Guitar Database app

[jkkkjkhk]

First I'll say I'm a musician, been playing guitar for about 14 years now. Also working in sales selling guitars for a couple years as well. I've had this idea floating around for a good while now and it's starting to sound like a very plausible idea. Basically it's a website or app (leaning towards website because of MASSIVE size), that has up to every guitar made (mass produced) that I can find all in one database as a resource for musicians. It'd be just a great site for just plain good info on all the different guitars out there. The biggest use would be for people buying/selling guitars. I'm sure there's other musicians on here, and you'll probably know when it comes to buying guitars (well really anything) is knowing WHAT you are buying and if it's the best price.

Now this would be strictly a information site, no selling of actual gear. There's plenty of resources for specs, pictures, reviews, and overall information for new guitars out there but no site has every guitar or even near half of the guitars out there. Even more there's many less that have all the used guitars out there. My idea would be to literally have every guitar EVER mass produced I can find all in one database in detail about years made, all specs, finishes, changes over time (if applicable), pictures, reviews,,,. It'd basically be like a Wikipedia, but more guitarists, which does not yet exist AFAIK.

Now that's quite a ton of work and there's tens if not hundreds of thousands of different guitars over the years. For instance in 1959 Gibson had maybe 4 different models of the Les Paul, one of the most famous guitars. But today there are well over 50 different Les Paul models including the Standard, Classic, Traditional, Custom, artist models... Those are subcategories of just one model by one brand. There's then hundreds to thousands of different brands, then throughout the past 50 or so years. I do not know web or mobile developing so I'd need to outsource for the design and development. I would imagine having a page dedicated to each guitar and then all the extra pages for misc, would be an enormous site and probably very expensive and need tons of testing. Turns into quite an investment of money and labor for no guarantee of any income.

Now this idea has me pretty excited and sounds even fun, but I'd love some advice on this. I feel it meets the 5 commandments but I don't know if I'm just convincing myself that. Do you guys have any questions for me on this idea, make me think from different views? Or is this too risky a fast lane?

Thanks

 

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[Dutchlike]

As a guitarist myself I would find it interesting to have such a site available to me.

The problem I'd see is, how are you going to make any money on this? Advertising only? As MJ pointed out with his GoogleAds debacle, you're going to lose a bit (a lot?) of control. If somehow, someway they don't like your content, you can be in big trouble.

The biggest use would be for people buying/selling guitars.

It might be nice to link through to a few dealers that sell that particular model. Should be good for a few bucks.
I'd like to ad, whenever I'm researching a guitar I'd like to buy, the first thing I do is go up on youtube and watch that thing in action. Might want to keep that in mind too.

One last thing; it's going to be a humongous task, consider if the time you're sinking in to this is worth the potential earnings?
I'm adding this because I'm busy on something myself, which is also based on information, but a lot less, and it's still a gargantuan task to get it all in the right format for me to use. Now, that might be because it doesn't stop at showing the information and I need to consider loads of options. But please consider what you might be getting yourself into.
Not to discourage you or anything, if anything I'd like you to go through with this, I'd love such a database!

 

[smartman]

i would also use said database if it were available, but why would you bother making "a wikipedia for guitars" when there's already wikipedia with guitar info on it? I understand that wikipedia does not have a streamlined and all inclusive details and info on the guitars, but it just seems like it will eventually happen. What I think might be a more useful tool would be to create something more like popsike.com but for guitars.

 

[Dutchlike]

but it just seems like it will eventually happen..

Why not be the one that gets it done first, and the best?

 

[Milkanic]

I think it is a solid idea and there are numerous ways you could monetize it.

The site development itself would be pretty easy. The expensive part would be all the research and data entry involved.

You could start with Gibson and Fender to test the market and then branch out from there.

 

[smartman]

if you go to the trouble of setting up the site(i certainly wasn't naysaying it previously) you could also take a hint from a site like discogs.com, where the info is up or submitted, and then users could even list their guitar for sale at a certain price. like discogs, you could have users "want" a guitar as well, so for those that are interested in trading or selling a guitar they have, they could contact people already looking for it. I'm not sure if a site like this exists in any form, but it would be so easy to monetize, and as long as you kept seller fees to something around 6-9%, you would gain a lot of interest.

