track, about half that the second and roughly 350 each for the last two (I didn't do enough analysis to know if those last 350 or so people were the same ones or not).<p>Out of those, about 20 people gaves some "bucks" and 9 people subscribed to the mailing list.<p>I would say your best bet is to allow people to pay artists on the site via a "virtual guitar case" and take a small percentage of each transaction.<p>If you have 404,772 users and promote one per day and drive 4000 people to that page per day, and your average musician drives $40 worth of revenue per day, you know. You make some money. Then you just increase the traffic and away you go.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.workingsoftware.com.au/page/Thanks_Louis_now_here_is_my_dad" rel="nofollow">http://www.workingsoftware.com.au/page/Thanks_Louis_now_here...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.nickdooley.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.nickdooley.com/</a>

Pud - when I look at your site, I see a marketplace for video music lessons. A tonne of people would pay $1.99 to learn a Radiohead song on piano, or get that perfect 'wub wub' sound in Reason. There's similar stuff on YouTube, but it's low quality and unreliable, and discovery is hard. Create a marketplace and you'll attract the best of the best.<p>Prerecorded video would be perfect at first, but you could happily expand to live, streaming lessons. I'm excited already. What do you think?

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.<p>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.

Pud, as I said here (<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3520013" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3520013</a>) 80 days ago, the way you keep putting out quality products is great. It's funny that your post on getting users (<a href="http://pud.com/post/5239917032/users" rel="nofollow">http://pud.com/post/5239917032/users</a>) isn't even a year old (although you don't seem to be using a lot of those methods for this project).<p>Do your project ideas (big and small) just come to you or do you have a process?<p>And any thoughts on doing a small post on a day/week in the life of Pud? Like how much time you spend on projects (planning, coding, designing), and whatever else you do like jamming. You clearly know at least a little about time management and/or avoiding procrastination.

Disclaimer: this one's out there.<p>Think stock market for music meets Kickstarter. As you mentioned, most musicians are strapped for cash. Most also have plans for bigger and better things, need new equipment, and want to get the word out about their music.<p>Let each musician set a value on their musical worth (market cap). Let friends, family, and fans contribute to the musician for a percentage stake in that musician's future/company. You take a cut of the money contributed sort of like a brokerage/transaction fee. They own a share of that musician. If I own 10 percent of John Doe and John gets a record deal for 1M, then I earn $100,000. Sure most people never make it, but it could be a fun way to spice up interest in a musician and help out at the same time. Plus the added bonus if that person really does make it big.<p>I have thought about this one for awhile but don't have the technical expertise to put it together yet. I might end up kicking myself for putting it out there, but if it worked, it could be really cool. Good luck.

Something a lot of us could learn from pud: ask for suggestions, actually read them and respond thoughtfully.<p>Well done.

Great blog post. It was refreshingly honest in its approach to the HN community. HN gets a lot of the "How do I get started fishing?" type posts. I very much enjoyed reading this "Okay, I have my hook set on something big. How do I pull it into the boat?"<p>I would recommend doing a lot of little things in different directions that can be measured then focusing on the ideas that show the most promise.<p>Pick the low-hanging fruit first, like ad sense. Keep the ad box small and unobtrusive. You could set it up in a day and see how it performs. You can always remove it later.<p>A simple mobile app that you could give away for free shouldn't take long to write. That will get you something installed on lots of devices that you could then use as a foothold for upgrades and premium features down the road.<p>Finally, find ways to reach out to your users and really tap into what they want from the site. Build ways into your site to get that reach and to take metrics of everything they're doing. In real terms, I'm talking integrated surveys, A/B testing of interfaces and features, and ways for you to increase the channels of communication between you and your users. Your users will help you figure out which way you could go with this thing.<p>Good luck!

Going through all the comments, there are some great ideas. We are bulding a community website for entrepreneurs/startups and could probably use some of these ideas ourselves.<p>Here are a few more:<p>- Allow musicians to offer "live" concerts to their fans or to a worldwide audience, using the free Google+ hangouts or air feature. I think they just released an API. The most popular ones can be sponsored or you could just run ads on the Youtube videos and share revenues with the musicians.<p>- Setup a buy/sell section on the site (or on a separate subdomain or website) for used music instruments, accessories, books, sheet music etc. and either charge a small fee for listing or a transaction fee. If you don't want to run an ecommerce site, just let them list their stuff on Ebay or Amazon, but allow links to it from their profiles. These could be affiliate links and you could split the revenues with them (with full disclosure on the site).<p>- Have targeted email newsletters, for different interest areas. Sell advertising within the newsletters (it won't clutter your site).

