“We’re confident it’s going to be bigger than IMDb”: Musicboard founders on growing a community and how it’s earned its cult status

My entire world revolves around music and film – and that’s not an exaggeration. So, for people like me, diary entry-style apps like Letterboxd really help when it comes to keeping track of what I’ve watched.

Since the downfall of MySpace, however, there’s been a big gap in the market for a social network for music lovers. I’ve been longing for a music journaling app, but my search was finally over when I found Musicboard.

About a year ago, I covered the Musicboard app as part of our Homescreen Heroes series, and last week I had the opportunity to talk with its founders Johannes Vermandois and Erik Heimer about Musicboard’s growth and the future of online music communities.

Letterboxd for music lovers

Musicboard is available for free on iOS and Android devices, and similarly to Letterboxd, the app allows you to record all the songs and albums you listen to on the best music streaming services into your own personal music journal – or you can go Pro for ($4.99/£4.99 a month) to unlock profile customization and make your page stand out.

Before Musicboard came to life, Vermandois and Heimer were fellow music obsessives who, like me, longed for a social network where they could express their love for music.

“I started Musicboard around four and a half years ago, so right at the beginning of 2020 was when the idea sort of formed,” explains Heimer, “I’d been talking to a lot of friends about hip hop music and music in general, and we wanted a place where we could talk about it online”.

The growth has truly been exponential, says Vermandois. “It’s been an organic growth journey – we haven’t done much marketing at all, and we’ve never paid for ads”, he adds. “It’s been solely by word of mouth and by people sharing their music reviews online. Now we’re at over 400,000 users, adding about 16,000 every month”.

As one of the 400,000 Musicboard users, I can attest that the sense of community that comes with the platform is beyond that of the next-best thing (which largely are Reddit forums). Especially in the wake of the pandemic where many felt shut off from their music communities, both Heimer and Vermandois highlight how individual fan communities have shaped the way users interact on Musicboard. “Its personality is entwined with who you listen to”, says Vermandois, as Heimer adds “if you look at other sites for film, like IMDb for example, they’re very big. But music has such a strong connection to people’s people’s personalities and daily life in a way that other media doesn’t”.

“What struck me about Musicboard is how incredibly positive and how tight-knit the community has become” Heimer noted. When I asked if that extends to the vivacity of fan and stan culture, he adds: “Of course, there’s some tension between cultures, but in general, there’s so much positivity, and the amount of friendships that I’ve seen formed is insane”. Touché.

Fanbases have been one of the biggest catalysts for Musicboard’s growth, and that’s not only as a result of users sharing their own opinionated reviews – which I’m guilty of, especially when it came to the latest Katy Perry album. Vermandois says it’s also thanks to a genuine interest users have in reading reviews about a diverse range of artists from other users about music they might never have encountered: “You have people that are passionate about their own music, but they’re also interested in learning about other people’s, and why they listen to it. So it’s stanning, but also exploring other people’s stanning”. I couldn’t have explained it better myself.

This is only the beginning

It’s safe to say that both Heimer and Vermandois are excited about the future of their platform, with shared ambitions of turning music reviewing into a fun community experience for all music fans. Vermandois says “Over the last two years we’ve been updating it, keeping bugs at bay, but we haven’t pushed new features and built it actively”, meaning there’s plenty still to come for the platform.

In Musicboard’s recent updates, personalization has been the focus, wherein Pro subscribers now have the option to customize their profile with photo and GIF banners and other creative features to express their personalities. With these features successfully rolled out, their next mission is to double down on the platform’s social networking aspect, sharing their proposal for a new feature called Clans.

With this upcoming feature, Vermandois explains how “you’ll be able to join Clans around your favorite artists and build small, micro-communities around them”, acting almost like mini forums allowing fans to express themselves through the artists they resonate with the most. Additionally, the two hope that this feature will pave the way for more music exploration features within Musicboard.

“We’re working on a way to import your playlists from other platforms and start talking about them, as well as curating playlists together and reviewing other people’s playlists,” says Vermandois. “We’re also talking to some major labels about collaborating with them and showcasing their new artists on Musicboard.

“Let’s say you have a major label with a new artist they’ve signed; we want Musicboard to be a place where our community can be first to access that artist and say, ‘What do we think about their songs? Let’s review’”.

Vermandois and Heimer’s dedication to growing Musicboard is impassioned, with the pair explaining that user experience and the well-being of its subscribers will always be their top priority. As their numbers continue to rise, Heimer feels confident in the platform’s future as the premier social networking platform for music lovers, concluding; “it can become one of these dominant platforms like IMDB”.

I can’t wait to see what’s in store for Musicboard as it continues to grow and develop. I love its layout and the freedom you have to be who you want, and you can see how Heimer and Vermandois’ focus on personalization makes the platform what it is today. Now, to go write my scathing review of anything made by Kim Petras.

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