 

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[jkkkjkhk]

Thanks for all the great replies. I was most interested in an app for the main reason of portability. Like if someone is at a pawn shop and find something special. Just pull up the app (with no internet connection) and either search or flip through the multiple filters to narrow it down. Something like reviews, current market price... could require internet connection. A website I imagine would be easier to build, but that's my only really advantage to a website.

I figured since it'd be a pretty extensive app that asking 2.99 - 4.99 for the app wouldn't be asking too much, maybe even more if the market's there. Maybe like a lite version with only current production guitars, and then a premium for used and vintage? As for a "wiki of guitars", not wanting to copy wikipedia but basically just an guitar encyclopedia and wikipedia came to mind first. Wikipedia is very basic when it comes to this. It doesn't have near the guitars out there, especially individual models. Like Les Paul it would have a whole page dedicated to it and mention possibly all the models but there's far from a page for each. I also thought about maybe letting people edit or create pages themselves to add guitars they can't find, and I could on top of that just do maintenance to make sure there's no duplicates...

I checked out popsike for a second, it's basically a site that shows the most recent value of a particular LP? That's not a bad idea for this as well and could definitely go along with all these ideas. There's just so much potential for this idea, need to start writing this down. lol

 

[jkkkjkhk]

One more question I had, if after a good while I was receiving significant traffic would something like being an affiliate of a major musical instrument distributor be a good idea? Like if I get say 250K+ views a month or more (no idea of any requirements atm) would it be a good idea to go to like American Music Supply or whoever and try to work a deal for every person who clicks the link in the app/site and brings them to the distributor I get a certain $$ amount? Don't know if that's really something that happens much or if it's wasted energy. Or really anything that works like that?

 

[jkkkjkhk]

Anyone else have their best brainstorming sessions at 3am? Every night for some reason.
Anyways, I've been spending the last few weeks working on another idea I had,
https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/idea-short-term-progress.50803/
It's been a great idea, have about 12 suppliers on Alibaba that I'm shuffling through weeding out the no's. Everything's going good so far with it but there's a few problems I'm facing. First off, the idea was created by a friend. I've modified it a good deal but it's still his idea in his eyes. So we've been working as partners. Problem is he has no motivation, we see each other every weekend and he hasn't thought about the idea all week, where I have 30+ emails back and forth with suppliers and I've done all the designing/planning. He thinks of this book as just another scam, which doesn't work with me. Anything I learn here I mention to him he blows off as BS. Simple enough, break the partnership. Problem with that is it's either: keep him as a partner and deal, take the idea and chance of him being hurt, start a new idea independently. I give him "homework" each week to do hoping he'll step up and do his half (or really anything). So personally I'm wanting to side with #3. Few other minor issues I've been thinking about. This isn't a niche group, this is a general product that would appeal to anyone. While that gives me a much larger market, it makes me need to rely on marketing more since it's not filling "as much" of a need as the app. I would imagine much less people would just buy this product willy nilly without some ad/commercial grabbing their attention, basically I view this as a "Snuggie" in a sense. The app almost could sell itself. No competition out there and something every guitarist would need.

Some I came back to this idea tonight. I've had it in the background for a while, wanted to come back to it in the future but I'm thinking of giving it a second chance. I had some new thoughts on it and I just think it has so much potential. These were just a few points I jot down laying in bed, didn't write much into them, just wanted to save the thought for later.

Self Marketing
Now I don't mean it literally self markets but musicians are just waiting for this app to come out, they just don't know it. I'm a part of over a dozen guitar, recording, and musician forums and have a good standing on all of them. There's a very large guitar community out there and a good chunk is pretty close knit. Much of well known gear gets around mostly from word of mouth. Musicians are some incredibly cheap and skeptical people so word of mouth seems to be best advertising. I don't think I've seen more intense forums from any other niche I've been apart of. Some people can easily spend up to $10K on a single guitar, (most people, myself included, spend between $1000 and $2500 on average), there's MANY more higher than that, some even up to $400K!! So some discussions can get pretty heated when money like that is being spent on a single guitar that many parents woulds ask "what makes it any different from a $100 guitar at walmart?", the most hated question I can think of. I've been a guitar and drum salesman for a few years and have worked with parents of "interested" kids all the way to international rockstars passing through.
Anyways, as a musician of 17 years (guitarist for 14) I feel I know my niche pretty damn well and I believe most guitarists would consider this app an essential. Which bring me to my second point.

