Currently I have exactly 2 customers, who are pretty much friends helping me test. The good news is the site is optimized for being set-it-and-forget-it (all serverless arch) so just having one customer is enough to break even.
Have a really small demo tier or a demo account, say with public domain classical and jazz standards, just something basic.
The demo tier could be phone number based, then a write once system, let's say 100mb ... something really token.
You could even have a few sample tunes everyone gets by default. Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin is in public domain for instance as are say, the rags of Scott Joplin, Debussy's Deux Arabesques, etc.
If that doesn't onboard people then have a no-hassles 7 day refund. If someone gives you money but then decides they don't want it, have it built in the interface they can back out for 100% money back in 7 days.
"Free 2 week demo. No credit card needed. [Try it now]"
"Register" is too committal ... try things like "get started" or "try it out" - more action, result and experience oriented.
Lastly on the technicals, look into https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MediaSessio...
this will allow you to navigate through things when listening over bluetooth using the media buttons. I'm sorry for the rather advanced example but here's how I use it to navigate through hierarchy with double and triple tapping: https://github.com/kristopolous/music-explorer/blob/master/w...
> "Register" is too committal ...
I actually didn't notice the "No credit card needed" until I had written a long explanation :-)
That is how hard the "Free demo" has been abused to snag my credit card, so maybe experiment with some variations as long as it doesn't delay launch :-D (FWIW: personally, with my background and as a non-native speaker, "register" doesn't sound as scary as "Free 2 weeks demo".)
There's other ways. "Upgrade to a paid account if you like it" works. "Upgrade" implies work. "Paid" implies the work is paying. Thus the thing you're currently engaging with doesn't need payment.
You can also call it "Free tier" which has "14 day expiration" as a stipulation.
There's no best practice here because it's dependent on the product, value proposition, where you are in the funnel and who the customer is. They'll perform differently and counterintuitively and most frustratingly, change over time (because the context of the relationship between your prospect and product is always dynamic)
The truths that do hold are,
1. Make it sound casual
2. Avoid hustle language
3. Give an easy exit strategy
4. Make it clear and direct
I don't think I'm your customer here.
I think the parting advice I can give is <all products are relationships>. The interface and experience defines this relationship. We shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us or the interface sets the terms of the engagement or the medium is the message. It's been stated a myriad of ways.
I kinda hated "Selling the invisible" by Harry Beckwith but out of the 100 or so marketing and product development books I've read, I think, for you in particular, a weekend paging through that book might really help you here. You have to read it as an analogy of how to design software of course.
I could be wrong about this, but aren’t individual performances of these works still protected? If I record an album of works by Debussy that performance isn’t in the public domain and couldn’t be used as sample tracks.
If the performer doesn't mind and the work is public domain then it's an easy path
For example, here's the famous Waldstein by Beethoven performed explicitly as a free and open recording
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ludwig_van_Beethov...
Funny apocryphal story about that song. For a long time I had got in my head that was extremely disruptive for the time. I envisioned men with powdered wigs running distressfully throughout the aisles as he plays the work for the first time as their wives fan themselves and couch faint in the seats.
I still think that every time I hear it and I think it's hilarious to imagine European high society losing their composure over this sonata. This and Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 are ridiculously close to modern music structure. That's a 110bpm breakbeat done with violins you're hearing.
https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/music
These are recordings of live performances by a variety of musicians from a long lasting podcast series.
Licence
https://www.gardnermuseum.org/organization/rights-reproducti...
and scroll down.
https://musopen.org/music/performer/isabella-stewart-gardner...
I've just discovered that the ISGM library has been uploaded to musopen.org which is good as the ISGM Web page has a pretty basic search function.
Once I started adding a bit more "flair" to it, things got traction. I'm not talking a complete redesign, but I too had to go back to capitalizing words, adding color, and caring about the "experience" for the market I was aiming to capture.
I hated it, I still do, but I hate it less after seeing success with the changes I was willing to concede on. Just sayin'.
https://github.com/web-scrobbler/web-scrobbler/
assuming the UI expresses meta data in an easily scrapable way.
