Comment by eranation | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eranation | Hacker News Reader

One tip - I'm a "musician" (hobbyist), I play the guitar, keyboard, dab with some Cubase, LogicPro, so I'm not a complete stranger to digital music. However nothing in the landing page explains to me what on earth is a patch, module, eurorack etc. Yes, I can google all that, but you have me as a "wider audience" that has a good chance in trying out the product if I had a clue what I need to do to use it. Do I need to buy hardware? You can upsell me an entry level synth (?), do I need to download / buy some software (e.g. a software synth) - a link to get a trial. You can basically open this from just people who know immediately exactly what you do and how it solves them a pain point, to a much wider audience, of people who didn't even know this is a thing, and now that you added a convenient feature to it, maybe the barrier of entry into this sub-genre of music making is lowered, and you gained an unplanned new customer that didn't even know they need it.

The modular synth heads who might use this are a niche audience, and they definitely would know what a patch is. If you don't know what a patch is, these aren't the droids you're looking for.

Hope that doesn't sound rude, its just that this tool doesn't really have any utility for a wider audience.

>its just that

It's not just that. OP's title is "I've built a tool for musicians using mod..."

1. The title is highly inaccurate. It's not a tool for musicians, it's for a specific subset of musicians (like you say).

2. The OP got a front page listing on HN. He missed a golden opportunity explaining things. He probably got a lot of musician visitors that found it interesting, but just got confused and left.

Ok, can you please tell how you would have called this? I've been thinking about the tagline for a lot of time, wasn't able to come out with anything better than that.

"using modular gear" felt really concise to me

First, not rude at all, you make a good point, but my point is, if OP wants to monetize it / make it a business, my unsolicited tip (not that I am some startup guru or anything, just a armchair wannabe) is that even though you go for a niche, you can bring in verticals adjacent to your niche, instead of just fitting a product to the market, you can actually generate new demand by expanding the market. E.g. The chances to convert a keyboardist who can play into becoming a synth head and therefore potentially a paid user are higher than let's say a doctor, so if you already have a musician visit your niche synth website, give them a link, maybe they'll get hooked and you gained a new customer.

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