Why We Open Sourced Queue'd Music
A fter nearly 3 years of on and off work on this project, I've decided to open source it so that the developer community might make better use of it than I've been able to. I don't think it's a particularly impressive app, but I certainly feel that it's a cool idea, and something I worked very very hard on. In a way, I taught myself how to code with this project — or at least, how to code on a higher level than I could in college, when I began my journey into the software scene. Though it may not be valuable as a sum of it's parts, I think that there may be hidden value in the many pieces of the app that I challenged myself and my team to build as we encountered problems along the way.
Backstory
In 2015, I had just finished building my second app. I was still learning, and wanted to try building out another idea I had always thought to be interesting. I thought democratizing the song requests in drunk college bars across the country seemed like something challenging and fun to pursue. Especially for me at the time: a 19 year old with wide eyes for the new scene of programming, with all these wild ideas rushed through my head. I was self taught, super motivated to learn more, and like everyone at that age, I thought I could be the next Facebook multi-millionaire by making some cool app. I strayed off to try something bigger on my own.
I pitched the idea for Queue'd to a board of judges at the Marquette University ImpactNext Business Plan Competition. It won first prize, taking home $5000. Three months later, I pitched it to yet another board of representatives for a 'Dorm Fund' that provides investment into student run ventures; we again won, this time taking home just over $2000. Next, I took the Queue'd prototype to an app competition run by three universities in southeastern Wisconsin — again we prevailed, taking home $1000 in cash and prizes...
Rinse and repeat this cycle, and 6 months later I found myself with nearly $50,000. It was enough to speed up the development of Queue'd and start a small venture of my own. Red Shepard was born from necessity, as I hired a part time team to help me build some pieces of the app, and to get things rolling on the marketing and sales side of things. I wanted liability protection, and an avenue to appropriately use the prize money. Most importantly, I had the money to get some legal counsel. I knew the app would challenge some existing licensing issues with music broadcasting, so consulting a lawyer seemed appropriate.
Trouble Begins
After laying out the operations of the app, initially, to the hired counsel, we were confident that we were in the clear (with a few exceptions, and necessary revision to our 'Terms & Conditions'). Since we were using Spotify's SDK to play music through our app, we couldn't charge for the service, and we couldn't openly play Spotify licensed tracks 'in a public space'. We therefore pivoted the marketing plan and go-to-market strategy to appeal to private events and weddings. In fact, I even struck up something of a relationship with Spotify after speaking with multiple leaders in different aspects of their business. Additionally, two more prominent music service providers entered the conversation, and I slowly began building something of a relationship with them all as we prepared for a beta launch. All these gentlemen knew each other, and they were happy to make introductions.
Everything seemed well and good — in fact, it was very exciting. One company in particular expressed interest in acquiring the app so as to capture the idea, and more significantly, protect the interests of their (somewhat similar) existing product. I was regularly discussing my app with all three companies. As the frequent conversations progressed, I even had paperwork signed with one party so that they could do their due diligence. I was ecstatic! As a developer, there's no better feeling than to see people interested in the thing you spent years building.
Then suddenly, the communication stopped. I couldn't get a response from any one of my contacts at Spotify, or anyone at the other two companies I had been in conversation with. Previously scheduled conference calls went ignored by all of them; the emails and voicemails left unanswered. Quite frankly, I didn't really know what to do at this point. These corporations had seen everything under the hood. They knew how I ran my business. Though contractually obligated to protect my intellectual property, I wasn't so sure they actually would. After a couple of weeks effort, and no responses from anyone, I received a very odd phone call...
The call came from a law firm on the west coast. The man on the other line identified himself, yet failed to mention affiliation with any single organization. After asking who put him in touch with me, he answered: "A good buddy of mine had met you, and wanted me to give you a call". Though polite he was, he proceeded to inform me that the idea for my application, Queue'd Music, was 'risky, and left me unprotected' from the music powers that be. In a roundabout way, I was being told that by releasing the app, I would be classified as a 'music provider'. This means I was subject to licensing dues in order to broadcast music to a crowd of individuals in a place like a bar. Depending on scale, this meant expenses upwards of $10,000 a month. But the most shocking part of our brief conversation were his closing words. He said something along the lines of: "You know, if you chose not to pay for licensing, you risk lawsuit from some of these streaming services whom you might use to provide the music...". I wasn't sure what to say. I was under the impression that we weren't doing anything this risky, and that we were 'in the clear' after the countless conversations I'd had with these industry guys, and my lawyer. How does this happen? How did I go so far without a warning for something like this?
How It Came To This
I felt that this man's intentions were good, and seeing as I had no ill-will with any of the previously contacted companies, I was not sure how to process the call I'd just had. I called
my lawyer immediately afterwards and discussed the call with him:
Lawyer: "Well, he could be right. I suppose if a company wanted to interpret the terms that way, they could certainly twist a case out of it."
Me: "So what does that mean, they'll sue me? Who? Who would sue me?"
Lawyer: "Well, anyone who wanted to argue that you were a 'music provider'..."
Me: "So I'm just screwed, or what? Releasing it means I could get sued?"
Lawyer: "Well, you're not screwed, you just risk lawsuit. Most businesses do if they directly compete with someone in the same industry. They'll try to hurt your business or de-legitimize it to advantage themselves."
Me: "Well what the f***, I'm just some guy trying to release this app, I'm hardly a major player in this? Why would they kill my business like that?"
Lawyer : "I mean, it wouldn't be a personal attack, it could just be someone trying to defend their business preemptively. It just kind of goes with the turf, ya know. If they are aware of you and see a threat, it's in their best interest to respond."
Me: "So what should I do? I can't just not release this thing, I've been working on it for over a year."
Lawyer: "It's just the risk you take in doing business. I wouldn't be too concerned with it in the present. But you'll always be threatened with suits as you grow, that's why the world has lawyers."
... So here we are.
I couldn't afford to take the risk. My initial $50k was dwindled down to less than $20,000, and I knew that was barely enough to pay a better lawyer. I was demoralized, and felt defeated by the fact that all
my time was poured into this project, only to be shot down by such massive legal risk. At that point, I figured it best to cut my losses, keep the code, using the money (and the app as a show piece) to build
a consulting business...
Welcome to our site, we are Red Shepard Software, and here we are — lol.
Looking forward
I've been sitting on the code for a while, and felt extremely guilty that the app was going to waste. I don't know if we'll see one of these big companies try to make something similar, or if I just got too spooked and thought my idea was better than it actually was. Regardless, I'm proud of how far I got to take it. Ultimately, I decided that open source was a good alternative to a release. We could provide value to the community, and open up the app for others to innovate off of. It might not be as impressive as a multi-million dollar organization releasing all their code, but to me, this was a lot of hard work, and I certainly know a repo like this would have helped me a lot when I was just getting started.
So to those reading this, and to anyone out there trying to learn, I hope that my code helps you. Go build the cool apps we all love to see, and I'd love to know if our code got to be a part of it! Enjoy!