Products of Music – Details, episodes & analysis

Welcome to Products of Music, a podcast sharing Inside stories and expert insights on product innovation in music technology.

In this episode host Adam Wakeling speaks with Tommy Stalknecht, co-founder and CEO of Single, the direct-to-fan platform for Shopify.

Since its inception in 2018, Single has transformed the way artists engage with their audiences by empowering them to sell music, merch, video and memberships directly to fans. Under Tommy's leadership, Single has facilitated the sale of over 5 million digital albums, reported 16 million albums to Billboard, and hosted livestream events for millions of viewers worldwide.

To learn more about Single, visit: https://www.single.xyz

Chapters:

00:00 Preview
00:45 Intro
01:07 Tommy's LinkedIn post
02:14 Single's origin story
10:52 The MVP of Single
13:00 Validating the MVP
14:53 Analytics feature development
16:38 Live-streaming integration
20:00 Single's org structure
21:08 Being a hands-on founder
22:26 NFT feature introduction
26:42 Are NFTs dead?
28:42 Patreon competitor
31:40 Tommy's product vision
33:30 Single's approach to product development
35:46 How Tommy prioritises
37:58 Tommy's lessons for new founders
42:30 Getting close to customers
43:40 Outro

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Aakash Gupta writes the Product Growth newsletter for over 140,000 subscribers and hosts the Product Growth podcast, where he helps product managers, product leaders and aspiring product managers.

In today's episode:

• Aakash's journey to newsletter success
• The 7 steps to follow to become an AI Product Manager
• Aakash's tips on growing your network and audience

—

Aakash's contact info:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aagupta
• Product Growth Newsletter on Substack
• Product Growth Podcast on YouTube 

—

Where to find the host, Adam Wakeling:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamjwakeling

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-wakeling

In this episode, we cover: 

(00:00) Preview
(00:49) Intro
(02:01) The growth of Product Growth
(07:32) Step 1: Shape your content diet
(12:55) Step 2: Take relevant courses
(20:25) Step 3: Gain hands-on experience
(23:46) Step 4: Structure your portfolio
(26:25) Step 5: Network
(36:38) Step 6: Snag interviews
(41:14 ) Step 7: Ace the homework and interview
(50:52) Final thoughts 

Useful links from the episode:

• AI for Everyone by Andrew Ng
• Jeff Su's YouTube channel
• Dwarkesh Patel's Podcast
• SVPino on YouTube

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Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia is Founder and CEO of Product School, and an entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience building global companies and digital products.

He founded Product School in 2014, which is the global leader in product training with a community of over two million members. All of its instructors are real-world Product Leaders working at top Silicon Valley companies including Google, Meta, Netflix, Airbnb, Uber, and Amazon.

In today's episode:

• How Product Management has changed in 2024

• Impact of AI in product development

• How to navigate the current product job market

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Carlos's contact and company info:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/villaumbrosia/

• Website: https://www.productschool.com/


—

Where to find the host, Adam Wakeling:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamjwakeling

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-wakeling-26494b35/


—

In this episode:

(00:00) Coming up

(01:40) Introduction

(02:21) Carlos's background

(04:14) Pull to Product Management

(06:12) How PM tools have changed

(08:12) First steps into Product Management

(09:22) The current job market challenges

(12:28) The Product career ladder

(15:22) How the PM role has now changed

(19:22) Building a great product in 2024

(23:28) The rise of generative AI

(25:44) First steps in implementing AI Product strategies  

(30:00) Importance of AI technical knowledge for PMs

(32:50) Risks of AI

(37:33) Final thoughts

(38:35) Outro

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Itamar Gilad is author of Evidence-Guided, which outlines a new product development meta framework called GIST. Itamar is also a speaker and a coach, previously working at Microsoft and Google. During his time at the latter, he came up with the idea for the tabbed inbox, which is now a core feature of the email product.

