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Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

• ryan-duve 6y ago
  What a nice, positive note to start the day off. Congratulations on your success. Feedback: - Could you remove the email requirement for getting started? Maybe figure out a way for people to associate an email account after they do the "Getting Started"? - Could you put a back button on the tutorial? - In addition to the poll at the end of the tutorial, I hope you are capturing implicit feedback data to determine how effective it is. Things like average time between clicks and whether users click the buttons you suggest immediately after are indicators of effectiveness. - For the registration form, maybe get rid of either the label "Display Name" or the placeholder text "Your Artist Name..."? It was confusing having them be different. As for actual content, unfortunately I can't help you. I don't have any personal music to upload so someone else will have to give you feedback. I hope my suggestions on registration were helpful. Congratulations again on your early success and good luck expanding in 2021.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    These points are helpful. Thanks for taking the time to reply. - Yeah I don't actually use the email address for anything other than sending updates about the product and standard marketing stuff. So I'm open experimenting with this to see how it affects conversion. - Yeah... this is a good idea. Consider it done. - Yeah I use a service to make the tutorials and they have a great dashboard. - Hundred percent... I didn't realise I had named them differently. Thanks so much.
• aazaa 6y ago
  Congrats! From the Why I Built page: > Years later, and I've taken a job in software at a large media company. I'll name no names but this company had music brands that were (and are) known globally. How have you navigated intellectual property to SongBox with your current employer, who it sounds like works in the same industry and who might have claim on some part of what you've created?
  • gigamick 6y ago
    I no longer work for that company, however the IP really doesn't have any crossover. They were a media company; magazines and radio.
    • dogma1138 6y ago
      If you worked on this while employed without getting a waiver their lawyers might beg to differ in the UK pretty much every contract I’ve seen has “we own all your discoveries unless stated otherwise” clause in it.
      • yitchelle 6y ago
        That clause is pretty much universal. Defending / enforcing it is whole different story.
        • Silhouette 6y ago
          That sort of clause is pretty much universally challenged by anyone with a bit of experience and credibility, too, at least here in the UK. And so it should be. That goes whether we're talking about inventions (which normally means patents) or other intellectual property such as copyright (which appears to be what we're talking about in OP's situation). "In the course of your employment" or similar words used to be a more reasonable standard that was widely considered fair to both sides for salaried employees. In other words, things you do on company time, using company resources and/or in the company's line of business go to the company, but they have no claim beyond that. I haven't spoken to a lawyer about this recently, so if the issue might affect you, please check whether this is still correct and don't just rely on my comment here.
• dahx4Eev 6y ago
  Slightly off-topic - how did you get started?
  • gigamick 6y ago
    In terms of making my first sale or in terms of actually sitting down at the computer to write code?
    • agustif 6y ago
      I'm more interested on the second, as the first one seems just a consequence of being disciplined on first one but adding whatever else than code, but still producing / doing deep work, like any marketing related copywriting stuff, design, which is usually code anyways, etc... I recently came upon lots of free time and I'm more and more inclined to do one side project, I don't think it will free me to need a 9to5 job in the meantime, but at least I can be productive without being bossed around and just do whatever I want with it. Might as well try to launch something public instead of acummulating unused private repos on github, I mean they're free now (thx microsoft overlords) but still failures on forgotten drawers... Sorry for my random rant, thanks for sharing your experience!
• jillesvangurp 6y ago
  Good website with a clear pitch. Some suggestions: - maybe factor number of listens into your pricing rather than tracks to nudge people into higher pricing around the time they are broadening their outreach. - think about automating distribution to soundcloud, youtube, spotify, etc. as a next step. Could be interesting for e.g. podcast creators to not have to micromanage each of those. Probably some or all of those have APIs for this.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    These are good shouts, thanks. I had already put in the roadmap digital distribution a la iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal etc... however didn't think of the Soundcloud / Youtube angle. Thanks!
    • 45ure 6y ago
      I would like to add Mixcloud to your list, if it is not already on your radar.
• ohitsdom 6y ago
  Congrats, it looks great! How did you get the testimonials? Reach out to "power users" (based on usages numbers)? Or did you specifically recruit artists to your platform?
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Yeah, I think one of the things I do that - perhaps - many people don't, is that I email everyone who signs up. or at least I did for a long long time. Not sustainable anymore. Now I email everyone who takes a paid plan. But yeah to answer your questions I just email everyone like a human being. Not like some marketer gasbag. I build relationships, make sure I'm on point when someone has an issue, and then just ask them for a testimonial. All the testimonials on there just are are legit paying customers.
    • m4tthumphrey 6y ago
      Theres many tools out there that will handle the follow up marketing part for you. Most will offer powerful workflow tools based on conditions etc.
      • gigamick 6y ago
        I do utilise such tools but I 100% advocate for being a human being and just speaking to people. Customers really appreciate it. I guess its not for everyone, and it's not infinitely scaleable but it is highly valuable in the early stages.
        • beaconstudios 6y ago
          I think this is the essence of the much-bandied "do things that don't scale" advice. Scaling inherently involves abstraction and generalisation, engaging with individual human beings can generate much clearer insights until it becomes impractical (scale being a forced issue).
          • 6y ago
• Hnrobert42 6y ago
  I don’t know why, but I expected a much less professional site. That is a compelling site. I only figured out what it is you do when I got to the pricing, but I am not your target audience. Musicians might be able to see the value prop more quickly. Regardless, as one who has never even had the courage to hang his own shingle, I am impressed.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thank you very much. I have put a lot of effort into the homepage. Like... a lot. Months and months of A/B testing copy, images, price points. I'm happy with it and I appreciate your words. Thank you.
    • brianwawok 6y ago
      I would be careful A/B testing at such a small scale. You are going to hit so much noise, it's not usually a great use of time. Just make it feel good and go from there. A/B testing works great at google scale.
      • gigamick 6y ago
        I hear you and sometimes the results weren't conclusive but I did uncover a few gems. particularly around pricing and the hero statement. I would rather do it than not.
        • wpietri 6y ago
          You did the right thing. You need Google-scale traffic to tease out subtleties, fractional gains. But at your stage you were looking for big signals. And clearly you found them. Congrats!
      • panosfilianos 6y ago
        This totally depends on the sample size and the impact that you'd like to measure. You can get very actionable results with a 95% confidence and 80% power at a few thousand sessions.
• hoschicz 6y ago
  Why only $30 for the Pro plan?
