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I started a one-man biz that's beating VC-backed startups
- omarchowdhury 10y agoThe entire thing is built on the ecosystems created by companies that were all venture backed at one point, though.
- idoh 10y agoThere is a big difference between having direct competitors that are VC backed versus using infrastructure that is VC backed.
- sidlls 10y agoI think the parent's point is that he's built his company on a VC-backed foundation. Not saying it's valid (I have no clue about this business or how it's built), but it seems he's trying to say this is a bit like Space-X claiming to be beating NASA at space travel.
- rhizome 10y agoWell we're screwed, then, because it's turtles all the way down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel#Origins
- mahyarm 10y agoVC cash is great for business that want to be infrastructure for the world. VC cash is a tool, to build a certain kind of large business. You just have to recognize that.
- lojack 10y agoI didn't get the feeling that the point was he didn't benefit (directly or indirectly) from VC funding at all. Only that he was able to remain competitive with companies that were VC funded.
- rmason 10y agoPUD has a well deserved reputation among solo entrepreneurs. I think Distro Kid is his fifth startup. All but one of his companies (the one unsuccessful one) were powered by CFML.
- Cyph0n 10y agoCFML is not a "hip" language, so I don't care /s This a lesson for all of us developers (myself especially!) who end up fussing over what kind of language/framework/server to use before writing a single line of code. Props to @pud.
- owebmaster 10y agoCFML is and always was an inferior tech. Worse than PHP, together with ASP. But kudos to the Guy that makes itvwork the way he need.
- prawn 10y agoIn the time you've taken to miss the point, Kaplan's probably launched another business.
- owebmaster 10y agoAnd now he is launching the third one. As a software developer myself, what is the point you got that I missed? CFML is awesome?
- no_wizard 10y agoI am a bit of a language nerd myself so I'm inclined to agree with you from a technical perspective. I just want to hammer in that last point you made about making it work the way he needs. I think this is often the most overlooked and undervalued thing in tech. Has been for a long time. It's quite often people look at something like this or walk into a project at a new company with existing code and realize that sometimes the important thing is that it works well for what it's intended goal is not that it's written with the newest JavaScript Library or the newest implementation of Django (great stuff there btw not knocking Django). Sometimes Perl is fine thank you. Still the best string processing language in the business In my not so humble opinion :) I remember when CGI was all the rage and then poof everyone now thinks that it's gross. Anyone remember making money on custom joomla templates and plugins? Edited for clarity
- econner 10y agoMet @pud once while he was CEO of Blippy. Very nice guy and great to talk to. I also absolutely love his post: "Why Must You Laugh at My Back End" (http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back-end http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back...). He's built lots of crazy impressive stuff by himself and DistroKid is no different.
- minxomat 10y agoHeh, I just wanted to checkout the DBaaS he mentiones, but it seems http://www.xeround.com/ http://www.xeround.com/ is now a really shitty Alibaba "clone". Edit: For reference, here's the old website: http://web.archive.org/web/20071019010255/http://xeround.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20071019010255/http://xeround.com...
- econner 10y agoYep, yep, my favorite part is using Dropbox to deploy code.
- georgespencer 10y agoI love what you're doing! But have to observe disparity between: > beating VC-backed startups and > DistroKid intentionally has a small team and no investors. We’re here to make the world a better place for musicians — not to make billions from them. We’d make ludicrously more money if we charged what the other distributors do. It sounds like you're coexisting quite nicely with different objectives.
- tedmiston 10y ago> beating VC-backed startups Just to nitpick, CD Baby isn't really a VC-backed startup either, right? I've been under the impression Derek bootstrapped it to revenue quickly similarly.
- skrebbel 10y agoHe sold it and they pivoted since. It's hardly the same company at all anymore (Derek's CD Baby was an online record store. A webshop for CDs).
- tudorw 10y agoFC, oh boy, happy days :)
- abraae 10y agoMany, many wasted hours.
- drenvuk 10y agoThis is pretty darn cool and the first I've heard of it. I thought there'd be a cheaper way to do what your competitors have and here you've done it. What your success also confirms is that reducing your workload with bots and cronjobs are one of the keys to succeeding with a small team. How do you handle support? How are you able to find infringing music?
