I built a free chord/tab site with 260k songs — here's what I learned about content-first launches

Hey IH! 👋

I'm a web dev and guitarist, and I spent the last few months building ChordRoom (https://chordroom.com) — a free guitar chord and tab site with over 260,000 songs.

Why I built it

Every chord site out there is either paywalled, drowning in ads, or has a clunky UI that makes you want to close the tab. I wanted something clean and fast that just lets you play.

What's working

• 260k+ songs across every genre and decade — from Beatles to Billie Eilish, with a solid international catalog too (Finnish, Swedish, Spanish, etc.)
• No paywall, no login required — you can just search and play
• Clean UI with auto-scroll, transpose, and chord diagrams
• Getting ~1,100 daily visitors organically from Google/Bing
• 2 registered users so far (just launched accounts recently)

What I'm struggling with

Retention is brutal. People come from search, grab their chords, and leave. Classic utility-app problem. My D1 retention is basically 0%.

Things I'm experimenting with:

• Personalized "For You" recommendations based on what you play
• Favorites and history (requires free account)
• Decade/genre/language browsing to encourage discovery

The content-first approach

Instead of building features first and hoping people come, I focused on building a massive song database first. The idea: if Google indexes 260k song pages, organic traffic handles distribution for free.

It's working for traffic but not for retention. Classic top-of-funnel without the bottom.

Questions for IH

1. If you've built a content/utility site, how did you solve the "use it and leave" problem?
2. Is it worth adding social features (comments, shared playlists) this early, or should I focus on making the core experience stickier first?

Would love feedback from anyone who's tackled similar retention challenges. And if you play guitar, give it a try — I'd genuinely appreciate hearing what you think of the experience: https://chordroom.com