The brief
John Bethel needed somewhere his listeners could find and play his music that he actually controlled. Streaming platforms put his catalogue next to everyone else's, gave him no direct line to the people listening, and no say over how the music was presented.
A native app was the obvious answer and the wrong one. Two builds for Android and iOS, two app store review cycles, and a download most casual listeners will not commit to before they have heard a track. For an independent artist that is a lot of cost and friction standing between a shared link and someone pressing play.
We built a progressive web app instead. It opens instantly from a link, installs to the home screen for anyone who wants it there, and behaves like an app once it is installed, with no store approval in the way of a release.
What we built
Plays from a link, installs if they want it
A listener taps a link and the music starts. No download, no account, no store page in between. Anyone who comes back can add it to their home screen, where it opens full screen with its own icon like any other app.
Keeps playing when the network drops
Tracks and artwork are cached on the device, so playback continues through the dead spots that make ordinary streaming unusable on Nigerian mobile data. Listeners are not watching a buffering spinner on the bus.
Push notifications for new releases
When a track drops, listeners who installed the app get told directly. That is a channel the artist owns, rather than hoping an algorithm surfaces the release or that a social post lands in the right feeds.
Built for the phone first
Everything is sized for one-handed use on a mid-range Android device, with compressed audio and images so the first play starts quickly on a slow connection rather than on a designer laptop.
Releases ship the same day
New music goes live as soon as it is uploaded. No store submission, no review queue, no waiting on someone else approving a release date.