- pud 10y ago> How do you handle support? 2 full-time support reps (who are amazing), so we're not really one-man, anymore. > How are you able to find infringing music? Obviously I can't get into details (lest the baddies figure out how to get in). But we have about 40 different checks to make sure the artist is who they say they are (or manually verify if the check fails) and other things.
- technologyvault 10y agoThis is another example that it's a misconception that you have to have a big team and lots of cash to get to the next level Stories like this hearken to people like Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram's Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger.
- sidlls 10y agoMark Zuckerberg had "lots of cash" compared to most folks (his father, a wealthy dentist, and his father's friends bankrolled Mark's business). He's not the best example to use when it comes to "bootstrapping."
- Animats 10y agoIt's Craigslist for music. Low overhead. This could do to the music industry what Craiglist did to newspaper classified advertising.
- idoh 10y agoI can see how they would dominate music meta-distribution but it does not seem likely that they would get into anything further.
- overcast 10y agoThe music industry still produces/mixes/masters music.
- Animats 10y agoNo, they don't. That's all outsourced. The music industry "labels" are mostly marketing and funding operations. All the steps of music production are available to anybody.
- overcast 10y agoRight, which is part of the industry. Who exactly is paying for all of that expensive studio time? The broke artist?
- urs2102 10y agoAh yes! The CFML guy - @pud (that's how I always remember him from that one blog post he wrote)! This is really cool, and love hearing about stuff like this. I love the idea of running a small team and scaling a product which doesn't have a huge overhead to make something which beats out the current market by just doing a few things better. Hats off to you man. Great stuff!
- pud 10y agoThis pub, this very pub we're sitting in. I built it, with my own hands! But do they call me the Pubmaker? Naa! See the wall over there, that protects our town? I built it, with my own hands! But do they call me the Wallmaker? And the bridge, you know, that crosses our river, I built it, with my own hands! But do they call me the Bridgemaker? But I tell ya, man! YOU F*CK ONE GOAT! - the CFML guy
- CPLX 10y agoI was wondering where that was going but I think you pulled it out at the end there.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hornbaker 10y agoWell, to be fair, you f*cked that one goat multiple times. ;)
- urs2102 10y agoThis is the reply I was looking for. You really got me there 'the CFML guy'.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- b_emery 10y agoSo artist pay $20 per year, and to quote the article "100,000+ artists", he's looking at $2,000,000 gross per year? Three employees. Amazing
- pud 10y agoPlans start at $20 per year. $35 gets you more advanced features (ability to set release dates, customize pricing, and more). We also have optional paid services, such as cover song licensing ($12/year per cover song), YouTube ContentID ($4.95 per single) and a few others.
- mysterpaul 10y agoHow does $12 cover the license of a cover song? Aren't those fees much higher/based on number of sales?
- citruspi 10y agoDistroKid is charging $12/year to handle the covered song fees for you - they automatically withdraw the required amount from your royalties and send it to the original author. [0]: https://distrokid.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/2131024 https://distrokid.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/2131024
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jtth 10y agoTo be fair, any company making a net profit is doing better than most VC-backed startups.
- jgalt212 10y agoTo add to this, any business that targets $100MM or less a year in terminal velocity revenues will basically be uncontested from VC backed start ups. At the risk of generalizing, VCs these days don't have interest in businesses whose exit price is less than $5-$10B.
- pud 10y agoI agree with you. But VCs are still investing in startups that do what DistroKid does. Those startups all take a percentage of royalties. So there's probably a sense of "if we release the new Jay-Z record, we'll make that $100MM revenue..." DistroKid doesn't take any percentage. While we're leaving money on the table, the hacker in me (in the HN sense) kinda feels good that we're f*cking it up for everyone. At least I hope that's what we're doing. \m/
- staunch 10y agoYou're competing with what's possible rather than merely what exists today. DistroKid is better technology and a hint at the great future of the cloud. Congrats!
- tedmiston 10y agoIs the number really that high? Can one really generalize all VCs? Are we strictly talking VCs and not other types of startup investors?
