Hey everyone!

Long story short:

I started DJing in 2024 almost by accident, after casually telling a friend I wanted to give it a go. Since then, it's completely changed the way I listen to music. I've gone from R&B and soul into jazz, blues, ragtime, and eventually way back into recordings from the 1880s–1930s.

Along the way, I've realised how personal music is. We all connect with different songs at different points in our lives, and sometimes the right piece of music can say something words can't.

That idea is what led me here. I've been restoring forgotten public-domain recordings and pressing a handful onto physical CDs, each one built around a specific person or a story/moment they've shared with me.

Rather than giving someone a song they already know, it's about finding something they've probably never heard and thinking, this reminds me of you.

I'm only making 5 this time 👉🏼 https://pressplaycds.lovable.app/

Would genuinely love to hear what you think, even if it's not your thing. I just want to share some of the magic I've found in digging through forgotten music.

If this sounds like something you'd want made for someone, send me a message/fill in the form in the link above with a little about them and I'll see what I can dig up. I'm taking 5 commissions for this first run, and I'd love to make each one genuinely personal. 😊

And even if you wouldn't commission one, I'd love to hear what you think of the idea!

Have a great day ahead.

Hey everyone, I'm pretty new to business and would genuinely appreciate some advice from people who have built and sold things.

A bit of context:

I graduated late last year and spent around 8 months job hunting, which honestly burned me out pretty badly. I took a bit of a break around late June (although I'm planning to get back into job hunting soon because, well, money 😅).

During that break, I was introduced to the idea of personal branding. I've always done a bunch of different creative things (dance, DJing, creative coding, etc.) and I have way too many ideas that I want to try. Long term, I honestly don't really see myself doing a corporate 9-5 forever, so I'm trying to use this period to build my creative capabilities and eventually figure out how I can make money independently.

So I came up with an experiment called Creative Lab.

The idea is that each "series" gives one idea 30 days to see if it has legs. Rather than spending 6 months planning something, I want to actually put it out there, test it, learn, and either continue or move on.

My first experiment: Custom CD mixtapes

I'm currently testing a custom CD business. The concept is slightly different from the usual custom mixtape/CD services I've seen:

Instead of the customer giving me a Spotify playlist, I curate the music for them.

I'm particularly interested in music from roughly the 1880s–1930s aka old recordings, jazz, blues, folk, early popular music, etc. A lot of this music isn't necessarily on Spotify (or is difficult to discover), and that's part of the appeal.

The customer would basically submit a request describing what they're looking for / who it's for / the kind of mood they want, and I'd personally research and source the music, curate it into a mixtape, and produce a physical CD for them.

I'm thinking of starting with just 5 copies and seeing what happens.

I've also made a very rough landing page using Lovable: https://sanncds.lovable.app/

Where I'm stuck / what I'd love advice on

1. Landing page / offer

A couple of friends told me that the product wasn't immediately obvious when they first landed on the page, so I've added a CD graphic + "Custom CD" near the top.

But I'm wondering what else I'm missing from a first-time customer's perspective.

What information would you personally need to see before you'd consider buying something like this?

2. Validation

What's the best way to actually validate this?

My instinct is to just start with 5 spots and see if anyone is willing to pay, rather than spending ages building the website.

But I'm wondering if there are better ways to test the idea before producing anything.

Would you run ads? Post in communities? DM potential customers? Pre-orders? Something else?

3. Finding people outside my existing network

I'm planning to document the experiment on my personal Instagram, so that's an easy first source of reach.

But yeah my personal network isn't going to be enough if I want this to become an actual business.

Who do you think would be the most likely customer for something like this, and how would you reach them? I've seen people talk about cold outreach / sales calls when starting businesses. Is that completely unnecessary for a small B2C product like this, or is there actually a place for it?

4. Pricing

Would you offer different pricing tiers (e.g. basic / premium / deluxe), or would you just have one simple price initially?

I'm leaning towards keeping it simple because I'm only testing the idea, but I'm curious what people with more experience would recommend.

I'm very much in the "I have an idea and now I'm trying to figure out how to test whether anyone actually cares" stage.

So I'd especially appreciate criticism rather than encouragement. If you think the idea is weak, the positioning is unclear, or I'm approaching validation completely wrong, I'd genuinely rather hear that now.

Thank you so much 🙏🏼