The Best Product Market Fit I've Ever Seen
Let me tell you about this thing called Music League.
I need to tell you about the best product market fit I’ve ever seen…
If product market fit happens when a product satisfies a strong market demand then what do you call it when your customers take your product and start building on their own because the limitations of the product don’t serve their needs enough? Fan fiction? Creativity?
I’ll call it product market fit plus.
Last year, my childhood friend Alexa corralled a group of 15ish friends, family, coworkers and neighbors to join her on an app called Music League.
What is Music League?
Music League is a competitive app1 that lets you share and discover new music with friends. It’s like if Name that Tune and Trivia had a baby. It’s a sticky, social way to stay in touch with friends through music.
For those curious on the details, here’s the app’s lengthy App Store description2:
Some of the highlights
It’s incredibly fun to share music week in and out, showing people your favorites and discovering new music from other people outside of an algorithm.
It’s not about taste, it’s about reading the room based on the theme. The ultimate curation game. With categories like “Best Roadtrip Song” and “Best Song to Bawl to” we really run spectrum on genre, artist and album.
Music is fun. It’s also inherently social and a treat to be reminded, and required, to listen to new music every week. It’s like a healthy dose of culture, weekly.
Some of the limitations
The social component
Music League is meant to be social experience. Yet, the execution of social features doesn’t mirror how people actually communicate on a day-to-day basis. While there are chat features within the app, it’s slow and clunky and doesn’t live within the native spaces that people want to chat (i.e., in iMessage or Whatsapp).
Side note: I spent almost a decade in audio streaming at places like Soundcloud, Spotify and Audible. I’ve explored numerous ways to make audio more social and nothing has come close to the experience of using Music League for social connectivity around music - but not exactly through the app (see below). The closest was turntable.fm.
The solve: We’ve solved for this limitation by creating our own group text outside of the app. It’s so active that I have to mute it, with 20+ people commenting on each other’s selections, bullying and smack talking and chatting about anything music-related throughout the week.
The user experience
The app is supported by ads. But, not just ads that are annoying, ads that prevent you from using the core features and functionality. Ads where you have to shut the app down multiple times to clear the cache. Week after week, we complain about the ads, yet we still power through.
The solve: There is no clear solve other than paying for the ad free version. This creative group of people has now deemed Royal Match’s King Robert (a top advertiser) a mascot for the League. He is featured in a lot of our “marketing materials” and now, he’s officially part of the lore. We officially love to hate him.
The underutilization of data
As someone who’s spent over a decade in streaming audio and someone who’s deeply entrenched in the tech space, the sheer underutilization of user data is appalling.
The solve: See below…
The product market fit plus
As you can see, we’ve gotten around a lot of pain in the core interface by building.
And by we, I mean Alexa.
At this point, it’s important to tell you more about what Alexa did to take this experience out of app and into product-market fit plus land.
It’s best told through The Leaguies, an event that she curated in July3 to celebrate, honor, and drive home the community we’ve created around Music League.
Here’s what happened leading up to July 25th, 2026.
Alexa set a date for the “Leaguies” in Chicago. New Yorkers booked flights and accommodations to join the Chicago based crew.
On July 24th, 19/22 Leaguers descended on West Chicago for a celebration.
We decorated and dressed to impressed.
Alexa made yearbooks
We then party bussed to Karaoke in Chinatown
Where we ….
Watched the Seasons Wrapped reveal (using some AI + Canva)
Got awards
Revealed next season’s rounds, as submitted by leaguers
And sung until we injured our vocal chords.
If you’re thinking wow this is all absolutely outrageous, you’d probably be right.
But to me, this is product market fit plus.
When your customers love the product so much they decide to go rouge and create something 10x better than you intended, you better be paying attention.
Music League team: If you don’t take cues from your #1 customer, Alexa Berg, I’m not sure what you’re doing. She’s got many ideas for you.
I’m Jori Bell, VP of Core at Hampton. I’m also a Coach for Product Leaders. If you’re working on building a team that tells you the truth, I’d love to hear from you.
Before anyone corrects me, it’s also available on desktop.
They definitely need some copywriting, brevity lessons here.
And also last December, the inaugural event I had to miss.