- rlucas 10y agoThose numbers ring true for expectations of medium-to-large ($250 M+ is probably a good threshold) SF Bay Area VCs, at this moment in early 2017. Source: small-to-medium non-SF VC.
- stuffedBelly 10y agoAs a part-time musician, I absolutely love DistroKid.
- pud 10y agoThanks!
- no_wizard 10y agoI think it's great that you have found great success as a pipeline service. I also think it may be disingenuous to suggest this can or should work for every type of business. While I happen to agree that services that simply do a pipeline, aggregation, or intermediary service are A) not something I feel VCs should usually spend their money on in great quantities if at all and B) are often the most ripe for disruption, I disagree that finding scaled efficiency for all types of businessses in this manner is possible. I do however think it's wonderful you are promoting the more traditional idea of a business with this product at least which is the more canonical bootstrapping or self funding/ side job till you make it/ type thing that doesn't need tons of employees to be a good value for those that are a part of that business. That's just my opinions though I'm glad it's been a success
- nagvx 10y agoPlease correct me if I'm wrong - isn't this a terrible business decision? It took a small team a year to make a product that is apparently taking the market by storm. Their secret sauce is apparently not some special algorithm, but common-sense automation. If the barrier to entry is actually this low, and they advertise the fact widely enough, they will soon be joined by competitors trying to do the same. They may be ahead of the pack, but they lose their selling point and their advantage faster than they would have done otherwise. Why give away your hand like this?
- 40acres 10y agoIt's one thing to talk about your plan, it's another thing to actually execute it. We've seen bloated startup after bloated startup, I think running a lean (and I mean lean, 3 employees is nuts to me) ship like this is very hard to do and also must be very tough being the sole programmer.
- PaulRobinson 10y agoIt might be tough being the sole programmer, or it might be bliss. I've been daydreaming about running a microISV recently - the ability to prioritise everything myself and crack on without justification appeals. Sure, I might be wrong, but that's OK.
- huangc10 10y agoDistrokid has been out for a couple of years now and it's easy to see that it's pretty damn popular. Sure someone can get a team together and create the next Distrokid (I'm sure it's happening), but they'll be behind a couple of years. By that time, @Pud will have made his millions and onto the next...
- clay_to_n 10y agoYup, they have the userbase already. Also, they disrupted the incumbents by being an order of magnitude cheaper (or cheaper than that, based on how many songs you're selling) than their competitors, which helped their userbase grow. It's hard to imagine a new competitor being able to compete with DistroKid on price at all, considering how cheap they are. An order of magnitude cheaper is probably out of the question. And these numbers (for the larger clients) are peanuts on DistroKid anyways, so even if you could compete on price it might not matter for much of the market.
- aresant 10y ago@Pud can undeniably build products that are laser focused and useful. And his minimalist approach to company building is epic and I am a fan. But it's sort of disingenuous to play David Vs. Goliath here like his line about launching: "I figured only a small number of smart people would somehow find us among the masses." He's just like the rest of us - just build a great product and be lean guys! But oh wait he launched DistroKid on the back of the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of registered musicians already using his other site - Fandalism - founded years before.(1) EDIT - why I am a fan of pud is in the children to this comment he brings a data-gun to a knife fight and sorts out my impression w some facts. (1) https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/06/philip-kaplan-fandalism/ https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/06/philip-kaplan-fandalism/
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pud 10y agoABP - Always Be Parlaying. I just made that up. Maybe it'll become a thing.
- harryh 10y agoCumulative Advantage!
- aresant 10y agoWhy not tweak out the "Our secret:" part of article to include the whole "capture a community" thing? Or, fuck that, since this article is awesome self-admitted wantrepreneur wrapped marketing I'm just personally curious - how important was fandalism to (1) launch and (2) tipping yourself into current hockey stick mode?
- pud 10y agoThere are two DistroKid banners on Fandalism.com. According to our tracking URL, the main one has been clicked 57,543 times, converting into 207 customers.