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.<p>Continue to grow Fandalism as a social network which in effect will grow your revenue site.<p>Another Idea:<p>- 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.

Pud, don't forget there are 2 sides to profit. Income and costs. Monetisation is important and there have been loads of ideas here. However, can you drive down costs? Have you investigated a dedicated server instead of EC2?

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.<p>Two suggestions:<p>- 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...<p>- 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.<p>In both the above scenarios you handle all of payments, naturally taking your cut.

most of the ideas posted by you are revenue models through advertising (where the real value of the user base is not extracted) or with more cumbersome product ecommerce tied with shipping which you don't want to do.<p>I bet you have these other ideas too - just wanted to point out that if it is an expensive hobby why not keep it as close to heart while making money too:<p>1. Sell amateur music and published albums of artists on the site.<p>2. Get musicians collaborate to create a Virtual Learning Environment<p>3. Let musicians get a private space to blog and evangelize their music to the visitors of the site for a fee. Support reviews, rating etc<p>4. Let musicians collaborate and organize music tours through the portal.<p>5. Let fans connect to their favorite musicians - ask questions, get autographs or learn music for a fee<p>Just some of the ideas to keep it close to music

Pud - First of all congratulations. 404, 772 users is serious business!<p>You already have a nice platform for musicians. How about connecting those musicians to help them form bands? As a drummer, I'm constantly looking for new people to jam with and would love to find a kick ass lead singer. It's really hard to find people outside of your social circle, and that enjoy the same music as you. Your site seems like it could really solve this pain point.<p>I'd love to be able to create a profile where I can tell people "Hey, I drum, I like metal, I can jam these days, I live in this city, lets play some music". Metallica was created when Lars / James put an ad in the newspaper, the other answered, and the rest is history. Now imagine, this sort of connection on Fandalism.<p>In terms of monetizing, I think you could use a sort of 'first look' approach like American Idol. If a band forms via your site and continues to use your platform, you could offer to sign them to your label, and give them more exposure on your site.<p>Another platform that comes to mind, is online Karaoke. American Idol, in essence, is a giant Karaoke fest. Nobody's singing their own songs. If you could create a platform where singers choose a song, and have the lyrics stream across the screen while they sing, you might be able to find some great new talent.

If you really like the site &#38; community you have built and are in it for the long term, here's an idea: build a stock market for buying a share of an individual musician's or song's future revenue.<p>With crowdfunding legislation passed, you could wait the 9 months for the SEC to determine the regulations for crowdfunding brokers and become one of the first brokers, with a focus on building a marketplace for investing in undiscovered musical talent. You could also, in the same platform, provide a secondary marketplace for reselling those shares so there is liquidity for early investors.<p>If musicians are better equipped than most to recognize the talent in other musicians, your site provides the perfect community in which to build this marketplace. The high school kid who can really jam on the guitar today might be tomorrow's superstar, and perhaps a community of musicians could recognize that, invest in him, and eventually earn a return on their investment. With the crowdfunding model, the minimum investment could be quite small and within reach for many on the site.<p>Your business model could be as a traditional broker - taking a fee for the stock purchase, or as a flat monthly fee for active traders. Or you could have your fee be in equity in every musician that sells their shares on the market, but that seems like it could generate conflicts of interest.<p>If the $2500/month burn is an immediate issue or might force a shutdown, ask your users to donate and try to get enough to cover 18 months of expenses ("personal appeal from jimmy wales"-inspired banner might work), giving the the time needed to wait for the SEC and build the marketplace.

Coldfusion? You built this with ColdFusion? Damn PUD, you're advice back in the day was to use CF for version 0.1<p>And still using it, impressive!<p>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?<p>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.

