We launched Kingdom Sound as a monthly subscription music library. Three tiers, recurring billing, download quotas — the standard SaaS playbook.
It lasted about a day.
What changed my mind
I was reviewing a proposal I'd written for a client — a real music-services proposal, the kind I'd actually send. And it looked nothing like the subscription product we'd just built.
The proposal offered three things: license a track from my catalog, commission a custom instrumental, or commission a fully original song written for one specific person. One-time payments. Real craft. Personal attention.
The subscription product offered: a download quota and a monthly charge.
One of those was honest about what I actually do. The other was me copying a business model because it's what everyone else does.
So I killed the subscription.
The real reason — it wasn't aligned
Here's the thing about a music subscription: the incentive is to keep you paying, not to serve you well. The library has to feel "worth it" every month or you churn. That pressure pushes toward volume — more tracks, more genres, more noise — and away from craft.
That's a fine model for some companies. It is not the model for a faith-driven shop where the whole point is doing work "with all your heart, as working for the Lord." (Colossians 3:23. It's on the wall for a reason.)
When you do work as worship, you don't want a customer trapped in a recurring charge. You want them to own something good and walk away blessed by it.
What Kingdom Sound is now
Three honest services, all one-time payments, all yours forever:
- License a catalog track — $150 to $497. Browse, find one that fits, license it. Perpetual commercial rights. Done.
- Commission a custom instrumental — $500 to $997. You bring the brief, I build the track around it.
- Commission a fully original song — $993 flat. You send me a story; I write and produce a complete song — lyrics, melody, vocals, production — built to honor one person. I've done this for the Ian McCormick story and for TD Jakes.
No subscription. No quota. No churn pressure. You pay once, you own it, and if you never come back, you still walk away with something that's permanently yours.
Why I'm writing this publicly
Because pivoting fast and admitting you got the model wrong is not a weakness — it's the whole advantage of being small. A big company would have run focus groups and shipped the subscription anyway because the spreadsheet liked it. I just looked at it, saw it wasn't aligned with how I actually work, and rebuilt it the same day.
If you're a business owner reading this: that's the speed you should expect from the people you hire. Not "we'll revisit it next quarter." Same day. Because the work matters more than the ego.
See the three Kingdom Sound services →
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters." — Colossians 3:23