- tom_pulo 10y agoI very much like reading this type of stories where founders candidly talk about their business, how well they are doing, what did it take to get where they are (remove a good chunk of the usual BS, add some numbers). Indie Hackers is a great source (https://www.indiehackers.com https://www.indiehackers.com) for this type of stories. I have a feeling that this is the dream of a lot of people on HN. Having an easy to run business with a couple of people, without crazy competition, not needing to go sell it to VCs, and making a good amount of money while running it. Not judging, just observing.
- tedmiston 10y ago> By contrast, our competitors largely have millions in funding ... And they’re owned by venture capitalists and/or private equity firms who are banking on a large exit. Disincentives of the startup model at work! These days it feels like you if your startup doesn't have polarized outcomes you're "doing it wrong".
- curiousDog 10y agoI probably missed it in the article, but how does Distrokid make money?
- scentedmeat 10y ago"artist pay $20 per year" ... "100,000+ artists"
- sandGorgon 10y agoYou have dozens of bots, written by one dude ? Really interested to know about your stack and your deployment methodology. Did you build a bit/async infrastructure because of scale issues...Or is it inherently a mental model that is easy to grok easily?
- prawn 10y agoMay not be up to date, but past info on his stack: http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back-end http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back...
- pareshverma91 10y agoDoes DistroKid track the usage/consumption details of the songs for artists to look at or analyze? If so, what is the probability that they will expand to also have a recommendation system for indie music based on these aggregated stats?
- pud 10y agoYes we provide lots of stats to artists. No, we're not planning on a recommendation system (plenty of online radio thingy thangies that are already great!)
- brilliantcode 10y agoI love articles like this it's inspiring...but it really doesn't offer any new insights other than the fact that Every one man success story on HN was largely possible due to existing audience from another entity that took years to grow It's pretty disheartening once you read the article and it boils down to this very requirement: You Need An Audience First. I'd like more insights and details in how lone entrepreneurs of HN were able to grow their audience. Because when Step 1 is have a big enough audience the rest of the steps are pretty much a no brainer. It's this step that most of us are struggling with. I've spent years in seclusion writing a SaaS that ultimately resulted less than the annual wage of a North Korean factory manager and it was rough both physically and mentally but it all boiled down to the fact that VC funded startups were able to do huge PR and buy ads, write blog posts, increase Adwords bid prices etc while I was not. So yeah, you can succeed with a one-man biz outfit but not without an audience. It makes sense why Linkedin is valuable, why Pinterest, Whatsapp, Oculus, Twitch gets bought out even without revenues.
- cardine 10y agoI was able to bootstrap and launch a successful (5 figures MRR) SaaS by myself with no previous audience. Now we are much bigger (in terms of both employees and revenue). How I did it was very simple. I found where my customers were and I lived and breathed on the industry forums they were on. While developing my beta I had a very strong sense of the problems people were facing, how my product solved those problems, and why my product would be superior to competitors. Plus I was able to establish myself as a reputable person within those circles of people on those forums. So when my beta was ready I was able to get people to pay for the beta by offering them a lifetime discount and the ability to talk with me throughout the development process so that they had some impact in shaping the product. Just from those beta users I was ramen profitable and I was able to bring on an intern for a couple months to help me speed up some of the development. By the time I publicly launched I had a core group of evangelists (the beta users), a strong reputation on industry forums, and an amazing product that solved big issues my customers faced and I reached 5 figure MRR within a month of launching.
- cottsak 10y ago
- tomelders 10y agoa distrokid API would be pretty useful.
- tomclancy 10y agoI've been watching DistroKid since it spawned out of Fandalism. Awesome to see how successful it's become. Just curious, what % of artists gross over $19.99 a year?
- aurizon 10y agoI see the comments where you started running with a sea of clients who trusted you to give them a fair shake. I see so many of the others where the music makers suck hind tit. Looking at your competitors, you have a clear advantage in your lean and efficient structure. In time your method will spread and and drive many others out. The problem I see is labels tied to the big companies may have restrictive agreements that exclude you. Couple this with the wish of many people to feel they are complete when they have bought into spotify/Apple/etc. In any event, I wish you well, live long and prosper
- pg_is_a_butt 10y agoi used your adbrite and marketbanker before that... tons and tons of $50 checks... finally had enough to justify trip to the bank, and the bank rejected them. called adbrite, and they wouldn't reissue... is that why you changed your name from marketbanker? because your plan from the start was to be a bank holding other people's money and then never give it to them? you're all idiots.
