Comment by j45 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by j45 | Hacker News Reader

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:

- 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..

- Events - Maybe music related events (learning, or looking for performers) could be something to provide. A place to find gigs?

- 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.

- Group buy deals that you can target to your team. You get to keep a cut of the deals.

- 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.

- 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.

I like all these ideas and want to do all of them in one form or another. Most of them I'd want to make free (like the learning stuff). But.. events... that could be a fun one. Specifically, I envision a huge trade show like CES but for musicians. There's currently one called "NAMM" but it's not open to the public. It would be a lot of hard work but I think would be fun. Ideally it would be free or cheap for musicians, and money would be made via sponsors and selling booth/demo space.

You potentially have the ultimate meetup for musicians... Music is as much about creating as connecting.

Some more ideas from the music consumer perspective:

1) I've been listening to music on the site for an hour and I've been struck with how much soulful music there is here... Any thought in helping them publish to iTunes and taking a small cut?

2) If love to be able to make a playlist by genre and share it.

3) Maybe there's a way I can give micro payments for all the stuff I like? Another angle for consumers to maybe sign up for a membership to vote with their wallet to the artists you listen to in a month..and my 10/mo is split among the number of listeners I liked in a month?

4) Could there be sponsors for learning materials?

5) What about a digital music streaming service for businesses? Good music, all original, businesses routinely pay $20-40/month and up for this kind. Put the music into genres, let the community rate it and let it self-rank into playlists.

6) Spawn an online radio station exclusively for the music on the site.

I've been around online music and radio for a while..had lots of potential ideas, just didn't have the content. if you want to bounce ideas if love to.

Forgive any typos or grammar, writing from my phone. :)

Why not a virtual trade show? Let equipment manufacturers sponsor a forum section and require that they participate on the forum to answer questions from users. It's not an in-your-face ad, but gives the mfr exposure and an opportunity to demonstrate their customer service skills (and maybe offer discounts to subscribers?), and you get money. Done right, it would be a fair exchange of value that benefits your users.

Going along with the idea of helping musicians find gigs, make the venues pay a membership fee to get connected with musicians. I would think venues more likely to be able to pay for a service over an aspiring musician. Also, I enjoy seeing such an honest response from someone in charge of a business :)

A really great idea. If you can help people make money, you can easily make money.

I think the supply/demand is backwards here. Most amateur musicians gig for free. Many actually pay to perform (by pre-paying the venue for x number of tickets, then hoping to recoup costs by selling those tickets on their own directly to fans).

Big touring acts pay to play too, by renting out the venue.

Ah, I had no idea. I'm not a musician by any means. That makes sense though. I guess a venue probably isn't willing to actively recruit unproven acts.

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