business

Vincent 2023-07-04T20:39:06.585359Z

Hi there. Not sure if this channel is active, but I have built a new product using only Clojure 😄 and I want some feedback on my pricing model. I reckon this is an all-right place to inquire.

lukasz 2023-07-05T16:35:03.524299Z

I'd be more than happy to help! Also building a product on Clojure, hopefully launching a private beta in few weeks 🤞

Vincent 2023-07-05T22:43:21.060019Z

awesome, keep at it! so I am working on a collaborative [multiplayer] reviews site for music, i'm currently splitting up the features per tier and was looking for feedback on that. what sort of app are you working on if you are comfortable sharing at this juncture?

lukasz 2023-07-05T22:44:57.831489Z

is it like a competitor to https://www.allmusic.com/ ?

lukasz 2023-07-05T22:45:16.488139Z

more than happy to share, private beta signup is here: https://collieapp.com

Vincent 2023-07-05T22:46:12.460199Z

yeah, a competitor built on websockets and clojure, with different goals

Vincent 2023-07-05T22:48:34.157609Z

collie sounds cool, just watched the video 😄

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Vincent 2023-07-05T22:51:43.318369Z

i have a collie mix 🐕‍🦺 so I like the name, too

lukasz 2023-07-05T22:53:57.131839Z

my first question would be about the business model: what is the incentive for people to pay for music reviews?

Vincent 2023-07-05T23:05:17.148349Z

fair question. the problem of music discovery for new musicians and artists is a real one. so this is mainly aimed at helping musicians get exposure, which is the target customer.

Vincent 2023-07-05T23:06:47.479709Z

say you have a band, your band makes a new track, you want to get it heard by lots of people, there are not many ways to accomplish that today without: spending a lot of money or building an online presence over time

lukasz 2023-07-05T23:11:48.344569Z

yeah, it's hard, one reason I don't promote my own music - I just don't have much time :-)

lukasz 2023-07-05T23:12:04.792609Z

I'm still not clear on the business model: what do I actually pay for?

Vincent 2023-07-05T23:16:00.038169Z

great question! the free tier: weekly fresh music newsletter lifetime membership (one-time charge) : can add stuff to the review queue, can rate tracks, can access chatroom

lukasz 2023-07-05T23:18:58.262339Z

how much validation of the model have you done?

lukasz 2023-07-05T23:20:39.987889Z

I only built/worked on B2B so that's where my experience is, not so much with B2C, but being a musician there's something that feels off - reminds me of my experience with https://www.submithub.com/ - you pay to get your music reviewed, and if all goes well - the tracks are being published on high traffic sites/playlists/etc but in practice people have very little success with this type of approach

Vincent 2023-07-05T23:21:36.097429Z

recently there was a project on hacker news that re-affirmed the model for me (http://non.io) although their's is donation / pick what you want. my model has a bit of a twist: the lifetime membership price increases slightly with each new customer (to add a sense of urgency to sign up)

lukasz 2023-07-05T23:21:39.428379Z

I think having a thread on https://www.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/ could be helpful to gauge interest - in tactful way of course :-) they would be your target market so it's a great way to do some validation

lukasz 2023-07-05T23:22:05.844929Z

ah yeah, the pinboard approach - I always wanted to test that but it doesn't work with b2b really

Vincent 2023-07-05T23:22:26.219999Z

pinboard?

Vincent 2023-07-05T23:24:39.113539Z

thanks for mentioning submit-hub, it's not exactly the same but it's yet another thing in the space 😅 my plan is to fashion a high quality collection of fresh tracks into a curated music magazine, so this is sorta step 1 slash the ongoing harvesting step

Vincent 2023-07-05T23:25:22.069639Z

so if you submit something to submit hub there's no guarantee it gets featured?

lukasz 2023-07-05T23:26:54.755379Z

at all

lukasz 2023-07-05T23:27:14.014109Z

pinboard did the same pricing strategy: the price was going up by a fraction with every new signup I believe

lukasz 2023-07-05T23:27:19.866379Z

or just every month would increase

Vincent 2023-07-05T23:28:23.971309Z

Nice. I used chat-gpt4 to run some numbers and i'm just increasing the price by $0.25 each customer.

Vincent 2023-07-05T23:29:34.555409Z

our app is basically a curated music database and the entrypoint to the database for new music is the "review queue" you can add any track by any artist (your band or another band) to the queue once a month with a lifetime membership and it's guaranteed to get into the database and the feed. i guess that's the main difference with other things.

lukasz 2023-07-05T23:33:49.837069Z

the only thing I'd suggest is to do more research with more musicians, even though I'm one, I'd pay only if I saw that there's some traction and people have results... which is a bit of a catch-22 for you

lukasz 2023-07-05T23:34:18.839589Z

getting critical mass for marketplaces (this is sort of one) is very hard, as you're building for two user bases (reviewers/listeners & artists)

lukasz 2023-07-05T23:34:55.656599Z

and review sites like G2 or Capterra (in the software space) always felt a bit weird to me, they really are playing a weird game while trying to be impartial in the process

lukasz 2023-07-05T23:35:10.559109Z

I hope this helps in any way!

Vincent 2023-07-05T23:36:21.864519Z

@lukaszkorecki it helps a lot my friend i appreciate it. yeah, thinking of 2 customer bases is key, since the one customer comes when there is plenty of the other

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