- Futurebot 10y agoInteresting related statistics: "The blockbuster effect has been even more striking on the digital platforms that were supposed to demonstrate the benefits of the long tail. On iTunes or Amazon, the marginal cost of “stocking” another item is essentially zero, so supply has grown. But the rewards of this model have become increasingly skewed towards the hits. Anita Elberse, of the Harvard Business School, working with data from Nielsen, notes that in 2007, 91% of the 3.9m different music tracks sold in America notched up fewer than 100 sales, and 24% only one each. Just 36 best-selling tracks accounted for 7% of all sales. By last year the tail had become yet longer but even thinner: of 8.7m different tracks that sold at least one copy, 96% sold fewer than 100 copies and 40%—3.5m songs—were purchased just once. And that does not include the many songs on offer that have never sold a single copy. Spotify said in 2013 that of its 20m-strong song catalogue at the time, 80% had been played—in other words, the remaining 4m songs had generated no interest at all." http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21716467-technology-has-given-billions-people-access-vast-range-entertainment-gady http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21716467-techno...
- yresnob 10y agoIs there something like this but for books and poetry books??
- bambax 10y agoCreatespace? It's an Amazon company but it gets you into lots of distribution channels, worldwide. Zero setup or recurring fee, but a percentage of royalties.
- runevault 10y agoSo there are a few parts to this. Raw distribution you've got stuff like Draft2Digital which can help you distribute to Amazon/B&N/Kobo/etc. Limited value outside B&N requires you to be in the US so they can help you get around that if you are non-US based. But they also give some tools to make things like putting links to the right store in the back of your book for each platform. However doing any licensing stuff if say you want to pay to put quotes from book snippets/lines from poetry/etc into your book the way distrokid lets you license a cover, nothing that I know of handles that space. I don't know if there's enough of a market for it because it isn't nearly as good a business decision for a writer as doing a cover can be for a musician, so smart writers avoid it.
- leroy_masochist 10y ago@Pud, would be great to hear your take on what it has been like dealing with the record companies. According to YC: > Because the alumni network is so large and tightly knit, investors or companies who try to maltreat a YC-funded startup can usually be made to stop. [--> footnote] Except for the record labels, which are effectively a rogue state with nuclear weapons. There is nothing we or anyone else can do to protect you from them, except warn you not to start startups that touch label music. [0] Your service does various tasks such as cover song licensing which are record label-facing. What has that been like? And, congratulations on getting engaged. [0]: http://www.ycombinator.com/atyc/#n3 http://www.ycombinator.com/atyc/#n3
- mshenfield 10y agoIt's awesome to hear about a swarm of bots replacing millions of dollars worth of labor overhead. Are you worried about the maintenance and QA at all? Is there anything about the problem that lends itself especially to automation?
- stryk 10y agoIs this a digital-only endeavor? I don't see any mention of physical product services such as pressing CDs & DVDs, printing covers/liner notes/etc. And what about marketing materials like posters, flyers and so on. There's still a market for that stuff, and it could be another revenue stream. Merch is also pretty big for some artists, you could explore getting t-shirts and hats and stuff printed. (just an idea, i've no idea if it's profitable, or more trouble than it might be worth)
- kyasui 10y agoI use and love Distrokid - thanks for the product!
- inopinatus 10y agoReally resonated with me, also being a micro-startup with a minimalist customer-centric philosophy, albeit in a completely different market. Steps to reproduce: 1. Identify a poorly served professional segment where the business processes are not the primary task, 2. Automate their processes with vision and passion and empathy for the customer, 3. Make fans for life. Maybe also profit. Minimum requirements to execute: at least one seed customer; wifi; coffee; time. Rock on pud.
- pud 10y agoIndeed. Rock on inopinatus
- blunte 10y agoHey, nothing wrong with self-promotion - it can take you places! Look at POTUS.