Did you ever try to promote it in Hydrogenaudio? Is "the" music enthusiasts forum.
It's a cool project nonetheless. I'd love to be proven wrong.
edit: I may have found a bug? I uploaded multiple remixes of a song and it only shows the original version. I don't see a way to see what raw files are being stored, which I think would be incredibly helpful.
edit2: Oh, I guess it just generally isn't properly showing new songs atm. Ah, well. I'll try again later.
Being in the same market, and being frustrated my service isn't even mentioned on this page despite being mentioned in the OP, I'm interested: how would _you_ find out about this? Would you search for it? Would you expect to see it advertised somewhere?
Also, I a smaller plan would be welcome, I pay $2 to google for 100GB, I would welcome it here too.
BTW I should also mention that if you don't pay after the trial, it never actually locks you out. I haven't coded that part yet and it I feel bad about charging for buggy software so it's more of a donation at the moment. So feel free to use it for free and contribute if you like it later on.
PS: I hate Sonos, but I am locked in :)
Great project!
But at the very least I'm going to try it out. Looks great from the outside.
HN comments: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2914779>
This is how a technically inclined but maybe less so than your current users may see this: Like its a kind of Dropbox? With folders and whatnot? But with a Music player App to play the music on various devices, which will stream the music from that drop box?
So it’s like a Spotify, except it takes the music from this drop box like thing instead of their server? For which operating systems do u have music player apps? Android, iOS, windows, macOS, Linux? What do these apps look like, where’s the link to those apps?
How do I upload data, via the website? Or is there another app? How about some screen shots to see how it’s uploaded and then played?
Inter.tube let’s you easily store your music collection in your own cloud and listen to it on all your devices. It's kind of like Dropbox, but focused on storing and streaming music. You can upload files (mp3, Flac, …) from your browser, and you can listen to your music either with your browser or via music apps. We don’t have our own native music playing App. You can use any music playing app that supports an open protocol called “Subsonic”. There are Subsonic apps for various OSs, including Android and iOS. See our list of recommended apps [here].
I am wondering about the legal part. Because the users store licensed files on your server, then you "distribute" it back to them, could it be any licensing problem?
I assume it could also be solved by encrypting the file, so you only store encrypted files on your server, and only the user/owner of that song can decode it.
No more than storing your legally-archived CDs on <insert cloud storage service>, I would imagine.
IANAL, of course, but intuitively there shouldn't be any issues as long as the songs aren't made available to anyone other than the user who uploaded it.
1. put your CD in your computer
2. our website recognizes the CD
3. we grant you listening access to songs on that CD (without actually ripping/uploading)
They got sued and lost:
>Judge Jed S. Rakoff, in the case UMG v. MP3.com, ruled in favor of the record labels against MP3.com and the service on the copyright law provision of "making mechanical copies for commercial use without permission from the copyright owner."
MP3Tunes 'won' in principle but they were liable for ignoring DMCA takedown notices and seeding the service with unauthorized copies of music.
> First, it established DMCA safe harbor protection for online locker services, potentially granting them "broad immunity from copyright liability". Second, it endorsed data deduplication, which allows cloud music services to more efficiently allocate storage and reduce the amount of space needed per user.
I would be curious to know why the rulings were different. If anything it seems like MP3.com provided stronger guarantees that their users legally owned the songs by requiring them to insert a CD.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._MP3Tu...
Good job!
Here's my site. You can try it for free: https://inter.tube
It supports almost all of Subsonic (highly recommend play:Sub on iOS). FLAC works. I never re-encode your songs, they are kept byte-for-byte. It doesn't support Last.fm (yet?) but I don't think it would be too hard to add. It respects metadata tags. There are still some glitches, and the web player kind of sucks. You can (batch) edit metadata on the web but it does not change the file, just the web/API interfaces.
To be honest I have mostly lost motivation to work on this, but I was aiming at exactly the pain points the author of this article describes. Send me an email (profile) or tweet/comment if you think it's worth pursuing again.