I have 7 tuner apps, 4 app modeling apps, 2 scale/chord apps, a tab app, metronone, recording, and even a decibel meter, and that's just on my iPhone. I'm a typical hardcore guitarist (not as in the genre). Reason for 7 tuners? Some are faster at picking up the note, some are more accurate, some are just different styles of tuner, and some were bundled with other apps, but I guarantee almost every guitarist with an iPhone (and probably any smart phone) has at least 1 tuner app. A master database of every current and past guitar made (to extent) would be another essential app that every guitarist would need.

My main reason for putting this idea on the back burner was for the expected high cost to produce such an app, with tens if not hundreds of thousands of different guitars, possibly each with a separate page. Since then I have discovered Kickstarter and other sites thanks to advice here, and it got me thinking again. Kickstarter alone could be a great way to gauge peoples interest, helping me decide if my market really does exist or not, as well as possibly helping fund it. I could also post "feeler" ads on forums to gain interest from people, even with links to the kickstarter.

I was also reading another thread recently asking whether to have a free app with upgrades, free app but with ads, or an initial cost for the app. Everyone swayed towards free with upgrades and it got my wheels turning again. Something as simple as a free version with only current lineup of 10,25,50 top brands. Then a premium version with top 10,25,50 brands entire history. Then a exclusive/monthly fee version where users can add guitars they don't see, and whatever ideas I could add. Other little additions could be added to any version such as: users add reviews/ratings, add own pictures, forums, classifieds,...

I'd love to hear any comments on this. Any advice that can be given on the other idea venture with the partner? Should I keep going on the product, or would you find the app to be a better match?


PS: Sorry for such a long post

 

[jkkkjkhk]

I figured the cheapest and easiest way to start it would be just doing the free version with very limited content. If it can get a very decent amount of traffic I can look to add other versions and the audience will already have the app so upselling to the upgraded versions would be that much easier.

 

[jkkkjkhk]

Any comments, questions, critisicms? I'd love to hear any feedback.

 

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[jkkkjkhk]

Ok, one more question for any developers out there. I'm gathering the data right now and Gibson guitars alone there's about 170+/- electric guitar alone currently in production. There's then all the models from 60 years back, then other brands... That either means a couple thousand individual pages for each guitar or some other way to organize them without being cluttered. Each guitar having it's own page would be ideal since there's quite a bit of info for each guitar and then pictures and anything I add later on. I could just post everything in a list but I don't really like that idea.

What kind of formats would work for this setup? I'd like the app to have all the info native so people can use it anywhere, I just don't know anything about developing.
Thanks for any help

 

[harerace]

Since this app is strictly database its going to be pretty easy. Build the site using wordpress and http://apppresser.com/ for the app.

 

[jkkkjkhk]

Thank you, rep transferred. That's exactly what I was looking for, I figured I'd have to outsource and be looking at a couple thousand for this.

 

[jkkkjkhk]

So I've been spending the last couple weeks gathering information, called Fender guitars and had them send me a stack of catalogs (Fender owns like 10 brands, Gibson owns another 10-ish). At the same time I've spent most of the time working on the other business venture I have, but I'm at a point with it where I need to raise funds before I can go any further. So while I'm getting funds together I'm working on learning copy but I'd like to try and check out my market for this app at the same time.
I don't currently know a lick of copy but I've thought many times of just simply creating a thread on the multiple musician forums I'm on (and have a very good standing) as well as the multiple guitar groups I'm in on facebook just to see how people will respond. Only thing that's stopping me is I don't want it to sound ameteur or cheap. Should I completely go at it like I'm going for sales and go into salesman mode, or should it be more laid back like a friend asking a bunch of friends if they'd think the idea is cool? Since I don't know any copy I can't do a salesman version yet.

I'm thinking of saying something like (on the spot very rough draft),

"I'm creating an app for us guitarists that's essentially an ultimate guitar encyclopedia. Any and every guitar made (within reason) past/present, will be in this database with full specs (up to what's possible). Perfect for the musician who wants a handy little app just to browse through, even better for the less knowledgable musician who's not quite sure what guitar they're looking at for sale and wants to make sure they're not getting screwed. How would you guys feel about this app? Would you be interested if it was free, $1, $5, $10? What are your questions, concerns, comments?..."

Never been good at closing, need to read a good bit and learn how to effectively close.

What are your thoughts? Any help is appreciated