In today's episode:

• The risk of opinion-based development (Google +)

• A run through of Itamar's new GIST Evidence-Guided framework

• How to become evidence-guided in your company

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Itamar's contact and company info:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itamargilad/

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ItamarGilad

• Website: https://itamargilad.com/

—

Where to find the host, Adam Wakeling:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamjwakeling

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-wakeling-26494b35/

—

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Preview

(00:45) Introduction

(02:40) The story of Google+ and why it failed

(05:23) The story of Gmail tabbed inboxes and why it succeeded

(08:40) Tabbed Inbox timeline

(09:58) GIST introduction

(11:44) How long it took to create GIST

(12:59) Difference between data- and evidence-guided

(14:11) Goals in GIST

(17:10) The challenge of the right Northstar metric  

(19:30) Why Meta/Facebook's Northstar is not ideal

(21:16) Ideas in GIST 

(23:10) Collaboration in ideas 

(25:00) ICE for prioritization/evaluation 

(27:25) Impact in ICE explored

(29:30) How to calculate confidence in ICE

(33:36) The right level of confidence 

(35:35) Tabbed inbox research and analysis

(40:32) Example steps/AFTER framework 

(43:12) PMs stuck in execution/feature factories  

(47:32) Empowering others in Product Discovery

(51:02) Tracking Tasks to Goals 

(52:52) How to integrate GIST into your business 

(57:44) Outro

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Krish Ramineni is Co-Founder of Fireflies.ai, which helps teams transcribe, summarize, search and analyze voice conversations. He previously worked at Microsoft and has been featured within Forbes 30 Under 30. He is also passionate about Product-Led Growth.

In today's episode:

• Fundamentals of Product-Led Growth (PLG)

• How Fireflies.ai scaled with PLG

• How to implement PLG into a business

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Krish's contact and company info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/krishramineni

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/krishramineni/

• Fireflies.ai: https://fireflies.ai

—

Where to find the host, Adam Wakeling:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamjwakeling

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-wakeling-26494b35/



—

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction

(00:47) Krish's background

(04:18) What is Product-Led Growth (PLG)?

(07:47) B2B vs B2C in PLG

(13:28) Acquisition, Retention and Monetization

(17:25) Aha moments and customer empathy

(19:55) Challenges implementing PLG

(23:30) How Fireflies.ai approaches PLG

(25:53) First version of Fireflies.ai

(28:53) How AI product SMEs can compete with Google and Microsoft?

(32:48) Frameworks that Fireflies.ai leverages

(35:26) Where to start with PLG implementation

(38:09) Product-Led Sales

(39:30) PLG to PLS funnel

(40:46) Outro

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Bijan Shahrokhi is Creator of PM Exercises and Product Monkey AI. He is a product management executive with 10+ years of experience in building disruptive technologies. He was previously Head of Product at O(1)Labs, working on Mina Protocol, the world’s lightest blockchain, an L1 project.


In today's episode:

• The key pillars of productivity

• How to be more productive in our lives (for PMs and everybody)

• Emerging productivity tools

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Bijan's contact and company info:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bijan_sha

• Product Monkey AI: https://productmonkey.ai/

• PM Exercises: https://www.productmanagementexercises.com/

—

Where to find the host, Adam Wakeling:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamjwakeling

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-wakeling-26494b35/



—

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:32) Bijan's view of productivity as a concept

(04:18) Where to start with being more productive

(09:53) The next steps

(12:34) Discussion around prioritisation

(17:50) Differentiation between team and individual productivity

(19:22) Tactics and The 5AM Club

(25:18) Using mini milestones

(26:30) Importance of exercise

(30:50) Tactics around improving knowledge

(31:46) Using generative AI for productivity

(34:02) Bijan's story in founding PM Exercises and Product Monkey AI

(40:54) The tension between productivity and redundancy

(43:48) Privacy and security around AI

(48:28) Emerging productivity tools

(50:48) Final thoughts from Bijan

(52:03) Outro

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Jonathan Courtois is a Senior Principal Engineer at Sky (UK), leading the development in C++/Qt of the immersive UI experience of Entertainment OS, the operating system powering Sky Glass and Sky Stream.

In today's episode:

• What makes a great Product and Engineering relationship through the lens of a Senior Principal Engineer

• How Sky how approaches product feature development

• The future of TV and streaming experiences

—

Jonathan's contact info:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-courtois-8a9ab98/

—

Where to find the host, Adam Wakeling:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamjwakeling

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-wakeling-26494b35/


—

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:33) What the Senior Principal Engineer does at Sky and Jonathan's professional journey

(05:55) Having a strong alignment with business direction

(06:54) The Engineering and Product relationship

(09:38) How Squads and Crew function at Sky

(11:07) Some tactics on product-engineering alignment

(13:04) Advice to Product Managers

(14:36) Typical product feature development approach at Sky

(20:11) Trimming MVPs

(24:00) Accessibility within product development

(24:52) The future of TV and streaming experiences

(32:32) The power of generative AI 

(34:30) Social Media 

(36:22) The end of traditional TV?

