Grayson Erhard

Performer, Programmer, Penniless

I feel you, this shit is hard.

We didn't choose to be musicians for the money.
Hell, we didn't choose to be musicians.
But we still need the money.

I'm tired of being broke.
I hate everyone sticking their cigar-stenched fingers into my pockets and acting entitled doing it.

I play, I work, and I want to do and be better.

I was constantly saying in my head, "there has to be a better way."
You see, I'm also a programmer.
So I hacked together this little app.
It shows audiences what songs I can play
and lets them make requests,
tied to a tip of course.

The first night I used it,
I quadrupled my tips at the same gig I play every month.
The next morning I banged out some improvements,
That next night I played another regular gig,
I made 10x the tips.
I used to make $40-80 in tips at that venue,
Now I average $300.

One night I played 6 hours at a 4 hr gig.
I told the audience "If you keep requesting, I'll keep playing"
Well, they called my bluff.
After 100 additional minutes of performance,
I started to realize they were never gonna let me go home.
I had another four-hour singing gig the next day,
I had to save my voice,
So I cut them off and stopped taking tips.
It took another X minutes to play out the queue,
and I walked away with $6XX in tips.

I got excited,
and started telling my friends.
Then I had breakfast with my buddy Gordon,
and he said:
"Holy shit dude - are you serious?
I could sell the shit out of this!"
And thus, Tipelodeon was born.

The next several months were a break neck pace,
building new features,
testing them at my next gig,
tweak, test, rinse, release.

Gordon and I agreed on a couple principles:
1. We never make money from the musician.
2. We never make money from the musician.

You keep 100% of your tips.
We charge a small platform fee.
That covers the credit card fees,
and we keep what's left over.
We make money from the audience,
same as you do.

Our beta users saw similar effects on their tips,
so we kept going.

I built a bunch of musician utilities in the app,
everything I needed to make my life easier.
Seriously, it's a powerhouse.
And it's all free.
No premium tier. No bullshit.
We never make money from the musician.

It starts with importing the library of what you play.
I made the process as fast and easy as possible.
You should be able to set it up in about 5 minutes,
if you have your data ready.

Try it tonight.
Tell me how it works for you.
I'm always listening and coding new features.

-Grayson
Performer, Programmer, Penniless

Oh, and the name?
A nickelodeon is an old-timey jukebox, BTW.
(I wonder where that orange splat came from...??)

Gordon Seirup

Marketer. Enthusiast. Pickleballer.

When Grayson told me he hacked together an app that quadrupled, then 10x'd, his tips the first two times he used it, I said "Holy shit dude, I can sell the shit out of that."

It was the Wednesday after the first weekend he used it.
We were having breakfast after playing Pickleball.

"You have to let me work on this with you.
If you try to do it on your own, it'll die in a github repo."

I knew he had struck gold, and I already hated the idea of taking a percentage of the tips.

My first idea was the perfect gravity well.
The app is free.
After the musician made their first $200 through the app, then we charge them a flat $20/mo subscription.
After all, we just helped them make $200.
Who wouldn't take that deal??

Better yet, make it $200 in a month.
And we'd track their earnings each month.
If they had a bad month, we'd skip billing
Then when they had a really good month,
we'd ask them to catch up,
but not require it.

Next we dug into features and tiers.
What if they earn more than $1,000/mo?
More than $2,500??
What if they use more server resources?
What is this gonna cost us to run?

But it all got so convoluted.
How could we keep the musician's best-interests first,
and still make enough money?

We met every week on Wednesday.
Every week Grayson would tell me
"Dude - I thought of this bitchin' new feature"
And I'd be like "Cool man..."
knowing how long it takes me to actually code the stuff I think of.
Then he'd say "So I built it and used it on Friday..."
🤯
"...and this is how it didn't work quite right,
so I changed this, this, and that and used it on Saturday."

Then there were the midnight texts "Holy shit dude, I just made $X-hundred bucks in a single night"
...and the numbers just kept getting bigger.

I am going to sell. the. shit. out of this.
No way I don't relentlessly work to put this in the hands of every gigging musician.
They need it.
(YOU need it!)

We make cents on each transaction,
so I need to sell A LOT of users to make us real money.
Good thing it's free.
and I believe when word gets out,
we're gonna have A LOT of users... 🤑

I gave Grayson his first job out of college
programming at my little website shop.
Now I'm working for him. (kinda... I'm a co-founder with ownership stake, but he's definitely in charge).
I'm not mad about it.

-Gordon
Marketer. Enthusiast. Pickleballer.