Some ideas:<p>Advertising is an idea, but the problem is, that you likely don't want random ads, selling phone sex, or other products a musician does not want.<p>I bit to late. I would have said "Come to Germany", one to three month ago, "join me at Frankfurt Music Fair, and we hustle around to hunt targeted advertisements, by shaking hand with the right people".<p>The other idea is to expand the business into a premium membership for live acts. I know that people are willing to pay for listening live to shoutcast streams. Managing shoutcast severs for musicians is one of the many small parts of my income. A good musician can earn about $50 in average per hour, by sitting in underpants in front of his computer, because people love paying tip!<p>All you need is a premium membership (accept pp and cc from listeners, payout with paypal), an own geoip shoutcast relay network, and charge some percent.<p>Last is your cost structure. You hobby costs $2,500/month. Thats a lot of money for the cloud trap. Own hosting or even co locating could be much cheaper in the long run. But you need some more admin work.<p>You can contact me in IRC (freenode #startups) or at my website <a href="http://kephra.de/" rel="nofollow">http://kephra.de/</a>

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:<p>- 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..<p>- Events - Maybe music related events (learning, or looking for performers) could be something to provide. A place to find gigs?<p>- 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.<p>- Group buy deals that you can target to your team. You get to keep a cut of the deals.<p>- 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.<p>- 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.

Depending on how many impressions you have, and how active your users are - putting a FEW adsense banners will almost certainly cover your costs.<p>What about a way to get musicians to sell their music through you? You make a small % cut on sales?<p>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.<p>What can you offer musicians that they need? Sales. Production. Marketing. How can you make all/some of that software dynamic?<p>You should try multiple things and see what works. What do you have to lose?<p>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.<p>Edit: I just googled and found these guys: <a href="http://www.hostbaby.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.hostbaby.com/</a><p>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.<p>Sure some time investment and a bit of money. But you have 400k users man! Keep going and good job.

I'm sorry, but $2,500 a month to run this site just seems high...I'm not sure what technology pud used to create the site, but it'd be interesting to know. I'd love to see my own sites get this much traffic, but damned if I could really afford to carry the success for too many months. This is where I really think the whole Rails (not saying he used rails...just using it as an example) argument of cheaper development costs but higher server costs breaks down. For the single entrepreneur, and app implemented in Rails versus one in a much faster/resource-friendy (PHP? Java?) framework/language could mean real, significant, insurmountable costs.<p>Of course, I could be wrong, and I'm sure someone will throw out the rails-is-not-the-bottleneck-the-database-is argument, but I recall reading an article about the gentleman who wrote plentyoffish.com in an unorthodox fashion with C#, and was able to run it for some time successfully on his home machine, then on <i>one</i> physical server. I think this would likely be impossible with rails.<p>And I say this as a rails fan/developer...

You have 400,000 people who actively use your product? I imagine a bunch signed up thru TC, and the initial press, but how many people use it day to day?

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?<p>Feature them, give them exposure. Get them <i>sales</i>. Just take your modest cut. 400k users is an awesome sandbox, don't waste it!

What about sponsored content? Pay a per-day fee to get promoted in the listings and therefor be a more visible part of the network?

Wow - great site!<p>You have built up a large userbase that is current free for users? I think that charging a fee for these users and for the app would not be a smart move.<p>However what about adding some paid features - like fee for promoting a profile to the front page, premium profile page (blog, sell tickets to gigs).<p>What is often overlooked is deals with corporates. Is there anyway to tie into promotional deals with companies? eg Fandalism members get discounts to gigs promoted by x event organiser? Corporate pays you a fee.<p>What do your current members say? How would they want the site to make money to keep it going?<p>Good luck - great result.

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)<p>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.

If you have advertising, perhaps try not to compromise the site visually and limit it to below the fold, and keep it relevant.<p>You could develop a section which creates/collates guides that might interest amateur musicians. Have some basic ones for free, small fee for others. Things that might appeal to amateurs: finding band-mates, splitting meagre proceeds, sticking together, battling stage nerves, inspiration for writing new material. Even up to and beyond getting your first sales online.<p>Crowdsource content by asking your more experienced users to answer questions. What's worked for them? What challenges have they overcome? What do they wish they could've told themselves 10 years ago? Maybe some content goes into a Guides section, while another goes into Fandalism Stories.<p>Allow people to flag themselves with badges like: only listening, learner, just jamming, gigging, touring, etc. Maybe charge for badges related to online sales (links to their stores), commissioned music (contact form), etc.<p>I know you're reluctant to suck amateurs dry, but you could give everyone a random chance at being featured so people don't <i>have</i> to pay, but charge for others to jump the queue and be featured in a different way. e.g., top row of results are promoted. Have a paid option to enhance/theme their page.<p>You could trade some level of careful promotion on your site with a another in exchange for opportunities to offer your users - that won't make you anything, but it will strengthen your site.

