Seeking musicians / Looking for a band: one-man dream project

[Alexander Paramonov]

Hello there,

I wanted to get to know the local crowd a bit better, but first, let me briefly introduce myself.

I am a software engineer and amateur bass/piano musician. I am, unfortunately, not a professional musician, but rather have strong addition to listening and playing
There is only one Warwick bass in my possession - it is the all-black Infinity, and it is a blast! I also found it on the forums and I have to say thanks to Hardy once again for helping me to get it!

Anyway, getting closer to the point. Once upon a time, I was looking for a band to join in Berlin. I started by looking online for some ad posts. Sites were either loaded with ads, had no option to contact band members without buying a subscription, or simply were bloated with flashy content and super slow and painful to use, sometimes with no possibility to search either.

I thought to myself that this could be easily changed, there was indeed nothing complicated in that ad posting business, and I probably could do that in a week or two. Bear with me, this is classical software engineer thinking haha. Nonetheless, a couple of months after work hours, a covid break, and a few job losses in between, I finally got to the point where it reached the possibility of being useful to somebody. Let me know what you think about the current version of the www.dmaj7.com a musician's network and what you would like to see on a site like this!

I have plans to integrate with other ad posting sites and move the musician ads here to be easily searchable and get some kickstart boost. Otherwise who the hell will use an empty board?
Please go on, create a few ads, play around with the current functionality, and let me know what do you think.

It only can send you a registration-related email, no spam, and no bs: that is the main concept behind the architecture and design (that still sucks, cause I am not a designer).
When registering, please use some random password, that you never used: after all, I am a random guy on the internet, no reason to share passwords with me although I have no way of reading them: it is encrypted, salted, and hashed (because I am supposed to be good at building secure websites), nevertheless, you should not trust a random person anyway.

Drop me a message, send feedback or simply let me know which features you would like to have there, or just let me know what you think about the site.
Your opinion is extremely valuable to me to understand what real musicians are looking for on sites like that.

I hope I didn't break any local forum rules, if I did, please be kind and give me a peaceful death.

Cheers,
Alexander

 

[eyvindwa]

Hi,

Cool project - I'm a software developer too (though I mostly manage developers these days, I try to get at least a little bit of coding in each day as well). I think the site is quite good, from what I could see without registering, but the big question is: how do you plan to gain traction? How will people get to know about, and want to use, your site?

Cheers - it's Friday!

 

[Alexander Paramonov]

Hi @eyvindwa, thanks for checking it out.

Getting traction is, as usual, an ambitious goal. So far I am quite happy with the feature set and the next step is getting the content up.
I'll start by collecting as many ads as I can from other ad-posting sites to create product value. So far I am having quite good progress with one platform and will roll out the integration in a week or two.

I already did very basic SEO for the project, more effort on that after the content is up, I may also have to add i18n because of the platform integration with German and French ad postings.
Once more people start finding and using the site, do some user interviews and figure out the direction of further development.

Then probably hire SEO and marketing freelancers, and ask a designer for help. But first more content and SEO.

Maybe I could tap into more modern ways of getting traction, do you have any tips?

 

[DiMarco]

Facebook advertising. Sad but true. It works.

 

[Alexander Paramonov]

Well, will check the FB ads as well then. I connected to one local ad platform and got some content up. In the meanwhile will probably do another integration. Then add some local languages for Germany and France.

Do you know what features or sites small venues like clubs, jazz clubs, and bars use to invite musicians and promote events? I guess it is Facebook again?
Will explore some FB groups in the meanwhile, and would appreciate any recommendations.

Regarding the next features, I can't decide whether to build something like Reddit to spark discussion or invest more in integrations and SEO.
Maybe add some music theory content and coaching/learning ads?