  • gigamick 6y ago
    It was $50, it was $7. I've done a bunch of experimentation of price points over the years and the setup now converts by far the best. Started seeing conversions shoot up instantly upon deploying the latest pricing. Prior to this setup it was $10, $25 and $50. No-one took out pro. When I changed to $10, $20 and $30 it all changed. Now the majority of my paying customers are on the $20 and $30 plans.
    • jacquesm 6y ago
      Note that such things are not written in stone and it may be worth experimenting again a while later. You may be drawing in different customers with different sized wallets and attitudes.
      • gigamick 6y ago
        Oh definitely! I will look at pricing again in the new year. I am contemplating reducing from 3 to 2 plans as well.
• topbanana 6y ago
  Looks good. Too many fonts on the landing page!
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Subjective. But I appreciate the feedback. I'll look into it.
• kevsim 6y ago
  uBlock Origin blocks your player at the bottom of the screen. Not sure why.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Hmm... thanks for that pointer. I'll investigate that. Cheers
    • rndgermandude 6y ago
      Yeah, does for me too: >Filter: /api/v1/track/* >Filter List: EasyPrivacy >https://songbox.rocks/api/v1/track/6d2c872d-fb1b-11e8-87d2-42010a8400b6 https://songbox.rocks/api/v1/track/6d2c872d-fb1b-11e8-87d2-4... Probably some generic analytics blocking filter.
      • kevsim 6y ago
        Yeah, "track" in your URL seems to be the culprit. Bad luck.
        • gigamick 6y ago
          Groan..... urgh thanks for pointing out. I will remedy.
• showsover 6y ago
  Congratulations! It's honestly very encouraging to read about it taking so long. Usually you hear about these 3-month projects that hit 1k MRR like it's the most normal thing in the world. It might be a bit egoistical, but this makes me feel better about my project going at a snail's pace (after 6 months I have something barely resembling an MVP).
  • gigamick 6y ago
    No, I see those stories in the same way that I see stories about people winning the lottery; it can happen, but it probably won't. Growing slowly has aided me hugely in being able to refine and optimise as I went. If I had the money to throw at marketing 2 years ago, to get loads of eyeballs on the site, it would have failed. Because the product wasn't ready then. It's been 2 years of listening to feedback and making incremental changes that has allowed me to really start growing revenue this year.
    • showsover 6y ago
      Thanks for replying. If you don't mind me asking, how did you get your first users and when did you decide it was worth asking money for?
      • gigamick 6y ago
        I decided it was worth asking money for before I laid a finger to the keyboard. Getting first users was really tough. I "launched" on product hunt and that was a bomb. I posted around some forums and that got some attention, but it was a post on reddit that was seen by the owner of a niche forum for audio engineers that helped. He allowed to me to post in their commercial thread and that got me going with a bunch of audio engineers who saw real value in the product. That burst of interest and Q&A gave me a TON of feedback to improve things and add features. Then things just VERY slowly started to snowball. and I do mean VERY SLOWLY. I also get a lot of traffic from organic google searches as I rank number 1 in google for some very relevant search terms. Even outranking soundcloud. Have no idea how that happened. As far as I'm concerned it was 2 years of refining the product. Only in the past 6 months have I seen consistent month on month growth, and it's still very early days.
• realusername 6y ago
  Congrats! I've never been great in the business & marketing side on my case for my side-project, are you coming from a developer background? It's not been completely a waste of time on my case at least though, I learned new tech stuff and it's a great addition on my CV.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    My career is actually in Product Management, but yes I am a developer... not the best developer but I can make anything I choose to. I think the product management background is what has helped me as I focus on the user and the product... focus on value. Rightly or wrongly I don't get hung up on code, infrastructure etc. The only thing matters (in my opinion) is that if a user sits down to use it, does it provide them a benefit. That is what I have been (and am) laser focussed on.
• Glench 6y ago
  Congrats! I had no idea what this product was or why it was useful until I read the Why I Built This page, but then again I'm not your target customer.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    No that's totally cool. I appreciate the feedback.
  • spyke112 6y ago
    Having used Siundcloud a ton, i can definitely see the appeal here, especially the “we do not compress” thing! That’s really nice!
    • gigamick 6y ago
      Awesome! thanks for the feedback. A lot of people who have come from Soundcloud said that was a thing, so I thought I should point it out on the homepage.
• xbar 6y ago
  Congratulations!
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thank you!
• holoduke 6y ago
  Very nice. Congrats. Keep on going. I remember that I started with my side project back in 2011. A small app. It made like 1 dollar a month. I spend like 8 hours on it every day and night next to my normal day job. People were thinking I was insane. After 1 year, it made like 1 dollar per day. Then few months later I got 20 dollars in one single day. Another few months later it made for the first time 100 dollars a day. Still worked on it for many many hours. App is still running today and generating 2k per day. It gave me freedom to quit my day job and the opportunity to start a business as around it a few years ago. And just recently I started an entire new (more serious) fintech business. Although I know it's not easy to start something like I did. But on the other hand. Most people are not even trying it. I always tell people to really start making something you feel passionate about. (I am talking from a developers perspective) Don't look at others and don't do something other want you to do. If money is the motive, then you will fail for sure.
  • jacquesm 6y ago
    I love these stories a lot more than that I love the venture capitalist backed start-up that makes 3x for their investors.
    • gigamick 6y ago
      100% ditto
    • jiofih 6y ago
      That new fintech venture is most definitely backed by VC.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thanks for sharing this. There are echoes of my own journey here. I truly believe that "slow and steady wins the race".
  • coderunner 6y ago
    Would you mind sharing what your app is? I'm curious what level of technical sophistication is needed for an app that makes $2k/day. Was it more engineering or marketing or equally both that helped you gain users and traction?
• epalm 6y ago
  Cool project, I like that you've clearly stated on the front page exactly what it's for. Just FYI the bottom of your Blog pages contains a button with a strange label CANVAS::BLOG.BUTTON.NEXT Also the link to your Privacy Policy has (almost) the same foreground and background color. https://i.imgur.com/HcU0wOy.png https://i.imgur.com/HcU0wOy.png
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Ooops... thanks so much I will address these issues tonight.
    • epalm 6y ago
      No problem! PS I think your Pro tier is too cheap ;) anyone that wants to remove your branding (and perhaps whitelabel the product as their own?) is a big enough outfit to pay more than what you're asking.
      • gigamick 6y ago
        You're not the first person to say that. It used to be $50 a month and no-one took me up on that, however the product has evolved quite a bit since then. Will re-look at pricing in the new year. Thanks a lot for your input, it is appreciated!