Here's an idea that I'd like you to try first. Pay what you want subscriptions. Offer a subscription service that is completely voluntary. Do not label it a donation system. It is simply a subscription service. People will pay an amount of their own choosing to support the site. Offer monthly and yearly subscription packages. See what happens. I bet you will get a significant conversion rate to paid members, all whom enjoy and want to continue using your service.

I was about to suggest the "Bands in Town" API, linking to upcoming concerts based on the "influences" section on each page, but it looks like they're about to discontinue it.<p>In that vein though, maybe let users link to recordings they have available on Amazon? use your affiliate ID and then pass on half of the revenue to each user if they reach a certain threshold?<p>Sadly, I think getting acquired (perhaps Guitar Center?) may get you more money than years of counting the pennies ever will.

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.<p>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.

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.

Very interesting post. First of all, congrats on making Fandalism such a success. I am a musician too, and 10+yrs back, I used to browse Harmony Central for all kinds of gears. Read reviews, read NAMM report, check out used gears classifieds.<p>One idea would be, just like you have artists and people give thembs up to artist, you could create profiles for gears. Then connect artists to those gears, as in artists recommending, endorsing those gears. If Fandalism is all about fans, if I am big fan of Pud the drummer, would love to know what sticks he uses and what kit he endorses.<p>Again, extending the fan aspect, sell used gears by the artists themselves to their fans. Fans will be happy to pay a premium for the used gears of the artists they follow.<p>Artist profile can be paid too. Basic profile is free to create. You can add, maybe upto 10 tracks. And to reduce your server bandwidth, stream those at lowres (low BPM encoded) for the free users. Subscribed users get hires versions. No artist wants to sound bad. That'll push many guys to be paid subscribers.

Would it be too cheesy or abusive to have showdowns? Puppyshowdown.com came up yesterday or the day before and had a good interface. What if you had musicians pick one or two of their songs to be used in head to head, this or that, contests. You could have a showdown each month then release a compilation album using the winning tracks. Revenue from the album would be shared with the musicians, you could get a small cut, and it would be a cool way for people to discover new music that has been filtered by their peers. This won't make a ton of money but it could be one little piece of the puzzle down the road.<p>There was a piece on NPR a few weeks ago about a classical music company that is doing very well releasing targeted albums on iTunes. They find out what people are searching for then compile their albums and choose relevant keyworded album titles. You could use your giant musician base to pump out indie albums to iTunes and other digital music catalogs. The albums could also be crowdsorted. You research and pick an album topic and title then set up a contest, the users crowdsort relevant tracks, you compile and release the digital album.<p>I don't know how you want to interact with other platforms but you could push updates to FB and the like "I just voted for X to be included on the upcoming album Y via Fandalism"<p>You could also make an app out of this functionality and people could listen to tracks and vote head to head or even just thumbs up or thumbs down pandora style. Everyone who was listening and voting would be sorting music for you.<p>I like to find new music but it takes a ton of effort to sort through totally unknown artists. Make it social and fun and empower sorters to contribute to a project (the albums).<p>"Help build the next great indie album @Fandalism"<p>Sorry for rambling but you just went from a music sharing site to an independent music label in 5 minutes.

I would try and use a couple of methods. Firstly highly targeted ads are pretty much a no brainer. Look at ultimate-guitar.com - they are constantly pushing video lessons etc.<p>Use the data you have and display the most relevant ads possible a la Facebook.<p>Secondly, I would consider a low cost premium model. Most musicians are desperate to promote themselves so a few dollars a month to get in front of nearly half a million viewers is good value.<p>You might find many people are looking for band mates as well, a premium model could make this process easier for them and I think would be well worth a few dollars. With half a million users you don't need to get many premium subscribers to earn a decent living from this.<p>Finally, I would try and contact some advertisers and maybe even record labels or something directly and see if they have any suggestions. They likely have more experience and will probably bite at your ankles to get some exposure on such a targeted network.<p>Bottom line, try multiple revenue streams and test, test test!<p>Good luck!

