Growing a 100% free app, where to start?

Let's talk about "free" for a second.

• Just because something is free doesn't automatically make it valuable. Focus on the value when writing your headlines rather than the "price".
• Making something free will tend to get more people to try it but it won't keep people using it if they don't like it.
• In my opinion, it actually looks kinda desperate and spammy if you lead with "free" in your headlines. I think "Tinder for Music" or "Find music you love" is better.

That said, I think your app does look pretty cool. You had me at "Tinder for Music" but lost me because I don't use Spotify. That's okay, I'm not your target market right now.

As for where to share it. Maybe subreddits related to Spotify would be a good start? I would take it slow and gather feedback before posting it to loads of high traffic places. Add it to your profile on any sites you already frequent.

Maybe also consider building in some sort of natural virality. Like being able to share the playlists that people create with friends and have a link or watermark attached to them somehow.

I dunno, that's just my 2 cents.

I just checked out your app, and I think it's cool, but I see a couple opportunities for improvement. Since you're asking about ways to market it, I'll start with the marketing idea I had.

1.) If I'm really excited about a song that Tuneful found for me, I'm probably more likely to tell my friends about the song/artist than I am about the app. The app could spread more virally if it gave me something to share that I couldn't get anywhere else.

Spotify does something interesting at the end of each year. They compile each user's listening data into attractive reports that they can share on social media. You could offer something similar, but instead of counting how many listens I have during the year, it would be something that broke down my preferences within the genre I picked.

If you had something like that, I'd be inclined to go share it in a genre-specific subreddit or Facebook group. Something like "hey, we're all here because we like Outlaw Country, but how do your tastes really compare to mine?", and I can share a cool graphic that shows how I like Willie Nelson but I'm not so into David Allen Coe. It's the kind of thing that could spark interesting conversations and the branded graphic would point everyone back to Tuneful.

(Perhaps check out Bannerbear for the graphics. I have no affiliation, I just think it's a cool product that I recently found on this site.)

2.) You've described it as "Tinder for Music", and it's true that it has part of the Tinder UX, but it's missing the most important aspect of Tinder: the matches!

I swiped through about a dozen songs, and nothing ever happened except getting more songs. On Tinder, one hopes that occasionally their swiping would be interrupted by a successful match. You could add some excitement to Tuneful by figuring out what its corresponding event would be. Perhaps after I've swiped right twice on the same artist, I get some recognition of that on a "match" screen of sorts? Maybe you could combine this with the prior idea, and the "match" screen is how I get the graphic to share?

Hope some part of this is interesting and/or useful!

Spent about 10 fully engaged minutes on Tuneful, loved it! A nice add-on would be if you could send/share a song that popped up on the stack. Convenient for me and a potentially viral means of spreading for you.

Great looking app Christiaan. If you don't mind me asking, I was wondering what stack you used to build it and in particular how easy /hard it was to integrate Spotify authentication?

Hello Chris(tilut?),

That's a very nice concept, kind of like Spotify's Discover Weekly except you don't have to wait a week to get only a few songs, except there is not much to discover and it's often a bit too similar and repetitive.

The UI is quite nice too, I wish I could superlike songs heheh (and open the song in Spotify since I signed in with Spotify).

I think a good way to get growth would be to find people who are recognized for their knowledge of music (or just famous people, I refuse to say the influenc*r word) and have them talk about your app in their Youtube video/podcast/etc.

And I know you see to be fine with it being free - which is very nice - but maybe you could tell people that a band will have a concert soon if you like their song? That requires a lot of extra work, but it could give you a commission on each ticket sale coming from your app. Also that's going into Songkick territory.

@Christilut - Wow, this is a really neat app. I like how you took an established idea like Pandora and added a unique twist.

I don't think you're going to have trouble finding places to share it. If you put it on Twitter, Facebook, or any of the big social networks, people will distribute it.

I think your real challenge will be holding on to visitors once they visit your app. I can suggest a few improvements:

1. Consider adding a call to action. Some examples are:
   "Sign up to get weekly song recommendations in your inbox"
   "Click here to see what music your friends are listening to."

Currently, you're not asking the user to do anything other than use the product. This makes it hard for you to know who your users are. And even more importantly, it prevents you from adding a trigger to get your users to come back to the app. If you can get their email addresses, then you can send them regular reasons to return to your app.

2. I didn't know WHY I should use the app. You could clarify that with some of the following language:
   "The fastest way to discover music that you like."
   "Quickly discover songs that you will want to listen to later."
   "Find the latest music ... and only the songs that you like."

3. Offer an exchange of value. An examples is:
   "Share this on Facebook and Twitter, in order to unlock 5 new genres in the app."

So, in summary, the recommendations are:

• Add a call to action
• State why users should use the app
• Offer an exchange of value

@Christilut, was this helpful? If so, I think you'll like my website, SplashPad. SplashPad helps you write about your product more effectively by suggesting language while you're writing. https://getsplashpad.com.

Good luck! Cool product.

Hey i noticed that your websites SSL certificate is expired. You should really re-verify it so traffic won't be bounced and chrome allows visitors on your site!