We’re proud to announce that Tiny Piano has reached 10 million downloads! To celebrate this milestone, we are giving away $50 iTunes gift cards to FOUR lucky fans this month.
To enter, please visit: http://www.tinypiano.com/giveaway/
May 3, 2013
Giveaway: $50 iTunes GC
April 8, 2013
Tiny Piano 1.6
Tiny Piano was just updated with 40 awesome new songs!
Get it here: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id477014214
March 12, 2013
Tiny Guitar 1.6
We’re proud to announce the newest update to Tiny Guitar!
Version 1.6 comes with three new song packs, and lots of popular music, such as Fun’s “We Are Young.”
February 26, 2013
One Year on the App Store
Tiny Piano recently reached 8 million downloads, after one year on the App Store. In this post, we’ll look at how the app gained traction, and make some guesses at how we might improve.
Tiny Piano launched on February 26, 2012. Here are the numbers:
- 8.1 million downloads
- 25,000 downloads per day
- 56,000 five-star reviews
- 3 million monthly active users
- Above average user retention, when compared with other music apps.
- Justin Bieber’s “Baby” is the most popular song. This gives you a sense of the user demographics.
Here’s a graph of weekly active users:
How We Got Here
The app hovered at 5,000 weekly users until we added support for iPad (in addition to iPhone/iPod). We then improved App Store SEO, adding 钢琴 as a keyword. The app climbed the charts and eventually became the #1 iPad music app in China. Since then, Tiny Piano has reached the #1 spot for iPad music apps in 41 countries. In November 2012, Apple launched an iPad mini commercial featuring a piano, and Tiny Piano got a lucky boost.
Looking back, my first code check-in was on Nov 14, 2011. So I was able to create a hit app in 3 months. Awesome, right? Of course, this overnight success actually began in 2010, after I left my full-time job and bought an iPad. That summer, I locked myself in my office and watched lectures on how to make iPhone/iPad apps. I put together a guitar app prototype and showed it to a few friends. Over the next year, I shipped two virtual guitars, an ear trainer, and even a Japanese learning app; all have been commercial failures. But with each failure, I learned a lot and was determined to do better the next time.
Tiny Piano actually shares a bunch of code and graphics with my aforementioned guitar app. It even has code that I wrote back in 2010. Looking back, I realize that this hit was created in 3 months plus 2 years.
How Successful?
At first glance, 8 million downloads sounds big. But for startups these days, “10 million is the new 1 million.” True success might even be measured in hundreds of millions. For example, the Temple Run team announced that their first game achieved 100 million downloads in one year. The Angry Birds franchise has generated a billion downloads! While we may never hit 100 million, just knowing that the mobile space is so huge is comforting.
Take a look at Tiny Piano’s USA iPhone Ranking over the last 90 days:
It is #18 in the Music category, and has never broken #300 in the overall charts. There is much more room for improvement.
The best thing about traction is: success begets success. The Temple Run team gained lots of media coverage from achieving 100 million downloads. They parlayed this publicity into a successful launch of their sequel, which earned 50 million downloads in only 2 weeks!
If Tiny Piano had never gotten its first 10,000 downloads (with favorable reviews), I might have abandoned the app. Luckily, early success encouraged me to continue working hard. At 1 million downloads, I felt comfortable pitching it to people I met at conferences like Startup School. At 3 million, I started blogging about Tiny Piano’s traction. Each milestone gains the app more publicity, which in turn makes it easier to hit the next milestone.
What’s Next?
Where do we go from here? Would I be happy in a year if the app is still hanging out at #18 in iPad music? With hard work, I am sure we can do better. Perhaps Tiny Piano can even work its way up the overall iTunes charts?
At the moment, I am improving Tiny Guitar. After that, I have a bunch ideas for making Tiny Piano better. In addition to adding more content, it would be nice if users could author their own songs, or share their performances. Of course, there is also a huge market segment that I haven’t yet addressed: Android. If only I could clone myself!
As with any startup, it is always too many ideas, too little time. I have learned that you just need to pick one and do it well.
Back to work!
Wanna chat?
- Discuss this on Hacker News.
- Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.
- Or just leave a comment below!
January 17, 2013
Interview with Temple Run’s Keith Shepherd
I’m a big fan of the Temple Run team. They are a huge inspiration for indie developers like me!
Check out the interview here: http://allthingsd.com/20130117/interview-temple-runs-keith-shepherd-on-freemium-staying-small-and-new-games
January 5, 2013
Learning from Mark Cuban
As a first-time entrepreneur, I love reading about successful business people. There’s always something to learn. You can be inspired and hopefully avoid mistakes as you start up your own business.
One of my inspirations is Mark Cuban. He made his fortune by selling his company to Yahoo! for $5.7 billion in 1999. If you follow sports, you’ll know him as the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. You may also recognize him from the Shark Tank TV show.
