Fairwood Studios &

The Single Point of Failure

Presented (in shorter form) @

FailPDX by:

Zoe Landon

@hupfen

zoe@leporidaemedia.com

The Year was 2009.

‘’Rock Band was a thing.A big thing.Lots of songs released every week.People gobbled them up.

I even learned how to play drums.Kinda.

‘’Even with all that music every week, there was too much music and not enough staff to put it in the game.

So Harmonix had an idea.

Let the fans do it!And we did. By God, we did.

‘’Very little thought went into my first business.I didn't know what I was doing.Hell, it was named for the street I lived on.I just did it because I thought it'd be fun.

This is not marketing. Don't do it. It's a terrible idea.But it's what I did, and it worked. Free clients led to paying clients.

Rockapella Giraffes? Giraffes!

And a lot of others!

(Editor's note: actual money nowhere near this much)

Over 90 releases total, from over 60 artists.

In the span of three years.

Some of them, people knew of!

Some of them, people liked!

But it all paled in comparison to...

This email.

This Guy

Me

‘’That was the big "success" of Fairwood.

Which I thought was so implausible, that I'd announce it on April Fool's Day, 2013.

But all was not well.

‘’Rock Band 3 came out in 2011.Pretty soon, it was clear that the market was shrinking.Sales were down all around.I punted.

A total, shameless clone of the Humble Bundle idea.

I gathered all of my music contacts, web dev skills, and marketing ability, and threw it all at this.

Stats:

May 7-19, 2012

663 copies sold

over $1500 raised for EFF/VH1 Save the Music

Failure.

Sure, the numbers were okay, for a total unknown.

But Humble sells that many in minutes.

Many bands in the bundle were in RBN, and sold more copies of every one of their songs.

In my head, I had failed to actually learn marketing.

I had no hope without leaning on Harmonix.

So I kept leaning, even when things were going south.

And then it broke. On April Fool's Day, 2013.Harmonix's sites went down, taking the Rock Band Network with them.

‘’For a month and a half, nothing could be done.

The whole situation was out of my control. Everything relied on Harmonix.

‘’When the Network finally came back, there weren't enough peers. Everyone had moved on.

Rock Band Network, and Fairwood Studios, was done.

What Went

Wrong

‘’The rockband.com downtime was merely the last straw.

My failure wasn't their fault; it just highlighted the problem I always had.

‘’Fairwood Studios was tied, very strongly, to Harmonix.

They provided so much that I easily became dependent on their continued success.

‘’Once Rock Band failed, Fairwood failed.

The Indie Allstar Bundle convinced me, accurate or not, that I didn't have a chance without the games.

‘’It wasn't Harmonix's fault that I couldn't succeed without them.

It was my fault for getting complacent and dependent.

LessonsLearned

▣ Be extremely careful working on someone else's platform, lest you become dependent

▣ Backup plans aren't just for technology - have backups for business model, key partnerships, anything you can

▣ Make sure you understand everything your business receives for free - just in case you suddenly don't receive it anymore

▣ Maybe put more than an afternoon's thought into your business idea

Lessons Learned

A single point of failure

Eventual failure*

*It's not guaranteed, you might still be successful, but it puts the odds against you, and do you really need more odds against you in business?

Thank You!

Zoe Landon

@hupfen

What I'm doing now:

RCRDListRCRDBox

Fortnight.Club

‘’PS:

The day after I drafted this presentation, Harmonix released the first Rock Band tracks in two years.

‘’They're now making not-so-subtle steps towards deciding if there will be a Rock Band 4.

I really hope they do it.