        • stuaxo 6y ago
          Sometimes people respect things when they cost more. Corporates and other businesses won't blink at paying bigger amounts than this, if you can tell them how much support they are going to get for their money.
• microtherion 6y ago
  Looks very nice! Do you have some sort of upload API, so music creation software could potentially upload directly, without going through a GUI? (I realize this may be an exotic request, so I understand if this is not of interest for you to implement).
  • gigamick 6y ago
    I use filestack.com for uploading and handling assets.. so yes I do believe this could be a possibility. Do you see a use case for this?
    • microtherion 6y ago
      This may not be a particularly compelling use case for you, but one of my side projects is a music editor that can generate and upload sheet music and backing tracks for existing or new compositions: https://woodshed.in https://woodshed.in While there are tons of image sharing sites with suitable APIs for this, it's surprisingly hard to find audio sharing sites (maybe due to piracy concerns?).
• pgt 6y ago
  Congrats! In Cape town $500 is my monthly rent when sharing a flat.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    haha well I'm Scotland and the way I look at it is that it now pays for my car, fuel etc. So I see that as significant.
• mtlynch 6y ago
  Congrats! I went full time on my own projects back in early 2018, and I only recently started making significant money from it. I like following along with indie developers. Do you blog anywhere or post about your progress? For reference, here are some indie developers whose regular progress updates I enjoy: * Cory Zue, creator of SaaS Pegasus and PlaceCardMe: https://www.coryzue.com/writing/ https://www.coryzue.com/writing/ * Jen, creator of Lunch Money: https://lunchbag.ca/ https://lunchbag.ca/ * Allison Seboldt, creator of Fantasy Congress: https://allisonseboldt.com/ https://allisonseboldt.com/
  • gigamick 6y ago
    I actually don't... I mean I have a blog where I post the odd article at my other site, https://division77.com https://division77.com but I didn't think anyone would be interested in my ramblings. Maybe this thread has changed my mind on that.
• avrgamp 6y ago
  What tech stack have you used to build this?
  • gigamick 6y ago
    backend is laravel hosted on Heroku with a MariaDB. Front end is just plain old HTML and CSS.
    • avrgamp 6y ago
      Thanks and congratulations!
• MrDresden 6y ago
  Congratulations on the achievement! The site looks very good, and the idea is very appealing (though I am not a target customer). Will point Songbox out to my audio producing friends. One question in regards to where the audio is being served; would it be possible to proxy it through Songbox from another origin point?
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Just so you're not recommending a competitor, it's songbox :-) not soundbox. Hmmm... I'm unsure of wether you could host the audio somewhere else and serve it through songbox. It's an interesting proposition though and one I will look into.
    • MrDresden 6y ago
      Ah ops, fixed that for the history. Songbox it is ;)
      • gigamick 6y ago
        haha thanks.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• ricardo03_c 6y ago
  In the pricing page, the "Starter" pack is vertically unaligned with the other 3. Using Chrome desktop. Is that on purpose? Coincidentally it has one line of text less than the other 3, hmmm..
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Not intentional but not a dealbreaker to me. However... I will remedy :-)
• fileeditview 6y ago
  With no experience in this business I wonder if some of your plans (especially "Pro") are priced to cheaply?! Great story! Keep going. I still have a side project that basically goes unmaintained for several years now but only returns about a hundred bucks a month. I think it still has potential but for several reasons I totally lost the passion for it.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thanks a lot. What's you side business? You should consider selling it.
    • fileeditview 6y ago
      It's namesmith.io. A tool for finding business names and their corresponding free domains. I had some offers but they basically all were just cheap and not worth any time. There is money to be made in this market but generally my experience with domains is that it's a pain.
• ehvatum 6y ago
  Congrats! After two decades as a salaried engineer, my brain was convinced that customers would give me money just for being a superior human being. People who were brought up right might not have this problem when they start a new thing, but I think that all too often this thinking creeps in with success. In my case, the world beat it out of me as I tried to make and sell things for profit, because I started rotten and had to get better, but as a decent human being, you should stay exposed to the rigors of serving your customers.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thank you! How are you getting on with your own projects now?
    • ehvatum 6y ago
      We are in the black, and I'm investing time in people to help carry weight. It's at least as hard as the core business. Offering a slice of potential big profits to intelligent people who can't get their shit together does nothing to help them get their shit together. It does the opposite; they fall apart and descend into playing mind games with me. Paying them a reasonable amount the instant they finish an assignment actually works.
• bacheson1293 6y ago
  Congrats! I ramped a little faster but followed the same path. The project started at my kitchen table now grosses $13M per year (10 years later). Keep going my friend; the road will be rocky but it's well worth the time and effort once you reach the top of the mountain!
  • gigamick 6y ago
    wow - congratulations to you! that is awesome. lol if I get to £1000 MRR I will be jumping for joy. Over £1m mrr is insane!
    • bacheson1293 6y ago
      when I was at your stage I thought the idea of $1M/m was an impossible dream...it's not...just keep iterating, listening to your users, following your gut and make good decisions everyday
      • gigamick 6y ago
        Thanks so much. I got goosebumps reading that comment lol.
• pendar747 6y ago
  Are you going to add more features to the audio player? The one that's featured on the home page doesn't let you skip to the middle of the the song etc. Thanks for sharing your experience, it's quite useful for all of us to learn.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Yeah that's the embed. The players on the actual songbox pages themselves are nicer. I may pull the embed functionality as I don't think it's used much. Maybe when songbox scales it will be useful but right now the main use of my product is for tracks that are NOT YET public, so the embed thing was probably a waste of my time lol.
