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Does The World Need An Indie Musicians Community? 🤔

As Indie Hackers, we know that a product idea usually needs validation and iteration with 'earlyvangelists' for it to bloom into a success.

For the indie musician (bedroom producer/songwriter), is such a process possible?

Imagine I spend my time writing and recording math-funk-jazz-fusion-metal instrumentals, uploading to soundcloud.

To try and promote and iterate with a potential customer I search for users who like my niche genre and reach out with:

"Hey there 👋 I saw that you're a math-funk-jazz-fusion-metal fan, I've made this EP if you'd like to check it out? I'd be happy to hear any constructive feedback on how I can better address your math-funk-jazz-fusion-rock needs."

It's unlikely I'd hear anything back, unless they happened to love my music. There is just so much music out there that if someone doesn't like my tracks they won't comment saying why - they simply won't listen again.

Silence is harsh and confusing feedback.

Are there any solutions for this problem?

  • get a band together and play live for direct feedback (well... not right now I suppose 😷)
  • continue to churn out music and setting it free into the void
  • continue to churn out music, while sharing with a community of other indie musicians

I had first hand experience of that third option when taking part in a music production course on monthly.com. I found encouragement and feedback from the community to be more valuable than the course content itself!

Some downsides to my monthly experience:

  • it doesn't run continuously, a community is built for a month then poof 💨 it vanishes
  • it is expensive - something like $300 for one month of learning

My utopian vision is this:
A community where indie musicians are assigned to cohorts of 10-20 creators with similar tastes and goals. Members post progress and listen to each others new tracks regularly - giving honest, detailed and constructive feedback. A community where people set and commit to creative goals and genuinely want each other to succeed.

That's the idea anyway... 🤷

I am going to validate this idea with a couple of indie musicians. If anyone is interested or can introduce me to someone who might be then please reach out! Also happy to hear people's thoughts in the comments.

  1. 2

    The unbundling effect atm means that there is the potential to create a niche community for almost anything.

    I wrote about 'validating a community', I think it might be helpful.

    1. 1

      Thanks for sharing - really useful post, I'll definitely be coming back to that.

  2. 1

    What happened to this idea? I think it is really interesting and have thought about the same concept.

    1. 1

      I didn't fully pursue the idea.

      I think I would have loved to use a community like this. I don't necessarily think that I am a community builder so it wasn't a great fit for me.

      The other things I couldn't get my head around when thinking about this originally were:

      • Is the niche too large? How would I cut it down?
      • What exactly is the value that people would get from joining that they couldn't get from a self-organised discord/facebook group? I'm not saying there isn't value - I just think it needs more thought (e.g. challenges like "produce and release an E.P. in one month).

      Let me know if you'd like to talk more - I was keen on the idea so would be happy to discuss more!

  3. 1

    Lets do a podcast on this!!!!

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