(37:46) Where the ad money goes and impact of individual content creators

(41:39) What emerging tech Jonathan is most excited by 

(43:51) Outro

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Rafal Maciag is Founder and CEO of ModelingEvolution, which helps businesses and organisations implement effective, high-quality software solutions. The company's Modellution product provides a collaboration platform for Event Storming and Event Modeling.

In today's episode:

• The foundational concept of Event Storming and how it serves as a catalyst for collaborative transformation

• How to integrate Event Storming and Event Modeling concepts into a business

• Rafal's story of founding a company and lessons learned

—

Rafal's contact info:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafalmaciag/

• ModelingEvolution: https://www.modelingevolution.com/

—

Where to find the host, Adam Wakeling:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamjwakeling

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-wakeling-26494b35/

—

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction

(00:56) Putting everyone on the same page

(02:32) What is Event Storming?

(08:40) Examples of 'events'

(12:39) Enabling Customer Journey Mapping

(16:00) How often to conduct Event Storming

(23:48) 'Movies' in Event Storming

(26:17) Who organises everything?

(28:10) Challenges of implementation of Event Storming

(29:54) How organisations are working with ModelingEvolution

(31:24) What Rafal has learned from founding a company

(33:37) Building the right things

(36:14) Final thoughts from Rafal

(38:00) Outro

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Gabrielle Hayes is a Product and Agile Coach. She is co-founder and instructor at Product x Agile, which brings expertise to product teams in the form of human-centred, on-demand, self-paced courses.

She is also passionate about all things Product Discovery, which is the main topic of today’s episode.

In today's episode:

• The fundamentals of successful Product Discovery

• How Product Discovery fits in the Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC)

• How to influence change in an organisation for better product discovery outcomes

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Gabrielle's contact info:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielleahayes/

• Product x Agile: https://www.productxagile.com/

• Product x Agile on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/product-x-agile/

—

Where to find the host, Adam Wakeling:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamjwakeling

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-wakeling-26494b35/


—

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Podcast Introduction

(00:46) What is Product Discovery?

(01:28) Iterative approach to Product Discovery

(02:44) Kano analysis model

(04:09) Where to start with Product Discovery

(06:04) Having a dynamic product team

(08:40) Framework for discovery efforts

(11:20) Impact of Customer Success teams

(12:55) Reaching non-owned audiences

(15:40) What questions to ask your customers

(19:21) Deeper empathy with customers and users

(22:10) What to do after the MVP launch

(23:30) What to document in discovery

(26:15) How to approach feature prioritisation

(29:00) The role of innovation within Product Discovery 

(32:20) Utilising AI for Product Discovery

(35:15) Pressure of being in a 'feature factory'

(38:04) Influencing leadership to enable more Product Discovery efforts

(40:43) About Product x Agile

(42:44) Outro

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Alina Verbenchuk is Senior Product Manager @ HypeAuditor and was previously Product Manager @ Creator Tools at YouTube and Program Lead at Google. 

She is also Founder of Verbetcetera, which looks to help empower tech careers through mentorship and consulting for people from various backgrounds. 

In today's episode:

• Exploring how technical skills enhance a PM's ability to work effectively with engineers.

• Alina's personal journey of realizing the importance of technical skills in her role as a PM.

• Discussing other crucial areas, such as generative AI and agents, in the evolving product development landscape.

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Alina's contact info:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alinaverbenchuk/

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@alinaverbenchuk683

• Verbetcetera: https://verbetcetera.com/
—

Where to find the host, Adam Wakeling:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamjwakeling

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-wakeling-26494b35/

—

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction

(00:53) Reading Alina’s Linkedin post

(02:06) Difference between a PM and a Technical PM

(04:18) Advantages in more complex products

(05:22) Computer Science prerequisite in Google PM interviews

(06:54) Importance of communication

(07:51) Engineering's respect for having technical skills

(10:04) The moment of technical realization

(12:30) The start of the technical journey

(15:17) Starting with SQL

(16:07) Key technical PM areas to learn 

(18:00) Rise of generative AI and agents

(19:27) Verbetcetera

(20:45) Thinking about a problem with technical skills

(22:47) Difference between Google and smaller companies

(26:18) Approaches and time to spend on different goals

(28:26) Turning theory into practice

(29:45) Favorite parts of technical development

(31:18) Outro

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