• jviotti 6y ago
  Cool stuff. Apart from a Software Engineer, I'm a musician/producer and the idea of having better stats about who listens to what and for how long sounds pretty appealing. I'm giving it a spin now and will write my thoughts as I go through it: - My first concern before signing up that the landing page is not answering very well for me is how the UX looks for my listeners. I see a screenshot of what seems like a mobile app, but I'm not sure how accurate that is, and how it would look like on i.e. a laptop - After I signed-up, the main call to action asked me to create a "SongBox". I guess this is the term you use for a playlist, and the in-app short tutorial also hinted at that but I'm wondering if this is a term that some people might be confused about, at least at the beginning. I definitely did get a bit confused - I have some copyrighted songs, but also some demos I'm working on at the moment. It'd be nice if the UI made it clear whether is safe or not to share non-copyrighted files through the platform to get feedback, etc (some platforms such as SoundBetter apparently have some protection for this as part of their terms of use). I don't know if this is the case so I will only upload copyrighted files - A small thing that can probably be easily fixed: I started by creating a SongBox, which prompted me to upload the files I wanted to add to the SongBox. After I uploaded some files, the songs remained unchecked by default, which meant that the main call to action to continue creating the SongBox would not actually add the songs by default to my SongBox. Because I started with the goal of creating a SongBox (the main call to action) and I did not have existing files, the product could be really sure that I did wanted to add those songs and at least check them my default or omit the whole song-checking phase - Having two different screens to select the songs I want to add and then to also sort the selected ones felt a little bit weird. Maybe they can be joined into a single screen where you can select & sort at the same time? (i.e. the selected ones bubble up to the top and you can sort them in place?) - I get the link to share, which is exciting, but again, I have no idea how this will look like, so I have to open a private browser tab to try it out before feeling confident to share it. Maybe the product can at least show me how it looks on this screen? (i.e. embedded at the right?) - I didn't realise I could customise my bio until opening the page. Maybe the wizard I followed could have suggested me to do that if I was creating my first SongBox and I did not fill it yet? - Cool stuff! I can see analytics coming in right away! What did seem super weird is that if a song is playing and I jump to another section of that same track (i.e. to skip part of it) then SongBox dashboard shows that as 2 different plays. Having the ability to know at which points of the track (i.e. minutes & seconds) people try to skip forward to another section vs just stopping the song would be killer! - After some initial plays the average listening time looks very skewed. It shows a lot, lot more listening seconds that I actually did. Maybe there is something wrong with the average calculations? Overall I think the idea of having better analytics for how people listen to your song is super nice. I'll keep an eye on the platform but the stats I got based on my own plays through private browser tabs seemed not very accurate, so I'm hesitant to trust it more for the time being. Hope that helps!
• read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  FWIW, I personally found the gradients a bit too pronounced, and the "EPK*" thing stood out a bit because if you're going to put an asterisk wouldn't it be visually cleaner to just fully write it out? Other than that it's a clean look. Congrats, your story is inspiring.
  • stuaxo 6y ago
    Similarly - it looks, nice - the shadow + soft effect could be a bit more subtle.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    I'll experiment with this tonight. Thanks for the feedback.
• avinoth 6y ago
  Congratulations is due! The journey sounds very similar to what I'm going through, though in my case acquisition was the end result, couldn't see it through to the 3 digit $$. Built an app 3 years ago, just kept at it and it was on a constant cycle of losing interest and suddenly bursting out features then losing interest again over and over. Nevertheless, I get the grind and I respect it. It isn't easy keeping at something for these many years on the side especially without any rewards. There will be this inevitable impulse to just kill it and move on to the new one when after the excitement wanes off (it definitely makes sense for certain projects). Kudos for keeping it up! Keep on going.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thanks, how did your acquisition end up happening? what MRR did you sell it at?
    • avinoth 6y ago
      It was via microacquire.com, the MRR was mostly around ~$90 for a year or so and was on the same when sold. Expenses were around ~$5/mo. so just kept it on maintenance mode. I decided to sell primarily because there were lots of enterprise companies' interests with people reaching out for bulk pricing and stuff, but I've really lost motivation on this project at that point so put it up for sale if anyone's interested to take it in that direction.
      • fbxio 6y ago
        Out of curiosity, how much did you sell it for? And can you share some details how your side project had been valued to derive the final sale price?
• btown 6y ago
  This is a really great idea, kudos! You might want to look at Docsend for feature and marketing inspiration - they started by allowing mainly startup pitch/sales decks to be tracked in much the same way your audio clips are, but have since expanded to a wide variety of enterprise use cases. I can only imagine that the music industry has many such use cases, including enterprise-style auditing/reporting needs and the ability to limit an audio file's distribution to within an organization. Not for the faint of heart to approach that, but there could be real opportunities there. Some other random thoughts: This would be a perfect UI to standardize the pattern a lot of YouTube ads do: a ~5 second teaser clip that pre-plays the full material. With this and other network features as you grow (say, "submit demos to my SongBox drop box, and then I can quick-review my inbound SongBox feed"), you could gain the reputation of - "if I receive a demo on SongBox, it means that the sender is being highly respectful of my time." You might not want to build all that social-network functionality, of course, but it's a possible direction to go! Also, custom subdomains (and beyond just removing branding, letting people add branding) could be a high-ROI way to add another pricing tier!
  • gigamick 6y ago
    There's a lot on this comment and I appreciate it all. One thing I'll pick up on now before looping back later is the ability to RECEIVE tracks via songbox. This is actually a feature I only rolled out last week. EG I could give you a link to my portal and you upload tracks to it, and they all fall into my feed for review. This literally is live in the app just now, I just haven't shouted about it yet as it is brand new.
    • coreymaass 6y ago
      This is the way to actually win. This is what makes it B2B, where the actual money in music lives.
• smjoervi 6y ago
  I was able to generate this error : Stripe\Exception\InvalidRequestException Invalid email address: asfd@fsdf vendor/stripe/stripe-php/lib/Exception/ApiErrorException.php:38 by omiting the tld in the email field at https://songbox.rocks/join/free https://songbox.rocks/join/free
  • gigamick 6y ago
    yikes... on it! Thank you!
• jhunter1016 6y ago
  I love seeing tenacity start to pay off. The way I view things like this is if you like doing it, keep at it. The slow growth over time models is one that gets buried in the flashy SV-style startup stories, but they are equally (if not more) important. I love the site and I only have two points of feedback: 1. I’d move the example player up higher. I suspect many artist will want to know what their link or embeded track will look like. Having to scroll past pricing for the example might lose people. 2. Pricing plan naming can be tough. In this case you may want to look at renaming the plans simply because artists who should be on the semi-pro plan may not pull the trigger because they think they are pros. That’s a small thing though.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Great feedback 1. Yeah I'm gonna re-think the whole sample player thing. That's not a representation of what the pages look like, that's an embed. And I think I'm gonna kill embeds 2. 100%!! I toiled for days over "semi pro" VS "amateur"
    • mixmastamyk 6y ago
      Up and coming :D
      • gigamick 6y ago
        Like.
• jamesmarkewen 6y ago
  Congratulations! I'm in a similar place where I'm aware of a load of user journey issues but this could just be the inspiration I need to get started again :)
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Do it man!
