He specializes in vinyl albums and 45 rpm singles from the '50s to the '90s, but he also does a few CDs. Neuman's built a worldwide network of collectors, wholesellers and specialty record company contacts that gives him access to over 500,000 titles. Some of Neuman's clients live in Japan and Russia. Naturally, musical topics dominate the forums, but there are also forums for discussions of cars and motorcycles, computer hardware and software, pets, world issues, Star Trek, collectibles and hobbies. Neuman says it takes users a lot less connect time to upload a message and give it a pertinent subject than it does to fill out database fields.
Revenues come from subscriptions as well as record sales.
TNFY provides limited access to all callers, facilitating the core music market message forums. It's not trying to be the biggest file library, phone line hunt group or collection of unrelated message forums in the world. Its 2,000-plus fans share just two phone lines. It does not offer Internet anything. That's a more likely profit strategy than throwing up a 64-line megamall and then trying to build a business.