Edison's liltingly melodic, emotionally resonant songs are filled with vivid storytelling, playful harmonies, and irresistible hooks. Although they've only been a band since 2014, they've already built a substantial national fan base, thanks to the their upbeat, high-energy live shows and tireless touring efforts. In addition to countless club gigs, they've earned attention at such music-industry conferences as SXSW, CMJ and Folk Alliance International.

"We've been on the road nonstop for over a year," Slaton notes. "We didn't have a lot of releases out there, so we decided to hit the road and meet as many people as we could and foster those relationships."

The strategy worked, winning the band a devoted national audience as well as support slots with the likes of Iron & Wine and Nathaniel Rateliff &Typically, this curve has an inflection point: a moment when all the pieces of the business model finally fall into place, customer demand explodes, and the market takes off. For videocassette recorders, the curve began to slope gently upward with the launch of Matsushita's VHS format in the late '70s, yet it would take another seven years for VCRs to find their way into one million American homes. By contrast, the market-penetration curve for Hotmail was a near vertical line, with more than ten million users signing up in the first 18 months. Matsushita ran a marathon. Hotmail ran a sprint. The Apple Newton might have evolved into something Palm-like, but only if Apple had paced itself by spending less, learning faster, and iterating more quickly. Apple blew