• germinalphrase 6y ago
  Perhaps this is outside the scope of what you want the app to be, but... I teach high school English. We will frequently create audio products like podcasts, speeches, Tedtalks, etc. Traditionally, I would offer feedback in person while a student is drafting/editing their products - but with distance ed. that is somewhat more challenging. The feature I would like is the ability to add an annotation to the audio track (either written or verbally) that is tagged to a specific moment/stretch of audio. The ability to have creators add submissions to a shared folder would also help (such that I can rapidly click through and provide feedback on a large set of submissions). Just spitballing, but maybe like genius.com but for private feedback on audio.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    This is a great idea and I already have schools as paying customers. Right now their use cases involve sending audio recordings (eg from music class) to parents, privately. Will look into this for sure. Thanks so much.
    • talolard 6y ago
      If you have schools (e.g. institutions, not individuals) already paying, maybe experiment if you can make a pricing tier for institutions. E.g. Special School package 3k/yr includes unlimited tracks, group by classroom, some other school specific feature ...
  • d883kd8 6y ago
    Soundcloud actually has a feature where users can comment on specific points in a recording
• jbirer 6y ago
  With 500/month I would just move to Southeast Asia and live like comfortably while doing my own hobby projects / passions or whatever. Great job. You are now an independent entrepeneur.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    haha well I have a family and a house etc to maintain so £500 isn't cutting it.
• caogecym 6y ago
  Congrats! I feel the excitement when seeing the project getting traction. I had similar experience building a [SaaS API request scheduler][1]. Promoted mostly in Q&A communities like Quora and Stackoverflow, took couple weeks to get the first user. Then after a few weeks, started getting 1 new free plan user per week, sometimes when lucky it got 3 per day :). And after 9 month of initial release, got 100 users and the first paid user! The registration and payment are self service. It’s very exciting to feel that someone from somewhere in the world who you haven’t met is willing to trust your product and give it a try, and hey, it’s a product that you built from ground up and you know it’s bringing value to people. The entire bootstrap experience is just awesome. Still way to go, lessons learned? Just get started, and keep doing it. Doesn’t matter if you wasn’t sure what exactly to build, maybe try begin with a real small feature, don’t need to worry about whether somebody else is already doing it, or someone is telling you this won’t fly - just get started and chances are you will identify some problems that you want to solve that is related or completely orthogonal with you current feature/product, you will find your way if you keep trying. [1] https://ihook.us https://ihook.us
• smarri 6y ago
  Congratulations on the milestone! And for plugging away at the project, it's great. I noticed a small formatting issue, I think, on the privacy policy page there is a button which has the text "Canvas::Blog Buttons.Next", I assume you probably meant for the text to say something different. Did you build the webpage yourself or use an agency for any of it?
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thanks, someone else has pointed this out too.. ooops. Will fix tonight. Yeah I built the site and the whole platform myself. https://division77.com https://division77.com which is linked to in the footer is also me.
    • smarri 6y ago
      Great! I have an MVP project I'm working on and may reach out to you at division77 if I need to build it out a bit. All the best
• rob74 6y ago
  So, in other words, it's an online demo tape? For creators to send around to (hopefully) interested parties, and with the added advantage that creators can find out who listened to which songs how many times? Sounds like a good idea - as long as the people listening to the songs are aware that they're being tracked this way...
  • JacobSuperslav 6y ago
    all you need is a box to click "I agree"
• aardshark 6y ago
  Minor nitpick, but what's up with the artifacting on your large images? See the text in your image "the button at the bottom of the page." See also the gradient in your second image: "Create a Private Playlist" There are noticeable artifacts, whether from compression or something else. It just takes away from that polished feel for me. Sorry I don't have actual functionality feedback!
  • gigamick 6y ago
    No this is cool feedback. All good. I don't know why you're seeing that. I'll investigate.
    • jedimastert 6y ago
      It looks like the images were somewhat aggressively compressed, and it's starting to become visible
• TooCreative 6y ago
  After clicking around your site a bit, I am left with a somewhat "cold" feeling of an anonymous service. As a potential customer and business partner, I would leave the site for good if I had not seen your post here on HN. For me to engage with a service, I need to know who is behind it. See their face. Their Twitter account, their Github. I would not put my data into an anonymous machine.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    I appreciate that feedback however I would say 'each to their own'. I'm pretty sure the majority of businesses don't have people's faces on display and info about their personal life. HOWEVER... I take it onboard. Would it help if I made more a big deal about the "why I built it" article?
    • 1123581321 6y ago
      I think you’re just missing an about or company page that tells the user about Songbox and Division77. No need for faces and personal Twitter accounts unless you individually are the “brand” driving the revenue.
    • TooCreative 6y ago
      the majority of businesses don't have people's faces on display Not on display. But most successfull startups I remember started with the founder in the open. You could find them on Twitter etc. Creating a startup as an anonymous page for some reason seems to be an indicator of failure.
    • inson 6y ago
      Or about page would be fine. As a client I would like to know the person behind the company.
      • gigamick 6y ago
        I'm going to work on an about page. This is great feedback. Thanks. Can I ask... does the "why I built SongBox" page not serve this purpose?
• dobika 6y ago
  Good work! I would remove Advanced security from the tiers. It gives me a feel "no way I'm gonna use it under Semi Pro"
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Intersting. could you elaborate ?
• karmakaze 6y ago
  Great to see a product find and fill a gap. I'm not in that target group but the product seems good and the landing page is so clean and clear. One note on the Pricing page, the [Show yearly plans] button wasn't obviously a toggle to me so was hesitant to click it for another page load. Turned out to be a toggle switch for current view. Maybe consider showing it as a 'slider' toggle?
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Great feedback, thanks. I will add that to the list... I cannot believe how much amazing feedback I'm getting from you guys today. Blown away.
• pc86 6y ago
  Can I just say I love the branding. It seems familiar (not in a bad way) but unique enough to stand up.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thanks very much :-)
• zonethundery 6y ago
  Congrats, this is very cool and inspirational.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thanks a lot.
