I developed Happy Place Music Player and Music Stick Market for as long as I could before bills necessitating getting a full time position again.
This has drastically reduced the amount of time I could dedicate to the project, but! I continue to work on everything.
Where things stand:
Music Stick Market – Currently operational. The artist management system is fully functioning and in place. Album product creation happens quickly and without issue. The Home page redesign resulted in a more rich experience. The page design will be an ever-evolving process, especially as things grow. Artists can upload and sell their albums, fans can purchase those albums. My next big push is to get more artists on board. I only have myself and another young artist signed up at the moment, but, this will change now that all of the foundational infrastructure is in place.
Music stick design has improved. I’ve now adopted a usb C based model that offers USB C and USB A. Interestingly, in my tests with the cassette variant of music sticks, fans and potential buyers immediately believed them to simply be cassettes. “Oh, a cassette, that’s cool.” was the typical response. By leading with the flash drive variant that does not need an adapter, it will be significantly easier to both impart the idea, and easier for music fans to enjoy their freshly purchased albums.
Happy Place Music – The app is on a stable release on iOS. I have been working on CarPlay with a few more bugs to squash before a full production release of the Apple CarPlay features. The Android version is still in testing. I need to have 12 testers download the app for 14 days before I have a public release published to the Google Play store. I am actively recruiting Android testers, and I will reach out to those who volunteered to download the app in my initial test group. The current test release is a stable version of the app. Some preliminary feedback greatly improved the design and function. It has parity with the Apple version but, its own unique Android flavor. As soon as I get to a full 12 testers, I will release the Android version publicly.
I will begin filming the marketing campaign videos this week. One is filmed, but there are more to go. Then, editing, polishing, and publishing. The videos are designed to demonstrate how easy and enjoyable using Happy Place and Music Sticks™ can be. I’m excited to launch the campaign in the coming weeks.
So far, we’ve had 73 people download Happy Place Music Player! All of this is from word of mouth and organic outreach. We have achieved a pace of 3 downloads per week!
I know this may not seem like big numbers, but I am so happy that people are finding and discovering Happy Place Music Player. I spent countless hours designing, prototyping, and creating the application to make it a pleasurable experience. It warms my heart that this little creation of mine is finally helping other people reclaim their music and restore a tiny bit of sanity into the world. In this time of enshittified subscription-based hell, we hope to be a little slice of heaven.
I’m very excited. What started as a wild idea is now taking shape into a concrete movement. This is just the beginning, but I’m very excited to embark on this journey and see how these amazing tools help artists and fans alike.
That’s all for now,
Joe
Leave a Reply