Recently, Mark hosted an AMA (ask me anything) on reddit. Here are my favorite snippets from the Q&A:
- On buying stuff online… he says: “I always look at the prices. And I belong to Prime to get better rates.”
- When someone mentioned that he had tipped 200%: “I worked as a bartender and waiter. I always try to tip well.”
- He also says there is a bubble on Series A valuations for tech startups.
Cuban has written an e-book filled with advice for entrepreneurs. I found a summary here: http://www.bradaronson.com/mark-cuban-business-lessons/. One of the best quotes is about perseverance in business:
It doesn’t matter how many times you have failed, you only have to be right once.
If you are interested in his back story, you can check out the Success & Motivation posts on his blog (here and here). It’s a long but interesting read, with nuggets like:
- I remember driving down to pick up some hard drives that I was going to put into my customers PCs….[The vendor] had just moved from the owner’s dorm room into a little office/warehouse space. I was so impressed by this young kid (I was a wise old 25 at the time), that I actually wrote a letter thanking him for the great job he was doing, and…I’m embarassed to say now, I told him that if he kept up what he was doing he was destined for far bigger and better things. I kept on doing business with PCs Limited, and Michael Dell kept on doing what he was doing.
- Long story short, I went to the bar to get some drinks for all us, I come back, they aren’t there. Come to find out the next day, Bill [Gates] stole my girls. As I would learn later in life, money does make you extremely handsome.
- It doesn’t matter how many times you strike out. In business, to be a success, you only have to be right once.
And one of the best comments on his post was from an early acquaintance of his:
I remember asking you to come with us to drink some beer and play water volleyball on a Sat Summer afternoon. You were in your bedroom reading some of those computer books you talked about – you just looked up and said “the sun will shine another day” I will never forget that. True story – I bet I have told that to 100 people who know nothing about you.
Mark Cuban has been a big inspiration for me. I hope you enjoyed these tidbits!
December 25, 2012
Tiny Piano 1.5
We’re proud to announce the newest update to Tiny Piano! Get it on the App Store.
Version 1.5 comes with two new song packs, with popular music (e.g., Call Me Maybe & Gangnam Style) and holiday songs. After you install Tiny Piano, click this link to get Song Pack #7 - Holiday Music for FREE!
And of course… you can now play Heart & Soul, like on the iPad mini commercial.
We hope you enjoy Tiny Piano. Happy Holidays!
December 20, 2012
OS X Utilities I Love
I spend most days sitting in front of my laptop, writing software. This means LOTS of typing. Here are some Mac OS X utilities that make me much more efficient and happy. (I’m sure there are similar tools for Windows users.)
BetterTouchTool: http://blog.boastr.net
This allows you to create custom swipe/tap gestures for your trackpad. Here are some I use to help me quickly manage open windows:
- 5-finger tap => Show Desktop
- fn + 4-finger tap => Maximize Window
- fn + tap [left|right|top|bottom] edge of track pad => Resize Window to [Left|Right|Top|Bottom] Half of the Screen
- fn + tap a corner of track pad => Resize Window to Corresponding Quarter of the Screen
Keyboard Maestro: http://www.keyboardmaestro.com
This is my Swiss Army knife. It allows you to create hotkeys for anything your Mac can do. It also does text expansion, and maintains a clipboard history for you.
- Hot Keys: When I’m working in JavaScript, and hit CTRL + L, it will insert
console.log();If I am in Xcode, CTRL + L insertsNSLog(@""); - Text Expansion: MyClass ai is automatically replaced with
[[MyClass alloc] init];I have lots of these little abbreviations. For example, #i becomes#import ""and @p turns into@property (nonatomic, retain). - Clipboard History: Everything I copy or cut goes into my clipboard history. I can safely cut multiple items in one area of my code and then paste them into another file. Editors like emacs have a similar feature, but this works system wide. That means I can copy snippets of code from a browser (e.g., stackoverflow) and then retrieve them later in the day.
- Menu Items: You can add macros under the Keyboard Maestro menu item. My incoming tech support emails will frequently ask the same questions. So, I’ll go to my menu item and pick the appropriate canned email response!
Alfred: http://www.alfredapp.com
This is an app launcher & desktop search tool, and also comes with lots of shortcuts. I no longer use OS X’s Spotlight (Alfred is faster). For example: I use it to put my computer to sleep: alt + space, s, enter instead of slowly moving my mouse cursor up to the Apple menu.
f.lux: http://stereopsis.com/flux
This tool adjusts your computer’s display at night to remove the blue part of the spectrum. The first time you use it, you’ll notice that your display looks “warmer” (more orange) at night. But you’ll quickly get used to it! It turns out that sitting in front of a computer screen late at night may make it hard for you to fall asleep. This tool reduces eye strain and improves your ability to get to sleep on time.
Do you have any software tools that you love? Let me know in the comments!