• rndgermandude 6y ago
  First of all, I like it! Some, hopefully constructive criticisms, mostly nitpicking/paper cut bugs. My pedantism doesn't mean I don't like it ;) - As somebody else mentioned, the email field on the signup page is a bit off-putting just to try it. Maybe add some text on why you need to know it (password reminders, whathaveyou). "Display Name" was already mentioned too for something that could be improved. - I think it would be good to have a password confirmation box on signup. I have enough family that constantly mistypes their passwords to know that this is a thing :P - When I created a box and was lead to the upload page (Step 2 of 4), I somehow assumed it would let me drag and drop straight to the page. Instead I had to click the button. Not a major thing but having a shortcut (like popping up that file picker once a dragover event happens) would be nice I think. Same for the Tracks page. - After creating a box and uploading a track on the next page, it might be a good idea to pre-select that track ;) The list of selectable tracks is also a little too subtle. I had to think a few seconds what's going on; ideally I'd have to think less about it. - It doesn't allow me to upload ogg or opus or straight wav. Again, no biggie, but the error text there could be more helpful. "The accepted file types are audio/mpeg,audio/mp3" is not so great. I later saw it says that "starters" are only allowed mp3 on the account page. Does this mean other formats are allowed when upgrading? I didn't see any info about that. - The text listing the benefits of the different tiers on /upgrade is extremely thin and hard to read when viewed on a regular non-retina display on a Windows box. It also is different to the different tiers text straight on the homepage. And /upgrade has no favicon (tries to get /favicon.ico instead of /favicon/favicon-32x32.png that other pages use). It also shows me a $ price and an £ approximation. I'm on € and used to $, but seeing £ is mildly confusing. It also has a title of "Become a member", but I am already a member :P - It now tells me: "You have exceeded the number of available SongBoxes on the Free tier. Consider upgrading." But the "Your SongBoxes" says "My Private Songboxes (0 of 5 in use)". I did create a few boxes and subsequently deleted them. Now I got none and am not allowed ot make any more. Also, shouldn't that be "(0 of 1 in use)" on starter? Bug? - Speaking of which, you sometimes use "SongBox(es)" and sometimes "Songbox(es)", come to think about it. - I like your privacy policy, short and simple. But it doesn't state if and for how long you will retain data after the user removes it. That would be a clarification worth making. - Since you're pretty much about privacy too according to your privacy policy, a way to delete the account would be nice. Would I use it? Maybe, but I am not a "pro" and the pricing is too expensive for the me (I am a cheapskate) at 10 bucks/month / 100 bucks/year for just 15 tracks. My price range for something like that, being "Hobby", would be maybe around 20-25 bucks / year for 50 tracks, but that's just me.
• djaychela 6y ago
  Serious question: How do you know that users of the upper tiers (who can share any file type) are not sharing anything untoward? I only say this having heard a podcast where Sam Harris was talking to someone who'd spent a lot of time investigating Child Sex Abuse Material and he said that on any platform where there are files, there is CSAM being shared. Site looks very slick, by the way, not at all "side gig"!
• pier25 6y ago
  Congrats, these things are hard. Could you share some technical details? DB, infrastructure, frameworks, etc? What's your main use case? I can see some audio pros sharing files regularly with their clients (demos, WIP of mixing and mastering, etc).
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thanks Framework: laravel DB: MariaDB hosted with jawsDB.com Host: Heroku Main use case is probably musicians sharing pre-release music with the press / agencies etc but I do have a pretty wide spread. I have schools, businesses, engineers, composers, producers etc. Basically anyone who uses audio files can find SongBox useful.
    • fbxio 6y ago
      How much % of your revenue do you spend on hosting, roughly? And do you feel comfortable with it or is that something you have to manage?
• cpeterso 6y ago
  Very cool! Some questions: * Showing the UI that listeners will experience seems important. Can customers customize the listening pages their listeners will use? * Have you considered offering to sell songs and albums? The listener is right there on your website, listening to a song they like, and now they want to buy it. Will they know how to do that? Will they have to navigate off to a different website? * How long does a user have to listen to a song before SongBox counts it as a "play"?
  • gigamick 6y ago
    This is amazing feedback. Thank you. 1. There are various images on the homepage that show the "listener" UI. Is that not coming across? 2. On the "pro" tier you can offer the tracks for download, but not for sale. This has crossed my mind as a future option but I'm not sure if this is the platform for that right now. Maybe when / if it scales and becomes more mainstream.
• g_delgado14 6y ago
  Congrats!
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thank you.
• charlesfinley22 6y ago
  This is awesome! I dabble in music sometimes and I think this'd be a cool tool for sharing. Don't know if I have any super detailed feedback, but just wanted to say congrats and that's exciting!
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thanks so much!
• socratees 6y ago
  Really great example of how to build indie projects. You built a solution to a problem you've personally experienced, and you solve it for others who may face the problem. Congratulations, good work! Also, site is very clean. I would give a try if I were making music. You maybe able to target a wider audience given your product is now mature. If you are willing and able to scale, maybe a SEO / Marketing specialist will be helpful in taking it to the next level.
• rubicon33 6y ago
  That's awesome. I applaud anyone who sticks with a project for that long. I've got a similar side project that makes some money, but isn't profitable yet. I'm in the "almost given up" point, considering shutting it down, but would be letting people down and frankly, letting myself down. Props to you for sticking with it and it sounds like it's been worth it!
  • gigamick 6y ago
    What's the project man? I've been there a few times. For me when I get a new idea for a feature or some feedback that I think is meaningful, it really re-ignites the fire.
• Wirerack 6y ago
  I'm always curious how do people come up with these ideas. I assume that to be in a position to make something like this you need to have a very good understanding of the problem space. As tech people i often feel that while we may have an advantage in being able to execute, finding a problem can be quite tricky if all you know is IT!
  • swyx 6y ago
    thats a self limiting belief. it is not true that "all you know is IT". all of us have interests beyond tech. if that's not enough, all of us have close relatives or friends with problems we can solve. they are representative of people who are like them, all of whom have problems that need solving. make sure you're not merely making excuses for not trying when you say "all you know is IT"
    • Wirerack 6y ago
      It's a fair point, though when reading many of these kinds of posts you see that usually the person has an "in" already in that particular niche.
• RangerScience 6y ago
  Congrats! I have some side projects, and these stories are always very inspirational. Thank you for sharing :) I'm not a music creator. I use SoundCloud (sometimes) to listen to stuff friends of mine make, or musicians I've heard here or there. It's not clear to me if there's a way that you want someone like me to use your site; which is fine, there might not be. If there is tho, I'm not seeing it yet. Design-wise, I think you could do with more whitespace, mostly around things. (Ex: Keep the div the same size, shrink the font size a bit).
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thanks for the feedback! You're right in that this isn't meant to be used in the same way as soundcloud. Soubdcloud is about discovery whereas my app songbox is about sharing privately. Most of the music shared in SongBox is pre-release and not for public consumption.
