7 ms·

How Two Teenagers Broke In To Silicon Valley - And The Music Industry

82 points by alaskamiller 15y ago

knewjax 15y ago
These guys truly get the whole "Social" thing.
joshu 15y ago
Well, "hacked" is now an overused word.
nicklovescode 15y ago
They "hacked themselves"... Really?
kaizenfury7 15y ago
By hack, they mean that two teens who know how to use Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, help musicians use Facebook, Twitter, and other social media.
- jQueryIsAwesome 15y ago
  Don't be so harsh... and they do know something about developing facebook pages: >Require yours fans to like you on Facebook before playing certain tracks and videos. (I find that extremly annoying though)
- nedwin 15y ago
  By "hack" I think they mean they know how to hustle the shit out of SV tech companies and some of the top musicians in the world. Not an easy hack at all.
brackin 15y ago
Props to these guys, i'm currently going through this as a 17 year old founder. This is more about the tech community and how it seems to be perceived by Forbes at least. From what i've seen startups don't discriminate by age (young at least). I know lots of 18 year olds (some younger) involved and working for startups, lots starting their own and raising money. I just perceived the piece as if they believe the valley is like wall street. When it's such an open ecosystem, if you're building cool stuff and are around you already have a lot of leverage. It's also much easier to achieve a lot of meaningful connecting from out of the valley, i'm from London and am out here for a week and have had lots of great meetings and catch ups. I've been able to meet all these people I know from twitter, hacker news (to an extent), events in other places and MLGen (http://mlgen.com http://mlgen.com). Not saying any of this is easy but many of these publications don't understand how it works.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
tl;dr version: 21st century version of Madmen. People with a talent for exploiting social networks to achieve brand recognition in a particular demographic. It certainly illustrates clearly the difference between what one might consider 'traditional' promotion to 'modern' promotion. In the sixties they guys would have founded a PR agency.
- rastafark 15y ago
  Mad respect Chuck but I feel like you're being a little reductionist. Couldn't I weave a story that these guys would have been hackers in the 70s, exploiting telephone networks for fun and profit? Rather than do that, I'll just say some things are just what they are, and don't need to be explained by being 'like' something else. Especially when it comes to Madmen, its just too easy to make anything mythological by conflating it with that show.
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    I've got huge respect for them, and if I came off dismissive then that was certainly not my intent. I do find it mythological when folks are just natural born connectors like these two. These guys took Lil Twist from 4K to 2M facebook fans. That is impressive. With the phreakers in the 70's and the folks at the MIT AI lab, it was not about brand so much as it was about the nascent power of technological change. I see that as a different groove.
Lukeas14 15y ago
If you're good at what you do and have the results to prove it, eventually, people will recognize that and present opportunities. This is Silicon Valley, not Hollywood, no need to "Break In".
- Cushman 15y ago
  The rest of the world can't conceive of a culture where real talent is rewarded appropriately and nepotism, politics and seniority take a back seat to getting shit done. Maybe we're better off that way.
abbasmehdi 15y ago
Following the wave of college dropout billionaires, we are going to be seeing high school dropout billionaires... ;)
bomatson 15y ago
C'mon. You guys don't understand the budgets they had to grow these bases. It's not hard to throw $ in a FB advertising campaign w/ a few grand a month and get to these #'s. Props to these guys for being hustlers and tech-savvy but the praise ends there. Tracks.by hasn't proven anything yet
- Mazy 15y ago
  I'm one of the guys in the story. We've never spent a dime on any ad campaign for our artists or Tracks.by
- schlichtm 15y ago
  $0/ever
  - bomatson 15y ago
    Right on guys. But, even for Lil' Wayne? It's hard to believe, usually ad budgets get allocated for Universal artists
    - schlichtm 15y ago
      $0 Its all about finding all possible ways to distribute their content + maximizing the interactions with the content once you send the traffic (optimizing it to be viral, social, and a great experience where both the fan and artist are happy).
      - mitjak 15y ago
        > maximizing the interactions...optimizing it to be viral.. You lost me.
    - marcins 15y ago
      Well, I assume Lil' Wayne's advertising budget went to these guys, but then these guys didn't spend any of it on the promotions they did (it just paid for their time / expertise).
wisty 15y ago
One clever hack - they want to give free tunes to people in return for "likes". I guess it's better than a free virtual cow.
schlichtm 15y ago
I'm Matt Schlicht, one of the guys in the story. We would love to chat with any music/entertainment focused companies OR digital managers + any start up founders. Email matt@tracksby.com to get in touch. To everyone else - thanks for the support! (love the Madmen reference)
- Cushman 15y ago
  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you social networking 100: When people are talking about you, go say hi. Hi Matt :)
marcamillion 15y ago
This is exactly the type of journalism that gives people the wrong impression about entrepreneurship. This makes it sounds so easy.
- muhfuhkuh 15y ago
  It's so easy, high school kids could get music's hottest stars to promote their service to garner millions of social network fans and raise the brow of every musician, record company exec and venture capitalist with a penchant for newsworthy investments. It's so easy, a guy built a shoddy little dating/hookup site that looked and ran like absolute nightmare, and the only distinguishing twist was that it's free; now he's a millionaire I'm not sure how many times over. It's so easy, one teenage girl created, bought, and licensed a bunch of shiny gifs and site templates for MySpace users years ago and was making at one point $2 Million a year and she hadn't even graduated or taken one cent of funding. Be in the right niche at the right time and exploit the hell out of it. Oh, and hard work, dedication bordering on the pathological, and almost zero aversion to both risk and knowing your "place". It's really easy after that.
unohoo 15y ago
matt & mazy - congrats on the launch and good luck. Hope you're able to recognize who I am.
- schlichtm 15y ago
  Holy shit - what's up. Go friend me on Facebook http://facebook.com/Mattfs http://facebook.com/Mattfs

