Growing to 42 Million Users: Audiomack's Growth Playbook | Charlie Kaplan, VP of Product (Audiomack)
Why real product-market fit feels less like effort and more like momentum you can't ignore.
TL;DR
Charlie Kaplan’s journey from early-stage founder to VP of Product at Audiomack is a masterclass in finding (and losing) product-market fit. In this episode of LaunchPod, Charlie breaks down how he:
How he drove 50x user growth at Cymbal, and why that still didn’t matter because they lacked strong fit (05:23)
The story of how he launched Audiomack’s product org and scaled to 42 million MAUs, on the back of strong product-market fit (16:54)
How he transformed failed features into new revenue streams, helping Audiomack grow into a platform big enough to host Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, and more (28:40)
Cymbal grew 50x, but without PMF, it didn’t matter
Charlie’s first startup, Cymbal, was billed as “Instagram for music.” It gained early traction, a lot of attention, and had 50x user growth in one year. But, because they didn’t solidify product-market fit, Cymbal ran into issues.
“People are talking about it on social media. What I’m describing is hype. And hype is not product-market fit.”
The product was designed around a social graph, but most users had no friends on the platform, and they churned quickly.
The team tried to pivot to an interest graph using hashtags
Users still didn’t stick; the app had no strong single-player mode
Cymbal ran out of money before they could rebuild
“It’s paradoxical, but if you want to start a social network, you don’t start with a social network.”
How Audiomack scaled to 42M MAUs by serving the right market
When Charlie joined Audiomack, it had roughly 4 million monthly and 900,000 daily active users. His first move was to add data infrastructure and start measuring behavior.
He discovered that the product was naturally solving a problem in emerging markets. Audiomack offered ad-supported music streaming, while competitors charged $11/month.
The result:
Artists in West Africa began uploading music and linking fans to Audiomack
The platform became a dominant streaming service in Africa
Audiomack negotiated label deals to expand its catalog
“That was our step into being able to negotiate major label contracts and to get Taylor Swift onto the platform.”
Audiomack’s current reach:
42 million monthly active users
12 million daily active users
Failed features turned into real revenue and global growth
In 2020, the Audiomack team launched a feature called Supporters that let fans pay artists directly. It didn’t work as expected.
However, they did see something unexpected: artists were paying themselves. The reason? To appear on the app’s homepage.
In response, the team built Boost, a native ad platform for artists to promote their music safely and transparently.
The result:
Boost replaced a failing feature with a high-performing revenue stream
It gave smaller artists visibility without relying on scammy third-party services
It created new value without changing the user base
“Boost has been like a way for us to enable artists with spending power to grow their fan bases directly and generate a brand new revenue stream for us.”
Final takeaway
“The thing about product-market fit is it’s a lot like gravity in the sense that you can feel it pulling you. You can't really build something successful away from product-market fit. But when you have product-market fit, it keeps telling you that it wants more things like that. And it's a strange kind of disembodied force that you end up working with or against.”
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