November 29, 2012
Jeff Bezos: Regret Minimization Framework
via Jeff Bezos, 2001. Reblogged from bijan:
I went to my boss and said to him, “You know, I’m going to go do this crazy thing and I’m going to start this company selling books online.” This was something that I had already been talking to him about in a sort of more general context, but then he said, “Let’s go on a walk.” And, we went on a two hour walk in Central Park in New York City and the conclusion of that was this. He said, “You know, this actually sounds like a really good idea to me, but it sounds like it would be a better idea for somebody who didn’t already have a good job.” He convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision.
So, I went away and was trying to find the right framework in which to make that kind of big decision. I had already talked to my wife about this, and she was very supportive and said, “Look, you know you can count me in 100 percent, whatever you want to do.” It’s true she had married this fairly stable guy in a stable career path, and now he wanted to go do this crazy thing, but she was 100 percent supportive. So, it really was a decision that I had to make for myself, and the framework I found which made the decision incredibly easy was what I called — which only a nerd would call — a “regret minimization framework.”
So, I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, “Okay, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.” I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision. And, I think that’s very good. If you can project yourself out to age 80 and sort of think, “What will I think at that time?” it gets you away from some of the daily pieces of confusion. You know, I left this Wall Street firm in the middle of the year. When you do that, you walk away from your annual bonus. That’s the kind of thing that in the short-term can confuse you, but if you think about the long-term then you can really make good life decisions that you won’t regret later.
November 7, 2012
Tiny Piano sales quadruple due to Apple commercial
Summary: Tiny Piano reached its 3 millionth download thanks to the iPad mini launch. Sales spiked over the weekend, bringing in $10K revenues over 3 days.
* * *
Last weekend, Apple released the iPad mini and launched a commercial featuring Heart & Soul played on the GarageBand piano.
Thanks to this TV ad, a large number of people logged onto the App Store to look for “piano” apps. By Monday morning, 7 of the top 10 iPad free music apps were piano apps. Luckily, Tiny Piano was one of them.
Here is Tiny Piano at #5 in the iPad Free Music category:
Tiny Piano is not even the top piano app! Nevertheless, we got a huge jump in downloads and revenue. Here’s a graph of the two weeks leading up to the iPad mini ad campaign:
The graph shows 56,447 downloads on Sunday. This was about 4x the number of downloads that we got the week before.
Tiny Piano generates revenues through advertising (iAds & AdMob) and in-app purchases ($0.99 song packs and a $2.99 “unlock everything” option). From Friday to Sunday, revenues totaled $8852.91. Thanks, Apple!
Below is a graph of my revenue from iAds. The AdMob graph has the same shape. It’s pretty clear that the iPad mini commercial had a huge impact.
Here are some lessons that I’ve learned:
No matter how hard you work, it always helps to get really really lucky. :-) When I launched Tiny Piano in February 2012, I could never have predicted that Apple would make a commercial featuring a piano, and drive lots of people to download my app from the App Store.
It might take a while. I left my full-time job as a software developer in May 2010 to create a company specializing in fun educational apps. It took me two years to earn enough monthly revenue to cover my rent. Before I made the jump, I had about 2.5 years of runway, so luckily things turned around before my savings ran dry.
Start small and keep improving. When I first shipped Tiny Piano in February, it had 16 simple songs (e.g., Yankee Doodle), and only supported the iPhone. It was a free app, with no ads or in-app purchases. After getting some favorable customer reviews, I decided it was worthwhile to continue working on the app. In April, I shipped v1.1, which included three song packs and iPad support (as a universal binary). I continued to add new song packs in May and June, and added a new $2.99 option for unlocking all five song packs at once.
Here’s a graph of the daily active users. It started with 1 user (myself) in February 2012 and reached a peak of 154K this last Sunday.
Make sure you ship! My guess is that the average indie developer never finishes his or her game. It doesn’t matter if you’re working on an iOS or Android game. You must ship! In my case, if I had never shipped Tiny Piano, I would have never benefited from Apple’s iPad mini campaign.
Experience matters. Tiny Piano was the sixth app that I worked on, and the fifth that I released to the App Store. You haven’t heard of the others, because they are commercial failures. I spent way too long on my first app (Galactic Guitar) because I’m a perfectionist. When I finally shipped, I learned that it was too confusing for most users to understand. :-( It was painful, but I learned a lot from shipping a dud. Even Rovio shipped 51 duds before finding success with Angry Birds. We can’t all be awesome like Andreas Illiger.
As Paul Graham says, “startups rarely die in mid keystroke.”
So I’ll keep typing.
* * *
Here’s a link to the Hacker News discussion.
Here are a few articles about indie development:
- http://thegamebakers.com/money-and-the-app-store-a-few-figures-that-might-help-an-indie-developer.html
- http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-postmortems/
- http://www.occasionalgamer.com/2012/01/02/2011-a-year-in-review-as-a-indie-developer/
- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2929612
- http://taptaptap.com/blog/heisting-the-app-store-500000-paid-downloads-in-1-week/
Have a question? Leave a comment below or contact me at hello@squarepoet.com!
1 of 2
Next page