- ejanus 10y agoOK.......self-promote your ventures ):
- cyberferret 10y agoGreat to see this. Stoked to hear that it is the same guy who started Fandalism. I used to use Fandalism years ago to post my clips but just kind of stopped. I never got any emails or communication from them and just assumed that they faded away. Spurred by this article, I checked, and am amazed that it is still going strong. Must remember to get back to posting on there again.
- erichocean 10y agohttps://distrokid.com/ https://distrokid.com/ is a near-perfect landing page for this kind of service. Well done! Anyone know if there is an equivalent for independent films?
- naryad 10y agoCheck out https://mubi.com https://mubi.com
- 6stringmerc 10y agoAmazon Video Direct is a worthwhile enterprise to explore. It takes effort. Quite a bit of legwork to fill out forms. Also, the content MUST have a subtitle file...but those things considered, it's highly competitive and gets things on Amazon Prime and pays out real $USD.
- RainManDetroit 10y agoGood, there are better backers out there who will buy you out whole and let you keep your soul.
- jasonwilk 10y agoCongrats Pud.
- BorisMelnik 10y agoWould have been so much better if it was titled "YC startups"
- haywirez 10y agoHey, does (or can) Distrokid offer an API? I've been dying to find a distributor that would let me programmatically submit/replace releases. It would only be used for my label, no bulk stuff, reasonable per-call fees or adjusting balances on a pre-paid account would be fine. Sale statistics API - even better.
- sidcool 10y ago>thought it would take 1–2 months to build DistroKid. It’s just plugging into some APIs and moving files around, right? I underestimated. It took a year. Wow. I would like to understand more about this.
- wingerlang 10y agoAny technical tasks estimation is usually 3x of the intial. So let's just put 3-6 months there. Then imagine talking to lots of 'stores', contracts, legal stuff and so on. Just reading about what this is, I think even one year is quick.
- sidcool 10y agoA very well written and inspiring post. Congratulations and good luck. Do you mind shedding some light on the tech stack you used for distrokid?
- bootload 10y agoHaving quickly looked at the audience for DistroKid, then see what happens with artists by major labels, no wonder the product is sought after by upcoming artists. [0] Bandcamp is another company that uses technology to squeeze out the middle man. [1] The first page is really well designed. You can easily see what the product does, "let artists make music, then distribute it for a fixed cost". Reference [0] "52 Ways to Screw an Artist, by Warner Bros. Records" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13648245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13648245 [1] "Is Bandcamp the Holy Grail of Online Record Stores?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12324350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12324350
- ajaimk 10y agoFandalism launch in January 2012. Distrokid in mid-2013. Considering it took @Pud near 4 years to reach these numbers with DistroKid, the year and a half of building a user base with Fandalism is not that big a deal. This basically would be the same as all the freemium companies out there that offer everything they do for free for a while till they build their product enough to start charging for it later. My favorite line is in the original DistroKid TC article where @Pud says the goal wasn't to make money with this but to get more people to the social network.
- ejanus 10y agoGreat! I would like to tap your brains. But now you have captured/conquered the music world wouldn't it be wise to disrupt movies/films distributions?
- quadcore 10y agoI started a one-man biz that's beating VC-backed startups Click-bait title in my opinion. It's not because you don't need VCs to satisfy your customers that VCs are bad. They are good when you need them to satisfy your customers. Now distrokid-competitors' problem is not that they have VCs money, it's that they "hired" bad ones. Now, I grant you, good VCs for startups, those who gonna understand whats good and not for your customers may be rare... But look at google and facebook, they did right by taking VCs' money don't you think.
- badestrand 10y agoOne could very well argue that this success would not have been possible with VC money. They would never have this business model of $20/artist/year because VCs want loads of profits. And they would have >100 employees instead of three, because, well, aggressive scaling. It might boil down to your definition of success I guess. Having taken VC money might have maximized their profit but at the cost of their top USP (very affordable service). Also they probably would not be loved as much by their customers and not doing as much of a good deed to the artists as they are now.
- sddfd 10y agoGreat work! I'd like to see more startups like this.