A lot of nice, practical suggestions here. Let me add one on more abstract level. But first congratulations on achieving hard thing - building two-sided market (<a href="http://cdixon.org/2010/10/16/the-ladies-night-strategy/" rel="nofollow">http://cdixon.org/2010/10/16/the-ladies-night-strategy/</a>). I think that in that situation you need to check which side benefits more from your site - and that's the one to get charged. And that's something what can be (and should be) tested - for example by this one-question technique "How would you feel if Fandalism was shut down tommorrow?" (can't find the proper link right now). The other thing to identify/verify is what actual problem does your site solve for the people and what additional value related to this problem they would appreciate (and pay for). You have quite big userbase so you don't need your own ideas anymore. Just ask people (as some people already stated here).

Musicians typically don't have a lot of money, so I wouldn't introduce premium features.<p>You do have a very niche market, so targeted advertising should work nicely.<p>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.

Imagine an internet radio station where all the songs are user-recorded tracks and the listening is based on collaborative filtering and you pressing like/dislike next to the currently-playing song...<p>400K users is a big base. If 1K or more were listening to the 'radio' at the same time, the collaborative filtering kicking in could be great!

You could follow the Dribbble model, and offer "Pro" accounts where artists could list themselves as available for hire. For bands that don't want to be hired, but just want to let their fans know where they'll be performing, give them access to MailChimp-like features to send email-blasts to their fans.

Figure out the music industry and find your place in it. There should be more than a handful of possible buyers.<p>Don't forget the value of the data you sit on / will be sitting on. It might feed up to managers/labels etc. Especially talk to the guys from BigChampagne about that.<p>Go talk to Ian Rogers from Topspin (although I'm not sure if he has a competing product), Eric Garland from LiveNation/BigChampagne, Matt Sandler from Chromatik .. find someone that can navigate you through the industry.<p>Who's on your platform more? Fans or Bands? Both groups can be catered to. Figure out which one holds more value.<p>Make it easy for artists to sell music. And try to find people who have enough from mainstream music and want to support local/smaller bands/artists. Take transaction fees?<p>Hooking up smaller venues with talent?<p>Let me know if you need an intro to someone.. Music tech should be fun :) Enjoy!

I've made some suggestions for monetization below, but I also have a suggestion for improving user engagement and stickiness:<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

It strikes me that musicians are like computer geeks, in that they often have a fair bit of expensive kit lying around and there is a fair bit of tech involved in making and recording good music.<p>So if in addition to showcasing the music, you also let the musicians talk about <i>how they make it</i>, you would both foster interesting conversations about the technicalities of the music and the tools used. That in turn is a perfect place for a marketplace for musicians to connect and buy/sell second-hand items - and a very valuable spot for companies to advertise gear to interested buyers or an opportunity to charge the site's members themselves for posting ads.<p>Also, finding session musicians who can stand in or help with a recording session may be another reason members might want to advertise to each other.

I'm not a musician, but I have some friends who dabble with music. I've seen them hunt for guitar tabs online to learn new songs, and it always looks like a sad night of romance with Notepad. Is there a better system for sharing tabs than a basic text file?<p>Either way, how about a more elegant system of recording tabs that can also be sync'd to streaming tracks (like SoundCloud, except with scrolling tabs instead of the spectrum graph) or sync'd to YouTube videos.<p>All this talk of monetizing and better user connections is great, but what about better technical tools that make the actual creation of music easier? Build a garage of well-loved tools and they'll finish the rest of the house for you.

Firstly, Congrats. Around half a million users in three months is a great achievement.<p>But as for 'now what?': I noticed that there is nothing in your list that I would state as being a direct win/win. Almost every item on your list seems like a distraction (yes, a distraction that will get you the really important money).<p>The exception is your suggestion of 'premium features'. But, if not done correctly, you start competing with yourself - and your free users might start to resent you. Instead, what if you focused on one or more features that are:<p>(a) free but bring you revenue - like helping users sell albums (and taking a small cut).<p>(b) require payment because of some limitations - like showcasing a users profile for a day.

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).<p>Often, asking users you've treated well to chip in works fantastically.

If I were in that position, I'd try to participate in advertising scheme for concert tickets for the very same artists whose pages you visit. That's something that could even add value for the visitors.

