TABOU1 Launch: First Impressions
Today is March 1, 2024, it is 5AM in Austin and I have spent all night monitoring the grand opening of the TABOU1.com platform less than 12 hours ago at midnight UK time. I thought I would share my first impressions.
Like myself, the TABOU1 team, spreading over 11 time zones from Texas to Kazakhstan, has not been sleeping much but we are all pumped with positive energy. I want to thank them for their hard work and enthusiasm.
I also want to thank our first customers because they are what makes or breaks a release. They were brave enough to try our solution, which has no precedent, and I personally want to tell them how grateful I am.
Key takeaway: during those 12 hours, preorders for our first ever NFT release (a brand new version of Bitty McLean's signature hit "Walk Away From Love" produced with Bitty and Sly & Robbie) beat our estimates by a huge margin. Speaking of Bitty, I pinch myself every day to remind myself that I'm not dreaming, I'm just so lucky that he, like Sly Dunbar and the late Robbie Shakespeare, have supported me in making this platform become a reality. Let's do more and continue to innovate together.
In half a day, our sales equaled Bitty McLean's entire Spotify revenues over one month.
In less than a day, TABOU1 sales = Spotify
In the future, the TABOU1 platform can become a very useful tool for artists, acting as a complement to Spotify:
- TABOU1 helps artists make money
- Spotify helps artists get more widespread exposure and promotion
Second takeaway: customers went for the higher priced editions that include a physical vinyl record, and shunned the entry level "Red" edition which offers digital files only.
Most of the sales are the $60 Green and the $115 Gold editions, both of which give access to limited edition vinyl records exclusively available on the TABOU1 platform. Several customers asked if we could sell them only the vinyl, they don’t care about the digital files or the bonus compilation tracks. In all honesty, I was surprised that the Red edition would post so few sales.
Third takeaway: community building is key. Inevitably, despite our best efforts, some kinks were discovered. We are happy to report that they are fixed. Many customers kindly volunteered to help us by sending us screenshots of the issues. That demonstrates both a keen interest in the platform, which provides a unique and new service to music fans, and also a sense of communal ownership: it's their place, they want to help improving it. We will definitely communicate on this sense of community and shared purpose and will reward suggestions. We want our customers and followers to help us serve them better.
On the right path: although the data is preliminary, our intuition was confirmed today:
- a strong community of fans does make a HUGE difference
- streaming does not fulfill the aspirations of music lovers and doesn't compensate artists as well as NFTs
- music fans love the good old slabs of vinyl
- we've got our work cut out for the immediate future and new ideas for later
- these are exciting times!
We will continue to share our feedback and thoughts on this on a regular basis.
Thank you and May The Force Be With You!
