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Wesley Verhoeve : What If Jason Fried Worked In The Music Business
February 8th, 2010 by Wesley Verhoeve
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Jason Fried was interviewed by Big Think on his software company 37Signals and the way they operate their business. As you may know I have a bit of a business crush on 37Signals and am an enthused user of their Basecamp product. Below I’ve noted down some points I found useful and translated them for the music industry. Watch the full interview here.
Free samples make sense, only if there is also something to sell.
Don’t give away all your music. Or if you do, make sure you have amazing merch for sale, or a lyric book, or limited edition packages, etc. Think like a bakery or a drug dealer. Give people a sample of your product, and have the quality of the sample do your sales work.
Putting a price on something forces you to make it worth paying for.
Just because you can record a crappy demo in Garageband and put it up as a free download, doesn’t mean that’s a sustainable business model. Invest in the quality of your product and make it worth purchasing.
Bootstrap vs Major Funding: Not having money forces you to make good decisions and really think things through.
I’ve seen some serious money wasted at well-funded indies or major labels that could’ve been used so much more wisely if only there would’ve been more urgency. Having money makes you think you have to spend it. “Well, I’m funded for a million dollars, I guess I should get a fancy office space!”
On Ad-Supported Business Models
Displaying ads only make sense if your core business function facilitates search and discovery. You can build a better business if the people that use your product are also the people that pay for the product. In the ad supported business, who are you trying to please? The users or the advertisers who pay you and keep the service around? There is a disconnect there. Examples includes news paper websites, radio stations, even Spotify. One of my major pet peeves is major label websites displaying google ads. So tacky, so pointless.
On The Modern Workplace
The modern work place is set up badly and optimized for interruptions. Interruptions include meetings, phone calls, people walking around, people asking you questions, etc. and they are the enemy of creativity and productivity. Establish ground rules in your work environment that enable people to focus for long stretches of time and know that most anything you think of as ‘very urgent’ is probably not so urgent that it can’t wait an hour or two.
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