What say the musicians? What are their pain points? And really focus on disruptive, as that is where the ripest of opportunities remain.<p>Just don't try to be the ______ (Craigslist/Facebook/Pinterest/HotOrNot) for musicians because _____ is probably sufficient, if not better for the simple reason that it's already being utilized and substitution is unlikely to be the droid that you are looking for.<p>Though I'm not a musician myself, you've really piqued my interest and I'm going to go poll my surprisingly large collection of musician friends and acquaintances...

@khangtoh - American Idol online - Isn't that just Ourstage? won't fandalism already capture this with the "props" feature that already exists on the site?<p>@mladenkovacevic- Re: A Discovery engine for Musicians to find one another and "jam" over the internet - +1 Others have pitched this, but not with @pud 's vibrant user base. As far as monetization worries, a cool tool of this kind is just as much a sound business model as any site fueled by display ads. Here's why in my opinion...at this stage in the development of the consumer web every product's success is a function of its ability to capture the waking hours of the consumers' disposable leisure time (this isn't the 90s when every web site was supposed to have the same business model as the new york times). Consider this assumption. Musicians spend a lot of time playing music alone and with each other, possibly more than instagramers spend taking pictures. Ultimately, especially if the bull market for venture backed companies continues, someone will create a way to capture these disposable leisure hours from the wide user base of musicians. but @pud it would be a lot easier with half a million users...<p>@replax Mic Quality Problem a) A fair point, but its worth considering the fact that most musicians would cede a high quality mic for the ability to interact with one another. Also, lets not forget that the barriers to entry for a powerful microphone have come down considerably in the last ten years. Today, a Blue Snowball (&#60;$100 used maybe new) will compete with microphones that were well above its price range ten years ago.<p>Also check out the iRig. The possibilities are endless and could tie back into the mobile platform @cruso (building a quick mobile app) and the online @mladenkovacevic jam session idea.<p>P.s. its interesting that crusso's was the only post that mentioned mobile<p>@replax again Bandwidth Problem b) key problem that every video chat service has been able to overcome, and if we can't solve it now we will be able to solve it shortly as bandwidth improves...<p>Thanks for the opening up the dialogue pud. This is an exciting space. Excited to see where people take this, but you have a one up with your years of experience and rock solid user base (don't leave them hanging!) :)<p>P.S. ur servers were down temporarily last night ;)

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.<p>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?<p>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.<p>Best of luck, musicians are a hard lot to monetize.

I would recommend checking the NextBigSound to make the best of your site. <a href="http://nextbigsound.com/premier/beta" rel="nofollow">http://nextbigsound.com/premier/beta</a>

Could you facilitate IRL meetings like Meetup? I.e a Jam-up? Sometimes I just want to hook up with someone in my area, but I'm too lazy to make it happen. A few local ambassadors could probably do a lot to get that going.<p>This is an example of something similar facilitated by a pro: <a href="http://www.gratefulweb.com/articles/first-otis-taylor-trance-blues-jam-festival-success" rel="nofollow">http://www.gratefulweb.com/articles/first-otis-taylor-trance...</a>

I was talking to a musician friend of mine about a website I plan on building and he mentioned a hip-hop centered site that made a mix-tape track everyday. The artists on the site paid for a slot on the mix-tape and it was available for anyone to download for free. I think it would be cool to have a few mix-tapes, separated by different genres, maybe once a week. I'd probably even pay to get a mix of all new artists every week.

FYI here's a presentation of Pud's that I was listening to just by coincidence earlier this evening: <a href="http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2011/08/big-omaha-video-series-philip-kaplan" rel="nofollow">http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2011/08/big-omaha-video-se...</a><p>Also heard Pud speak at the Open CF Summit <a href="http://opencfsummit.org/" rel="nofollow">http://opencfsummit.org/</a> in February but I don't think that talk is online yet.

A while back someone posted a "digital busking" project he made for his father, a musician. Maybe give fans a way to throw a few coins into their favorite artist's digital guitar case? You sell the coins, artists can then use them to buy promoted listings and such on your site.<p>(if anyone can find a link to the Show HN post I'm referring to, I'd appreciate it... something about mp3busking I think)

To cover the cost of running the site, partner with Amazon or Ebay as an affiliate and get a cut of any sales which are generated by the site.