82 points by alaskamiller 15y ago

knewjax 15y ago

These guys truly get the whole "Social" thing.

joshu 15y ago

Well, "hacked" is now an overused word.

nicklovescode 15y ago

They "hacked themselves"... Really?

kaizenfury7 15y ago

By hack, they mean that two teens who know how to use Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, help musicians use Facebook, Twitter, and other social media.

jQueryIsAwesome 15y ago
Don't be so harsh... and they do know something about developing facebook pages: >Require yours fans to like you on Facebook before playing certain tracks and videos. (I find that extremly annoying though)
nedwin 15y ago
By "hack" I think they mean they know how to hustle the shit out of SV tech companies and some of the top musicians in the world. Not an easy hack at all.

brackin 15y ago

Props to these guys, i'm currently going through this as a 17 year old founder. This is more about the tech community and how it seems to be perceived by Forbes at least. From what i've seen startups don't discriminate by age (young at least). I know lots of 18 year olds (some younger) involved and working for startups, lots starting their own and raising money. I just perceived the piece as if they believe the valley is like wall street. When it's such an open ecosystem, if you're building cool stuff and are around you already have a lot of leverage. It's also much easier to achieve a lot of meaningful connecting from out of the valley, i'm from London and am out here for a week and have had lots of great meetings and catch ups. I've been able to meet all these people I know from twitter, hacker news (to an extent), events in other places and MLGen (http://mlgen.com http://mlgen.com). Not saying any of this is easy but many of these publications don't understand how it works.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

tl;dr version: 21st century version of Madmen. People with a talent for exploiting social networks to achieve brand recognition in a particular demographic. It certainly illustrates clearly the difference between what one might consider 'traditional' promotion to 'modern' promotion. In the sixties they guys would have founded a PR agency.

rastafark 15y ago
Mad respect Chuck but I feel like you're being a little reductionist. Couldn't I weave a story that these guys would have been hackers in the 70s, exploiting telephone networks for fun and profit? Rather than do that, I'll just say some things are just what they are, and don't need to be explained by being 'like' something else. Especially when it comes to Madmen, its just too easy to make anything mythological by conflating it with that show.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  I've got huge respect for them, and if I came off dismissive then that was certainly not my intent. I do find it mythological when folks are just natural born connectors like these two. These guys took Lil Twist from 4K to 2M facebook fans. That is impressive. With the phreakers in the 70's and the folks at the MIT AI lab, it was not about brand so much as it was about the nascent power of technological change. I see that as a different groove.

Lukeas14 15y ago

If you're good at what you do and have the results to prove it, eventually, people will recognize that and present opportunities. This is Silicon Valley, not Hollywood, no need to "Break In".

Cushman 15y ago
The rest of the world can't conceive of a culture where real talent is rewarded appropriately and nepotism, politics and seniority take a back seat to getting shit done. Maybe we're better off that way.

abbasmehdi 15y ago

Following the wave of college dropout billionaires, we are going to be seeing high school dropout billionaires... ;)

bomatson 15y ago

C'mon. You guys don't understand the budgets they had to grow these bases. It's not hard to throw $ in a FB advertising campaign w/ a few grand a month and get to these #'s. Props to these guys for being hustlers and tech-savvy but the praise ends there. Tracks.by hasn't proven anything yet

Mazy 15y ago
I'm one of the guys in the story. We've never spent a dime on any ad campaign for our artists or Tracks.by
schlichtm 15y ago
$0/ever
- bomatson 15y ago
  Right on guys. But, even for Lil' Wayne? It's hard to believe, usually ad budgets get allocated for Universal artists
  - schlichtm 15y ago
    $0 Its all about finding all possible ways to distribute their content + maximizing the interactions with the content once you send the traffic (optimizing it to be viral, social, and a great experience where both the fan and artist are happy).
    - mitjak 15y ago
      > maximizing the interactions...optimizing it to be viral.. You lost me.
  - marcins 15y ago
    Well, I assume Lil' Wayne's advertising budget went to these guys, but then these guys didn't spend any of it on the promotions they did (it just paid for their time / expertise).

wisty 15y ago

One clever hack - they want to give free tunes to people in return for "likes". I guess it's better than a free virtual cow.

schlichtm 15y ago

I'm Matt Schlicht, one of the guys in the story. We would love to chat with any music/entertainment focused companies OR digital managers + any start up founders. Email matt@tracksby.com to get in touch. To everyone else - thanks for the support! (love the Madmen reference)

Cushman 15y ago
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you social networking 100: When people are talking about you, go say hi. Hi Matt :)

marcamillion 15y ago

This is exactly the type of journalism that gives people the wrong impression about entrepreneurship. This makes it sounds so easy.

muhfuhkuh 15y ago
It's so easy, high school kids could get music's hottest stars to promote their service to garner millions of social network fans and raise the brow of every musician, record company exec and venture capitalist with a penchant for newsworthy investments. It's so easy, a guy built a shoddy little dating/hookup site that looked and ran like absolute nightmare, and the only distinguishing twist was that it's free; now he's a millionaire I'm not sure how many times over. It's so easy, one teenage girl created, bought, and licensed a bunch of shiny gifs and site templates for MySpace users years ago and was making at one point $2 Million a year and she hadn't even graduated or taken one cent of funding. Be in the right niche at the right time and exploit the hell out of it. Oh, and hard work, dedication bordering on the pathological, and almost zero aversion to both risk and knowing your "place". It's really easy after that.

unohoo 15y ago

matt & mazy - congrats on the launch and good luck. Hope you're able to recognize who I am.

schlichtm 15y ago
Holy shit - what's up. Go friend me on Facebook http://facebook.com/Mattfs http://facebook.com/Mattfs