Every once in a while you discover an album, an article or a book that helps to put many things in perspective. You need these to stay on your feet. In contrast, every once in a while you find a competitor, whether direct or distant, doing just about everything you want(ed) to achieve from the onset, but somehow quicker and at first disheartened glance, better. You need these to stay grounded, to understand your audience and to refine your focus.
The book that fits the former scenario for me this weekend is the dip by author Seth Godin of Purple Cow and All Marketers are Liars fame. Dubbed as "a little book that teaches you when to quit (and when to stick)," it asserts that if one is in a dip (that is, a scenario worth pushing through the valley), there are essentially two options: quit and regret or work harder than ever and persevere.
Launching an end-to-end e-commerce application that features the uploading, promoting, sharing, purchasing and downloading of content is no easy feat, and Speakerheart has certainly seen many iterations. Speakerheart once saw more than one name, though none as cool as what now seems like the only choice. Speakerheart has seen team members come and team members go. But, alas, Speakerheart moves forward because of a vision and passion to enable all artists to achieve greater things. To achieve what they deserve.
Just as with any product, we have competitors. It's easy to become (and worse, stay) distracted by the latest and greatest that they have (or seem) to offer. There is a fine line between conducting research and dwelling on which product has what features and exactly how long it would take us to "catch up". The good news is that our features, design and interface stack up. But just as importantly, Speakerheart as a product -- though very online and in beta -- feels very offline. We are building an incredible community of artists ready to not only use our product but also communicate and participate with us at shows and in the streets, and it's exciting to be part of.
Being a songwriter myself, I not only want to ship this thing from a Product Management perspective, but I also can't wait to use it as our audience will. To create a listener account and send my friends, family and the artists with whom I have played and written in the past Hearts of my music will be an incredible day and a reality very soon. Of course it will be great to promote my songs, but even more so to demonstrate a product that lets everyone publish, share and sell music, from symphonies to garageband masterpieces. Everyone can get in on the act. Everyone can contribute. Everyone can create and be creative. We're happy to be a part of exactly how large an impact this can be.
david@speakerheart.com
