Wave Radio Launch
About two weeks ago I finally launched my latest project, Wave Radio. A community for sharing and discovering new music. It's been far from an astronomical launch story but there's been enough growth for me to be encouraged.
The initial launch included a few tweets and emails to beta testers. That brought a few users along but nothing to rave about. Next I shared it on a handful of subreddits with similar results. Honestly it was a bit concerning after months of effort. I hesitated to launch on Product Hunt next but after obsessively tweaking the assets I'd submit for week I pulled the trigger.
The results again were nothing crazy but it brought enough new users for me to feel positive about the product. In total it got:
🔼 87 Upvotes
💬 8 Comments
👉141 Referrals
Again not a significant showing but it brought in enough users to kickstart the community. By the next day there were about 60 registered users and the home page was filled with new songs.
Post-Product Hunt
On Saturday I opened up the site and saw a huge spike in posts. Mainly Spanish songs which was even more surprising. Once I checked my referrals I found someone had written an article on Genbeta, a Spanish tech site, about Wave Radio after finding it on PH. That single article has so far driven over 400 unique users to the site and brought a ton of signups (more below).
I would have never expected any significant amount of non-English users to use the site at this stage but it shows how unpredictable these things are. I might need to improve my Spanish...
Stats
So here are the most important stats over the past couple of weeks.
The first spike you see comes from Product Hunt. Very few signups there. The big spike in the middle is the Genbeta article and that's provided a solid amount of traffic since then.
There are now over 300 registered users but the signups have significantly dried up since then.
The spikes in posts coincides with the PH launch and the article. But while signups have declined the number of posts has settled too a more consistent flow in the week since with a spike after the weekly newsletter. Hopefully it can maintain this steady rate.
There are now about 400 songs posted.
Similarly, plays follow a similar trend to posts. This seems like a good sign that a decent number of users who signed up are remaining engaged with the site.
Problems
A few problems with the current iteration of the site has become clear to me as usage has grown. Most issues are focused around the listening experience. Initially I focused on the sharing experience but as I try to listen every song posted I'm seeing issues I didn't encounter before.
So many songs are posted listening to all the new ones isn't as easy as it should be. Maybe a method to continue where you left off listening would be helpful. Or to mark which songs you've already listened to.
It's also hard to curate songs you like right now. The songs you like are easily accessible on your profile but a simple way to add it to your Spotify library would be useful. Also the ability to create your own playlists and export them.
There are also no filter options available right now and that could really improve the listening experience. I've been considering adding genre tags but those would have to be chosen by users and aren't 100% reliable. More date filters could be helpful as well as sorting options.
Next Steps
My main aim in the following weeks is to improve the listening experience and increase interactions within the community. I'll be collecting feedback from as many users as I can and updating the public roadmap. If you have any thoughts and opinions you'd like to share feel free to reach out.