• harrisonjackson 6y ago
  Very cool! Congrats on the revenue milestone. Is there a mobile app? Does it stream or download the songs for offline consumption? There are a lot of authors looking for an alternative to audible. Bandcamp does not work great either due to pricing and their app UX. Songbox currently seems very focused on music but maybe future avenues to explore are podcasts and audio books.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    This is amazing feedback. I love the Audible angle. More food for thought.
• ashish1521 6y ago
  This is great work.. congratulations on getting consistent earnings from this.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thanks a lot.
• ourcat 6y ago
  Nice work. Though you might want to be careful about putting an artist like Miley Cyrus on your home page. ;) A volume control woud be nice on the player embed too. (I built amazingradio.com)
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thanks for the feedback. That Miley Cyrus thing is just a vocal stem. I recorded all the music myself. Will check out amazing radio later :-)
• alasano 6y ago
  Looks great! My suggestion would be to add the percentage discount when you click on "Show Yearly Plans". It's 20% but people suck at math, make it obvious.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Excellent feedback. Thank you. Will do that for sure it seems like an easy win.
• DanSmooth 6y ago
  Fantastic logo! I first thought it was a stylized treble clef but I think it's more a stylized sixteenth note. Not sure if this was your intention but still great. You might even consider to add the five lines used in sheet music to make the music-part more clear. Speaking of logos, I disliked that you use songbox there, but call your service SongBox. I would change it and maybe even fix it in the user stories. Small suggestion for the image that shows the dashboard: To quote Matthew McC: "You gotta pump those numbers up!" It's apparent that they are from a demo account you use, but perhaps you could make the numbers more appealing (don't oversell it, though). If I would use your service, I would hope to have a better avg listening time for example. Kudos for that Doctor Who easter egg, btw!
  • gigamick 6y ago
    haha you're the first person to notice the Dr Who thing. Good advice, thank you!
• rasikjain 6y ago
  Congratulations on your Milestone. Website looks very professional. Like the colors and theme. I also watched the youtube on getting started. Very nicely done overall. I have an adblocker installed. I see that there is a grey area under "Share your tracks anywhere". It says the request had been blocked by ad-blocker. May be googletagmanager or new-relic Good luck :-)
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thanks for this. I think that ad blocker thing is because I have the word "track" in the URL
• dkural 6y ago
  This is very compelling. I humbly recommend that you spend 80% of your efforts in finding ways to market this. What's nice is, it is "viral" in that as people start sharing their music in this way, probably with others in the music scene, they will also get exposed to the product.\ Your tiers could use some work. Your basic aim is to discriminate between dirt poor student musician, professional or hobbyist individual freelancer, small businesses, and enterprise: - The first free tier is good, but for the second one, I wouldn't give unlimited songboxes (I understand you're limiting by track de facto); as that feature should be saved for enterprise. - You can charge a lot more as you go up, as you increase number of songbox, and bands supported (i.e. a set of songboxes). - I wouldn't limit the # tracks much after the first paid tier, because it helps drive engagement and exposes your product further. Also as a growth aim buy more domain names with an ultimate aim of songbox.com :)
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Amazing feedback. Thank you. As I'm saying now to most of the commenters, it is going to take me days to process all of this. I cannot believe the traction this thread has had. I'm overwhelmed lol.
• ljf 6y ago
  Love it! Great looking site, very professional. I agree with another comment that your name/face on the 'why' page could be useful, but not a deal breaker. Out of interest, do you have the rights to embed Wrecking Ball? If I was musician who saw you using another musicians music without permission that would turn me off. (Also on android chrome the count up timer worked on the player, but the bit that would tell me how long the song was stuck at 0.0)
  • gigamick 6y ago
    The wrecking ball thing is interesting. That is just a vocal stem that was available on the internet. All the music is recorded and performed by me.
• kundi 6y ago
  Congratulations. Lovely project. For electronic music creators, Formaviva.com is a great alternative to the mention platforms that besides free private sharing also enables downloads, play and heatmap tracking (for free).
• talolard 6y ago
  Hi, Congrats on hitting that milestone . As others have said, the site looks great and it's clear you've put a lot of time into it. I can offer a few feedback points: The pricing tiers could have better names, from a quick glance I wasn't sure which plan fits me. Maybe take a look at what are common traits for customers in each plan and see if you can come up with a one word persona for each plan that way. The product tours after signup are really clear and crisp well done. I've found that getting users to Wow fast is key to drive conversions, and that tours aren't enough. They show me how to get to wow but don't bring me there. A common pattern is to prepopulate the app with some data and lead the user to a likely wow event quickly. That's super hard, because you need to know what wow is, but it's gold when you crack it. I've asked customers "What made you decide to give us money" and that can get some good insights towards what wow is. I just visited the site for the second time, and my dashboard is empty because I haven't done anything. A real user will likely churn, because they don't know what to do. Nudge them hard towards the action that will bring them to wow. I'm parroting patio11, but your pro plan is priced to low. Try raising prices on it (a lot) and see if anyone goes for it. Anecdote: I set a pricing page to have $50, $180 and $1200. $50 sold the most, but one day someone self served themselves an annual $1200/month plan, which is 24 $50 customers. Point being, if someone wants to give you a lot of money, give them the chance to do so. Last point, I just noticed the video under the the pricing section. My personal opinion is that it's weak for marketing purposes, it tells me how to use the app, but doesn't immediately show me what the app can do for me. The point of a video on a marketing page is to get me excited to try and then convert. Make me feel excited ... On the other hand, it is a very good tutorial video, maybe put it on the dashboard of the app if the user hasn't uploaded any tracks yet. Good luck!
  • gigamick 6y ago
    This is all excellent feedback. I actually cannot believe how much interest this thread has gotten today. It's going to take me a while to categorise and document all the feedback and ideas... but I will!
• quickthrower2 6y ago
  That looks really polished. Well done. It wouldn't be HN if I didn't give some feedback! One thing that I think is confusing is "Advanced security" and "Any file type" in the price comparison. I think it is better to list the specifics e.g. "Password Protect Your Profile Page" "Only .mp3 and .wav supported" "All music files supported" Etc.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    This is great feedback and I will implement. Thank you.
  • llagerlof 6y ago
    Yeah, that bothered me too. I mean, even in a free plan I expect the same level of security as the paid plan.
• gigamick 6y ago
  THANK YOU I cannot believe how much traction this thread has got today, I am blown away. SO. MUCH. GREAT. FEEDBACK. It's going to take me days to process all of this. Thanks so much. I am blown away. If anyone want to follow the process you can subscribe to my blog at https://division77.com https://division77.com THANK YOU!!!
