So, now that we've established what the desire for Birdcall is, what exactly is the roadmap to get there? Well, the answer to this has already become a bit complicated, right off the bat. You see, my original timeline for putting together a minimum viable product (MVP, in UX parlance) was actually to get one up and running by the end of the year, and that would largely be funded by a grant from the Canada Council Digital Greenhouse strategic initiative fund. Except, after months of working on that grant application, and scoping the project out with a UX collaborator, I... somehow missed the deadline??

I'm still confused as to how it happened, and I'm in touch with Canada Council to see how this grant could have slipped past me, especially considering I'd meticulously written the deadline date down in multiple places, and been in touch with multiple parties about all the key details since last fall. But regardless of how it got away from me, the only assumption I can work from now is that this money is simply gone, and never coming back. Which means, the plan has changed in both knowable and un-knowable ways.

Knowable changes

Without the funding to retain the UX partner and development contractors I'd been intending to work with, I simply won't be able to build the functional MVP we'd been talking about. I could always do what I've always done for my own initiatives, and cobble together some kind of a parts-bin melange of cheap/open-source products into a workflow, but that feels like a fruitless endeavour, and more of a proof-of-concept exercise (which feels doubly wasteful to me, as independent artists and labels do this every day, and are inherently the proof-of-concept).

I could kick the can down the road, and wait for some other big grants to come up later. This is, in effect, kind of what I think I have to do regardless, but I'm much more of a parallel-processes executor, which means I also need to make use of the time before such an opportunity arises (which is also not a guarantee). My variation on this option entails me doing a lot more preliminary UX work than I'd hoped, which has pros and cons:

  • The pros: I can technically design and plot out the fullest vision for Birdcall, building the most comprehensive map of the entire toolkit imaginable, then scope out the route to get there into what I can predict to be manageable development cycles.
  • The cons: This will likely materially change the cost implications for my current MVP, and I don't know how much funding will become potentially available in the future, so there's a very real chance I'll still have to re-do the process of scoping out those development cycles again, and certain targets might not be so easily split up.

This brings me to a third option, which might possibly help alleviate the cons of the last: I could always opt to crowdfund this portion of the project. Community support has always been a core part of the vision for Birdcall. One of the very tools I want to bring to artists & labels is a more integrated subscription/membership/patronage model, and there's precedent for similar platforms (including the very one I'm using) being launched via crowdfunding campaigns. There's also the added benefit of immediacy; being able to get right to work, as soon as the campaign is over.

It's a compelling option to me right now, and my only hesitation is in how difficult it will be to get the word out. I've run a successful crowdfunding campaign before, so I'm acutely familiar with how much of a grind it can be to keep building awareness (not to mention, how critical a role plain ol' dumb luck can play). It's certainly possible to raise the capital for an MVP of Birdcall with an aggressive enough push to the right communities, but I feel like I'll definitely need to get some serious prototyping done before my vision is anywhere near ready for public presentation.

Unknowable changes

A huge chunk of the uncertainty of how to get from ideas to an MVP lie in the finances. The funding that I was planning on from that grant was never a sure thing, but it is now a sure thing that I will not be getting it. As such, many of the things that funding was intended to pay for are also now delayed, or will fall to sweat equity (which is also a factor impacting time).

As it stands, my work on Birdcall in the immediate future will largely exist conceptually. I'm continuing to connect with artists and music workers, explore current market offerings, and generally nerd out on music business practices (the good, the bad, and the ugly), all in the pursuit of gauging the needs that stand out for my peers, as well as the general interest-level in jumping ship from the platforms. How long this part of the process will take, however, has become a giant question mark hovering above my head. My suspicion is that the more time in this period passes, the better idea I'll have of how much more time things will take.

I also think there's a real omni-present X-factor in any new venture, which has always been there, if not as amplified as it might be now: Who knows what else is going on out there in the world? Is someone else – simultaneously experiencing total over-it-ness of the industry – building their own version of Birdcall? Perhaps someone more connected, or perhaps independently wealthy? Perhaps, more threateningly, there's simply a ✨new✨ platform brewing; one run by people with more fluency in the language of equity and liberation for artists, but ultimately backed by venture capitalists with no actual regard for said ideals (beyond how attractive they are to a user-base with endless room to grow)?

Cognitively, I know that there's no such thing as "too late" to take your shot in any given career. There's a fresh batch of data-spiration tweets circulating as we speak, highlighting the number of recent Grammy winners all above the positively geriatric age of 30 right now, so I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to bring this to life. But, emotionally, I'm pretty exhausted from the last decade of a career in music that once truly peaked just before a massive migration of interests, and a very real hurdle to clear is going to be what artists and labels en-masse end up strategising around once the current platforms become untenable to their operations (i.e. any day now).

I'm a big believer in taking the time to do a job correctly, especially coming from a background in tech, wherein I've seen the stranglehold of years and years of tech and UX debt absolutely crush any chance of meaningful improvements or development of a product. But I'm also sensitive to the fact that, for a lot of people, even way down here at the indie-est of indie levels, their careers rest on the ability to lock into a stable path forward. This industry is precarious enough as it is, so no one really has the time or money to waste on "trying out" mission critical tools that might not have legs. I'd love to be able to offer that necessary level of stability, but I also fear missing the chance to do so because "good is the enemy of perfect".

At the same time, all of this came forth as a function of wanting to equip myself with the best possible tools for running my own label. And as I've been developing the concept of spinning off Birdcall as a public toolkit, Sanzuwu Group's greater function as a label has grown to also entail serving as a proof of concept. So, while I've lost a considerable amount of momentum by missing this grant, the work remains the same.

In the meantime, I'm chipping away at a bunch of other parts of the process. I've got business registration taken care of, key online accounts set up, and (perhaps most important of all) a long runway of creative planned.

But I'd love to hear what folks think about crowdfunding in particular. What kinds of projects have you backed before, if any? And what are your favourite platforms for that kind of thing? Leave a comment, and I'll see you in the next one!

The link has been copied!