Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

You don't say how much it costs you; my impression is that the time is more than the cash amount. Have you tried asking your users what they want, or telling your users what you want? I'm thinking of '8500 artists. 1200 upcoming shows. Could someone please buy us a drink?' A subscription model would be ideal but I'm not sure how you do that - although i do think that charging two quid for promotion sends the message that your service lacks value, and that you would have got many more signups if you had demanded twenty. If you can't see a subscription model, cost out an upgrade and some merch and then do a kickstarter to raise the funds.

What sort of values could you ad if you had money to burn? How about a full page ad in NME or Q every month promoting 3 new bands? Or a hookup with a radio station? Have you tried getting sponsorship from music instrument manufacturers/dealers? Musicians are always craving new gear, it's an addiction in the same way that music fans are always craving new tunes.

Thanks for your reply.

It costs us roughly £400 per month, including blog posts, server costs and we have an odesk hire who does about 10-15 hours per week researching and entering in shows.

I see what you mean about the £2 as lacking in value, it's all about perception.

Sadly outside the US so I don't think we can do kickstarter (don't know if there are any EU equivalents).

If we had money to burn we'd most likely revamp the site, focusing on mobile (more and more people are accessing us with Android/iPhone ad we both feel this is the way to go). We'd also like to do events for unsigned bands.

If money was truly no object, then yes, full page ads would be pretty cool, but I have no idea how we'd get roi on this.

One thing we've thought about (in conjunction with the localisation of a mobile site) would be very localised targeted advertising. But we're not marketing/ad people and have no idea even where to begin with this.

Is it even possible to get a sales person for commission only to do something like this?

I hesitate to give specific advice from so far away, but my experience of music promoters is that they are some of the most entrepreneurial people out there (to the point that they will exploit you if allowed, of course). Offhand, I would look for ways to get income from the venues, whose economics are simple: book bands with fans, sell booze to fans, profit. They're much more likely to spend, and to understand their own economics than bands themselves. Start your research by calling around local and regional papers as if you had a pub or something and wanted to take out your own advertising - get the rate card of old-media publications and try to guess how much it costs a venue owner to bring the public inside the door and spending money. Or again, simply ask them.

The more I think about it, the more I think venues are your revenue stream. Bands come and go, whereas stages tend to stay in one place :-)

This is great, and probably the way to go. We do have a number of venues who update their listings on a weekly basis, so we must be doing something right by them.

So it's sort of a three link chain:

1. help the fans to find bands they like (and help the band to promote themselves to a wider audience) 2. help venues find bands with the most fans 3. connect these bands with the venues so the bands play in front of large audience and the venue sells more beer.

Point 3 is where we get the revenue stream.

This is good stuff, and helping me see things a bit differently. Thanks

Don't forget to close the circle - make sure the (local) fans know what's on at the venues, even if it's unfamiliar to them. Remember being young and single, and going out for the sake of going out. The exploratory and habitual aspects of cultural behavior are at least as important as the directed ones - but I'll stop here lest I start to sound like a marketing course :-)

Lots of luck, and congratulations on the baby!

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