One possibility which I think is overlooked is simply to ask for money from your users.<p>Add a "badges" feature (i.e. "X Followers", "Y Plays") and then ask for contributions in return for a "Fandalism Supporter" badge.<p>It won't serve long term - but it may tide you over in costs for a couple of months, allowing you to focus on the site &#38; users. In which time a proper business model may emerge.

How about: "The Fandalism Bundle"<p>Just like all those "indie game and app bundle" sites, but you source the goodies from your musical userbase. It could be anything, but enough to be of "value" for say 10 bucks, or $25, or $50 or whatever, i.e. 10 mp3s, 2 cds, 1 t-shirt, 25 stickers -- whatever, just start small and built it up in future bundle "events".<p>edit: and of course, you take a cut.

Just add features incrementally, you don't have to go for broke straight away. I'd start with small ones that can give you an easy return (marketplace etc), then see how it goes.<p>You're lucky: at the moment the market for "social network for musicians" is wide open, thanks to the demise of MySpace and the fact that Facebook doesn't seem to mind that space.

I'd love to learn how you grew so quickly.<p>Affiliate income on tabs, sheet music, musical equipment, recording equipment.<p>Subscriptions - just like DeviantArt or Flickr.<p>Use Earbits's business model - pay money to promote bands. People who play music listen to music. After all, you are building out an audience.<p>Sell tutorials - hire the best guitarists to teach techniques, etc. Just like on the iMac.

Or what about...<p>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.<p>So I say I like "Nirvana" and your player matches me to undiscovered artists that are similar? I LOVE discovering new music.

You could follow soundcloud's business model and offer premium services like more uploads and things of that nature.

thanks for posting this - i actually had a similar start with my start up, artmeme. after hearing "expensive hobby" to "business hobby" i can relate. took me over 2 years to find out what the art community needed. this all through the on and off line community i built. get a newsletter going if you dont have one already. i'd love to hear how i can improve and generate some cash flow. i think you got the concept there - just continuing to build the community - you'll figure out what's needed after surveying musicians to see what's lacking in their community. this might be a good udemy for musicians down the road...i also praise you for reaching out and getting feedback. not many people can put their pride down for a second. would love to hear where you end up going with it. good luck!

You could become a music publisher! Allow the artists to sell their songs for ~.5 usd and you take 10% of that. I know everyone of them would be very glad if someone paid anything for their music, and it would help pay for the site (and make you a millionaire, who knows!)

A music selling platform sounds like a pretty good idea for this I'd say. It could be a one stop shop for searching for music, interacting with artists, and buying music. Might be interesting. Take some notes from Myspace Music, Bandcamp, and Ultimate-Guitar.

Check out <a href="http://headliner.fm" rel="nofollow">http://headliner.fm</a>. Marketplace for musicians to promote each other and grow their respective fan bases through social media. Seems like a win-win for both of you and you'll gain a revenue model.

I would also apply to a start up hosting program. Many hosting companies offer big discounts or even free hosting in exchange for a "powered by" on the bottom of site. Not going to solve your problem but at least reduce monthly cost.

Another idea: marketplace for independent musicians? Seems like with a little tweaking it could be a great way to find studio musicians, wedding bands or even teachers. AirBnB for musician rentals?

IIUC, Muziboo.com is a similar site and they do offer pro features : <a href="http://www.muziboo.com/tour/" rel="nofollow">http://www.muziboo.com/tour/</a>

I like the idea of meetups. It would be nice to have a feature that allows a group of musicians to arrange a get together, jam session, to play music.

Drop me a line.. your users could come in handy.

If they want, let them provide links to their songs on the itunes/&#60;mp3 store&#62;, add your affiliate code to the links. $$$

My first thought: Make the free app- with ads. Then provide an ad-free version for $0.99. Nothing brilliant here, at the moment.

I'm curious, if you do you something like adsense, what kind of revenue can you expect?

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

so how did he go from 0 to half a million users in three months? or is this just another rockstar founder effect?

I'm honored, you're asking us... ?

404,772 problems, but a paying customer ain't one.

Command them to start building the giant death ray immediately, then to wait patiently for further instructions.

Billion dollar valuation. Thats how heard it works I heard.

You could sell the site on <a href="http://flippa.com" rel="nofollow">http://flippa.com</a>