  • graderjs 6y ago
    Love your enthusiasm
• fuddle 6y ago
  The landing page looks great. Some nice animations would make it stand out more IMO.
• samizdis 6y ago
  You wrote on your site about why you developed SongBox, saying: We received dozens of demos in the post every day. This was well into the streaming era, but we still received box loads of CDs every day, from all over the world. Some of these packages were exquisite. Some were terrible. Some came with elaborate gifts. What they all had in common was that none of them got heard. They piled up in the corner of the office and every week the area would get cleared out. Myself and some of the other developers called it "the corner where dreams went to die". To me, that is really emotive. If your dialogue with HN users in any way helps you to address that sad problem (by way of optimisation of pricing/functionality/whatever) on behalf of those with whom you seem to empathise/resonate then that will be a happy outcome. Good luck and best wishes.
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Thanks for this. I hadn't read that since the time I wrote it. you're right, it is pretty sad.
• prashanthr2403 6y ago
  Is your site down?
  • gigamick 6y ago
    Nope....
• peterfield 6y ago
  How does it position compared with disco.ac ?
• k__ 6y ago
  As an aspiring bootstrapper, may I ask how you started? What was your background? What were the features needed for your first customers?
• jftuga 6y ago
  What tools did you use for your web site design? It looks very clean -- I like it.
• rewgs 6y ago
  Hey, professional composer/producer here. I thought I'd give you some honest feedback from one of your target users. These are my more or less unfiltered thoughts as I scroll down the page. Apologies in advance for the bluntness: Man, that iPhone photo on the right is a little blurry and way too big. "The smart way to share music privately." Me and everyone I know uses Dropbox. The majority of us pay for Dropbox accounts that allow you to disable downloads, so it's as private and secure as I need it to be. Beyond that, there are a number of more specific competing services already -- for example, ReelCrafter allows me (a film composer) to host video and audio for less than $17/month, with insights. What are you offering that I don't already have or can't get elsewhere, quite possibly for less? The "Get Started" button is above "What is SongBox?" Why would I get started when I don't even know what it is? Profile Page: Feels like social media. That in and of itself kinda feels like friction. Insights: This is nice. I definitely like this, because I do sometimes get annoyed when I send music to someone and don't hear back, and it'd be nice to know if they listened. This solves a real problem for me. "Stop Wondering If They Listened." Yup, there it is. I like it. The photo below this section is unnecessarily huge. This page feels weirdly like it has too much text and too many photos at the same time. Not sure how to solve it but even though the design is clean, it's a little fatiguing. "What SongBox Users Say" Speaking of too much text, all of these are too long and there's no way I'm reading all of them. Either roll them all up into a "Testimonials" page and link me to it, or choose the biggest name you have a testimonial from and feature it higher up on the page -- and keep it short. Pricing. In a vacuum, this pricing is nice. But it's one more cloud storage service I'm paying for, and in that light it's suddenly way too expensive for the higher tiers. Highest I'd personally go for Pro is $20/month and that's still pushing it. "How Does It Work?" This section should be much higher. "Don't Worry About Sharing Your Music." This page now feels redundant and way too long. Axe this section and merge the unique info elsewhere. Ditto for "Share your tracks anywhere." All in all: The front page could be condensed to half or even less than half of its current size/info dump. The service seems solid but enough for me to try the free version, which if I'm honest will probably result in me forgetting about it -- paying something no matter what would at least put in my mind a sense of needing to use it. I know you say in your post that your pricing was wrong, but if it were me (with the little info I currently have -- who knows, maybe you tried this and it was wrong) I'd do the following: -Lose the "Starter" as it is and "Semi Pro" tiers. -Retitle "Hobby" to "Starter" or something similar (though I don't love that -- I think you should entirely focus on professionals, i.e. people willing to pay money long-term; anyone needing these features already has a free Dropbox/Google Drive account that already works just fine, so name your tiers appropriately). -Now you have two tiers (easy, simple, doesn't require too much thought). Allow both to use any file type (that's a frustrating and arbitrary limitation). Price the former Hobby-now-Starter-or-whatever-you-call-it tier at something stupid low, like $2/month. Make Pro $15 month or so. -Allow a 30 day free trial with Pro features -- again, no credit card required. -If someone with a Hobby-or-whatever account tries to cancel, allow them to disable downloading for an extra $1 per month -- a hidden "middle" tier. I guarantee you that lack of disabling downloading will be the #1 reason people cancel their account. This has the potential to be great and you've clearly put a ton of work into it. Wish you the best and hope this succeeds.
• shadowtree 6y ago
  Given all the IPOs in the last weeks, from Doordash to AirBnB, how does it feel to have lost out on massive opportunity cost? Same skill and effort as a Director, exponential payout vs. your grind for hand outs.
  • shrimpx 6y ago
    In other words “why do what you love when you can be a well paid company man?”
• jokethrowaway 6y ago
  A friend doesn't let a friend do a music startup. Jokes aside, congrats on your results. Have you ever considered dropping your really hard project to work on something easier to monetise?
• macduy 6y ago
  Congratulations! Great idea and the app looks very polished. I'm really excited for you as I've got a similar story: working on a project on and off for 10 years, first as a hobby offering it for free but last 3 years thought what if I could make it worth my time. I started charging this year and now at a similar MRR. Oh and judging by the currency, also living in the UK. A story like yours really gives me hope and inspires me to keep going so thank you for sharing.
• upnrunning2140 6y ago
  Congratulations. As I don't really produce any audio I don't have much use for it but if I did I would try it. Great landing page, pricing, etc.
• mrwww 6y ago
  I have zero understanding of your domain, but from quickly scanning your landing page i immediatetly understand what its about. Great idea and really nice implementation!
• thisisodog 6y ago
  Checked this out and looks cool. A bit confused how this competes with the likes of disco and songspace as it seems to be noticeably more expensive with fewer features at the moment. 50 tracks isn't enough for the semi pro tier IMO. Disco offers 500 in its basic $10 tier. Looking forward to seeing where you take it.
• aleksjess 6y ago
  Tech might be the best, tho if you don't do something marketing cool tricks, then we'll... Yeah, it will be stuck in 2nd gear
• pawurb 6y ago
  My no longer "side" project recently hit the milestone of $4k/month https://pawelurbanek.com/profitable-slack-bot-rails https://pawelurbanek.com/profitable-slack-bot-rails . Took me over 3 years to get to this point. It allowed me to quit my job and focus on growing it even further full-time.