100DB was a music discovery project I started. This is part of a series of posts I wrote to explore the thinking behind it.
I read something on Twitter shortly after publishing the previous post that neatly sums up the position that Iâm currently in with 100DB, and Iâve been thinking on it for the past week. The tweet in question posits that every product needs a promise that itâs fulfilling, or else you donât really have a product. You could certainly frame a promise (especially a âproduct promiseâ) in many ways, but I might boil it down to the statement that animates the entire company. For Spotify, itâs âMusic for everyoneâ. Lyftâs is âA ride when you need one.â â and so on.
I donât (currently) know what promise 100DB is trying to make â my current best effort is âListening is a narrativeâ â more of a position than a promise. I also think you can uncover a promise if you are opinionated enough about what a product isnât, on which point Iâm on firmer ground. 100DB isnât Spotify, itâs not music production, itâs not editorial. Or: not inherently editorial â to my mind this requires a stance on whatâs âgoodâ, which is not my intent.
Whatâs helped to frame my exploration has been two recent conversations with informal advisors (thatâs the mailing list â yâall rule). The first included a question which hopefully the person in question wonât mind me posting verbatim: âWhat would be an incredible tool or experience, if I donât limit myself by todayâs technology or typical approaches?â This is an especially good reminder for me, as I tend to be a pragmatic designer â i.e., âhow might we solve this specific problem quickly and efficientlyâ vs. âhow might we solve a category of problems by thinking more broadly and deeplyâ. (My experience in startups is that you need both kinds of people.)
The second discussion was on what music means to people. Everybody has their own methods of organization and curation, their own web of personal meaning and history intertwined with specific songs, albums, and artists. The perfect example (again, lifting an example directly from the convo in question, apologies/thank you) is a playlist, perhaps called âHigh Schoolâ. This playlist would not contain music that came out when I was in high school â but rather music that has meaning because itâs indelibly tied to that time in my life, regardless of release date. This isnât music as journalism, but music as chronicle, as self-history.
Referring back to Discovery and Value, I wrote about solving microproblems â that is: building very, very small things to validate small pieces of âthe promiseâ of 100DB. Taking very small steps is not incompatible with either of the above directional inputs â quite the opposite: it allows me to dial in very quickly on the pieces of those two points that matter most. I gain more clarity on what I should build as a âMinimum Viable Interestingnessâ output if I have guard rails. âDonât worry about techâ and âhave a firm opinion on why music is importantâ are good ones.
Finally, while weâre talking about figuring out how to set goals: I think I’m reaching a point in this project where I have enough directional confidence to actually start building something. The genesis of this project was really about capturing an idiosyncratic personal moment about something that I love â the only way I can tell if it means anything to anybody else is to build. Unfortunately, thatâs something I canât do by myself. If you are a developer with a little bit of time on your hands and a willingness to come to some kind of arrangement, letâs chat.