About a year ago, I had an idea that sounded slightly ridiculous: What if I built my own music streaming platform? I’m an independent artist/producer who’s been making and releasing music for more than a decade. I also work in IT and have always been heavily interested in technology. Like a lot of independent musicians, I became frustrated with how difficult it is to get music discovered when you don’t already have an audience. Eventually I stopped asking, “Why doesn’t somebody build this differently?” And started asking: “Could I actually build it?” So I did. It’s called Sonik Music. What started as an idea has turned into a functioning music platform with a web application and native iOS app. And somewhere along the way, the project became WAY bigger than the streaming app I originally imagined. 😂 Today Sonik includes: • music streaming and artist uploads • artist/listener accounts • playlists and libraries • synced lyrics • immersive lyrics • AutoMix • artist profiles and discovery • Fresh Drops for newly released music • artist analytics • direct fan support through virtual “Flowers” 💐 • artist wallets and earnings • music purchases • merchandise • social posts, photos, videos, comments and reposts through our Sonix Universe • Fan Mail • local music playback • personal cloud music storage • shows/events functionality • subscriptions and entitlements • artist verification • web + native iOS experiences There is also an entire financial system behind it for purchases, artist earnings and payouts. Building that part made me appreciate the phrase “it’s just a payment button” in an entirely new way. 😂 We’ve had to think about things like entitlement enforcement, transaction lineage, payout controls, stream validation, fraud prevention, storage authorization and making sure the server — not just the client — is authoritative about who owns what. And that’s before you get into actually making the music player feel good. One feature I’m particularly proud of isn’t technically complicated compared with some of the backend systems, but represents the philosophy behind the product. Our Featured Artists section randomly surfaces eligible artists. I didn’t want to build another discovery system where popularity becomes a self-reinforcing loop: More streams → more visibility → more streams → more visibility. Sonik’s Fresh Drops section similarly gives newly uploaded releases an actual discovery window. Then there’s Flowers. Listeners can send Flowers to artists while listening to their music or visiting their profile. Flowers have monetary value and contribute to an artist’s eligible earnings. The idea is that an independent artist shouldn’t necessarily need millions of streams before a small community of real supporters can meaningfully contribute to their career. Building it I’ve been building Sonik largely myself under my company, TechDen Technologies. My background is primarily IT/infrastructure rather than being someone who spent 15 years as a traditional software engineer, so building this has been an insane learning experience. AI-assisted development has also been a major part of my workflow. But I’ve tried very hard not to treat AI as “generate an app for me.” I define the product architecture and requirements, break development into phases, review implementations, test features, inspect failures, iterate, and keep security-sensitive systems like authentication, entitlements, purchases and payouts server-authoritative. That process has taught me an incredible amount about software development, product design and what happens when a side project refuses to remain a side project. 😂 There have been plenty of moments where fixing one thing created three new problems. There have also been moments where I open Sonik, play a song, see the synced lyrics moving, transition into another record with AutoMix, open an artist profile and realize: Damn. This thing actually exists now. Where it is today The web application is live and usable now: https://sonikmusic.techdendc.com The native iOS application has also been built and we’re working through the App Store release process. We’re still testing and polishing things, so I’m absolutely not claiming the product is finished. That’s actually why I’m posting here. I’d love feedback from people who build things. Not just: “Looks cool.” I mean the uncomfortable feedback too. What would concern you about this product? What would you simplify? What would you remove? What part of the business or architecture would you expect to become painful at scale? And for anyone who’s taken a side project from “this would be cool” to an actual product with real users: What did you wish somebody had warned you about before launch? Feel free to try Sonik and break things. If you find something confusing, tell me. If something sucks, tell me that too. 😂 At this stage, useful criticism is more valuable to me than compliments. — Stephan B / Mr. BEST Founder, TechDen Technologies Creator of Sonik Music   submitted by   /u/bestpandbeat [link]   [comments]