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Welcome Collaborate Business Ideas Specialized online platform for small artists looking to sell their beats/music

  • Specialized online platform for small artists looking to sell their beats/music

    Posted by Vijay Gupta on October 18, 2020 at 9:12 pm

    As a beatmaker myself, I’ve been pretty disappointed in the options for selling my beats online. I either have to go with something general like Shopify (low fees but not great for the music industry) or something like BeatStars (good for music but very high fees).

    I want to create a platform that is somewhat a compromise between these two. On one hand, I want it to have all the basic features that sound designers and musicians need, like user-friendly audio sampling and instant social sharing. But I also want to be limited enough so that fees can be similar to what you see on Shopify and the like, ideally less than 5%. I know that’s ambitious, but if I keep costs down and use PayPal as the primary payment gateway, I think I could make it possible.

    My main worry is that I’d have a hard time finding demand for the platform. Not only is sound design a pretty limited industry, but I’d be competing against the big companies that already have hundreds of thousands of users. If any of you know the industry, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Even if not, I’d still love more general feedback on the technical/financial potential you see in this.

    Ishaan Patel replied 2 years ago 13 Members · 24 Replies
  • 24 Replies
  • Zach Stevenson

    Administrator
    October 19, 2020 at 9:56 am

    I don’t think your main issue would be getting users, I think it would be keeping the fees as low as you’re proposing. If PayPal takes ~2.5% off the top of transactions, that means you have to sustain your entire website on the remaining 2.5% of the purchase before you hit the fee cap that you proposed. The big players can do this because they have massive numbers of users and plenty of other revenue streams, but I don’t know if it would be sustainable for a small startup like yours. If you do the math and it checks out though, I think there is plenty of demand and potential for an idea like this.

    • Vijay Gupta

      Member
      October 23, 2020 at 3:39 pm

      Thanks for the feedback. To remedy what you’re saying, I think I’d have to make the fees a little bit higher in the beginning and find other incentives to get new users, and then once the platform grows enough I can move to the lower fee structure.

  • Leonitus Vauxhall

    Member
    December 10, 2020 at 11:49 pm

    I like this idea.

    • Vijay Gupta

      Member
      December 12, 2020 at 12:21 am

      Appreciate it. You think it’s feasible enough to sell or just good in concept?

  • Jabari Toure

    Member
    December 12, 2020 at 1:57 pm

    I like this one too. I don’t know much about the music industry but I think it’s a niche enough group that if you market it right you won’t find the demand to be an issue. One question I would have is how would you build the site? For small stuff like this, the design quality is going to be really important.

    • Anthony Stewart

      Member
      December 13, 2020 at 1:09 am

      Agreed and I second the question. If you want to compete against these sites that spend thousands on creating the best user experience possible, you’re going to need a pretty good site yourself.

      • Tom Croft

        Member
        December 13, 2020 at 12:01 pm

        I’m a web dev with a couple years of experience, I’ve worked on marketplace sites in the past and have experience with plenty of payment APIs (PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.NET, NMI, etc). Let me know if any of you would be interested in making this idea into reality.

      • Julia Slover

        Member
        December 18, 2020 at 1:31 am

        I think you could feasibly do this without needing to spend thousands of dollars. You could probably build it on a platform like WordPress and then most of your cost would just be finding a payment gateway. But for sure the user experience would be crucial for something like this, you’d want to spend a lot of time working on the site design.

  • Douglas Owens

    Member
    January 2, 2021 at 6:32 pm

    I think it’s feasible, but you wouldn’t want to start at 0 sellers and try to grow purely organically. If anything, I’d reach out to a few small/mid-sized artists and get them to commit to selling their next piece exclusively on your platform (you’d probably have to pay them a bit). That would immediately drive their fans to your site, and if the drops went well then you could consider longer-term deals with those artists and grow from there. Plenty of other ways to go about this as well, I’d just recommend trying to jumpstart with something like that if you can afford it.

    • Zach Stevenson

      Administrator
      January 3, 2021 at 11:39 pm

      Very well said, and I totally agree. When you’re creating a social site, doing something like that to drive a quick movement of people to your platform is one of the best ways to make it eventually self-sustaining. That being said, it wouldn’t be cheap to get artists to sell exclusively on a little-known platform. You’d either have to be willing to put decent money in, to start small, or to get some really favorable deals.

      • Vijay Gupta

        Member
        January 4, 2021 at 6:36 pm

        I’m liking this plan. I’d want to keep it as low budget as I can, but I think I’m willing to spend what would be needed to get some artists on the platform. I do have some artists as friends and as friends-of-friends, so I’m hoping too that people would be more friendly with deals because of that. Also, instead of just money, I could maybe also offer them free marketing on the site and its social pages. Thanks for all the ideas!

    • Noah Richardson

      Member
      November 15, 2021 at 6:32 pm

      This strategy is definitely your best bet. Get some pre-established brand credit on your side and then you can start with a solid and dedicated userbase. It might be harder than you think to onboard creators, though. Entrusting their main revenue stream to an unknown platform is a risky move for them to take and they’re going to want benefits and assurance to do so.

      • Jabari Toure

        Member
        November 15, 2021 at 11:57 pm

        Definitely agree with this as someone who’s worked with creators myself. Be ready to spend big or offer unmatched rates/benefits. I think the plan could work but it’s definitely harder in practice than abstract.

      • Vijay Gupta

        Member
        November 16, 2021 at 2:40 pm

        Appreciate the feedback. I am ready to offer good benefits, but you’re right in that I should be prepared to offer even more especially to get my first few creators.

      • Ishaan Patel

        Member
        March 24, 2022 at 12:36 am

        What benefits would you realistically be able to offer though? Keep in mind you’re a cash-strapped startup and other companies have thought of these possibilities too.

  • Jashan Shetty

    Member
    January 5, 2021 at 11:04 pm

    I’m very much interested on this plan

    • Vijay Gupta

      Member
      January 6, 2021 at 12:05 am

      Awesome, let’s DM and see what we could do.

  • Luciana Moore

    Member
    February 7, 2022 at 11:04 pm

    I think this is a pretty good idea. There’s a lot of inter-platform movement right now, so with the right brand deals, I think you could get off to a good start.

    • Vijay Gupta

      Member
      February 9, 2022 at 11:14 pm

      Thanks. What do you mean by there’s a lot of inter-platform movement?

      • Luciana Moore

        Member
        February 13, 2022 at 11:21 pm

        Of course! I mean right now we’re living in a few years where artists and creators transitioning between platforms is commonplace. If you look at streamers or podcasters or musicians, it’s normal (maybe even expected) for them to change it up once in a while. So I think it’s feasible that you could attract some substantial talent with the right approach.

      • Vijay Gupta

        Member
        February 17, 2022 at 11:53 pm

        Oh I see. Yeah, I agree, and I definitely hope I can use it to my advantage in growing the platform.

      • Agata Paredes

        Member
        February 28, 2022 at 11:02 pm

        I agree. Now is a good time to start implementing this idea.

    • Jabari Toure

      Member
      March 14, 2022 at 11:44 pm

      I left my advice on this idea before and I want to agree that I still think the market is ripe for something like it. Unless one exists that I don’t know of, I believe this is something new and something that, with the right design and positioning, could be big.

      • Anthony Stewart

        Member
        March 15, 2022 at 11:16 pm

        I also still agree, but I’d reiterate that you want to make sure there is an adequate market for this. It’s a niche idea which means you’ll have customers who like it, but will there be enough of those customers to sustain your business model?

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