You have 404,772 users. Here’s what you can do.
There was a very interesting post recently from Pud, co-founder of Blippy and creator of TinyLetter. Pud is also behind Fandalism, a social network for musicians with 400,000+ users. The question he is asking is “What do with this?”, especially on the monetization side: getting bigger? making new features?
My take: Why not building new types user experiences? Golden equation is: sleek UX + great content/data = magic sauce for user stickiness and monetization. This is the plan followed by Spotify for example. Here are some crazy things you can do that would help to monetize Fandalism in the future.
Build a band generator. Using the data and some filters, in one click, Fandalists - if I may - would generate a random short list of musicians (s)he could play with on weekends - my colleague @_timothee was suggesting this to me this morning. I am a jazz pianist in SF, I would get a drummer and a guitarist who are also passionate jazzmen living in the city. Another click and the website would send a notification to the matched users. Your band generator could have also some preset and could build any kind of band/event: “Rock band”, “Gipsy guitar trio”, “Piano duel” or even “Jazz Big Band” or “Grand Orchestra”. Of course, this is doable using each filter manually but the magic is to make instantaneous. Make it obvious, create new connections.
Create worldwide music battles. Just like there were trumpet battles between Gillespie and Louis Armstrong in the 1950s. Pick 5 charismatic songs: “Hotel California”, “Autumn Leaves”, “Let It Be”, “Wonderwall”, “Get Up, Stand Up”. Build one page for each where users could post their own version of the song. Like memes on the Internet, it would create another sense of community within Fandalists, help discovery and can generate a lot of user interest.
A collaborative online recording studio. Fandalists could create open projects and see other contributing to their creation. Like a colossal music Dropbox on a certain tempo. I start a project with a line of guitar and some info (mood, tempo, chord structure). A bassist comes to the site and drops its line of bass. Later, a drummer adds a beat. Another drummer comes and offers a different beat version. In a sense, it would be a cloud-based Babel tower on which thousands would create together.
Overall, I believe data - content especially - and people mixed together are a fantastic path to create never-seen user experiences, which in turns leads to stickiness to the service and easier monetization. Users are more likely to pay a new way to practice their day-to-day passion. Advertisers are ready to be where people come back every day. Potential acquirers are looking for services that have gathered people better than they could have done themselves.