- sanifsdd 10y agoDo you have a pay~pal ? because if you do you can create an extra 500 a week to your earnings just working from home for 3 hours per day. go here to this site. http://bit.ly/2atnA1a http://bit.ly/2atnA1a
- myfonj 10y agoMinor complaint / remark: is there complete list of all stores and services that DistroKid supports (directly, or better even indirectly) somewhere? All I was able to find were murky statements about 'dozen mayor services' and "150+ others" [0]. That page links "MediaNet Customers" page [0a] that displays 24 logos and links [0b] that displays list of 286 "MediaNet Content Partners". Is that it? I was particularly interested about Bandcamp and all I've found that DistroKid mentions Bandcamp [1] and Bandcamp mentions DistrokKid [2] but no proof they really talk to each other. [0] https://distrokid.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1276117-what-stores-will-my-music-appear-in- https://distrokid.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1276117-... [0a] http://www.mndigital.com/about-us/customers.html http://www.mndigital.com/about-us/customers.html [0b] http://www.mndigital.com/about-us/content-partners.html http://www.mndigital.com/about-us/content-partners.html [1] https://distrokid.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1601235 https://distrokid.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1601235 [2] https://bandcamp.com/help/selling https://bandcamp.com/help/selling
- 72deluxe 10y agoI am surprised that the development time of 1 year was considered a long time by him compared with his 1-2 month initial estimate. If only projects I / we had been working on for 2 years became so successful!
- kriro 10y agoPrevious connections aside this is still very inspiring. Scaling this well with only three employees (and resisting the urge to add more people just to be bigger) is an amazing feat. I'd be very interested in more details. How focused were you on being profitable and reinvesting profits vs. taking venture money? My guess is profit was one of the key metrics?
- spir 10y ago3 employees, wow! Sounds like it would have taken 300 employees twenty years ago. Reads like an advertisement for basic income.
- tehno 10y agoI wonder what his contingency plans look like. That's a bus factor of 1 there with just 1 programmer.
- bwhites 10y agonice
- bwhites 10y agonice
- ommunist 10y agoThis is fantastic success story! Thank you for sharing. A schoolbook example of disruption howto.
- rrtwo 10y agoHow did you get the music industry companies to agree for you to directly upload files to them?
- dyeje 10y agoEh, I go with CDBaby because the math doesn't work out for me as a small artist. I'd rather pay $50 and just have my album up forever. 9% doesn't matter much to me because I'm making peanuts anyway. Maybe if I get bigger I'll consider switching over. It would be really slick if DistroKid had some kind of conversion process for CDBaby / Tunecore customers.
- 6stringmerc 10y ago...and please count me in among the users for the past 4 years who have seen the value, enjoyed the service, had a lot of fun playing with metrics, and feel inspired to continue my 100% rights ownership in music pursuit for 2017 and beyond. Great product. Great support. Great example.
- mcguire 10y agoHey Pud, since you are answering comments here, I have a question: what failures have you had?
- omouse 10y agoWhat's interesting to me is how he focused on doing small things and building up on them.
- startupdiscuss 10y ago@Pud There are many people who want to know about your tech stack. I think the thinking goes: with one developer, it must be an insanely productive stack. http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back-end http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back... is old, do you still use the same set up?
- Prefinem 10y agoAs someone who works in an AWS / CFML shop, I would also like to know this
- sk24iam 10y agoThis is very motivating. I am also running a site in the indie music industry as a one-man biz. (http://www.synthshare.com http://www.synthshare.com) It has been a challenge to build up the community, I'm sure leveraging Fandalism helped you kickstart your growth. Do you have any advice about user acquisition? Recently I've been getting feedback from music production communities which has all been positive and converted to users; however, it sometimes feels like the site isn't growing as fast as it should be considering all the positive feedback I've received.
- drewman 10y ago*one-person ftfy
- buss_jan 10y agoI'd be interested how you arrived at this particular pricing. $20 per year seems crazy low to me, have you experimented at all with raising the price. Intuitively, I'd think that the next cut-off point is at $49, but that in the range below that the demand is fairly inelastic.
- luckystartup 10y agoThis is amazing. How does one person build so many successful startups while everyone else struggles to just do one? Maybe there was some momentum from his previous successes? If you're already a famous startup founder, then I guess it's easier to get users for your next startups. I've heard that this was the case for Slack, but I don't know how much truth there is in that.