The Genesis: A New Social Media for Music Lovers
Soundwave Social was never a calculated corporate concept; it evolved organically from the initial idea to preserve concert videos on a social media platform.
Stage 1: The Stranded Art Form (The Concert Archive)
The initial spark for Soundwave came from a simple realization: live music is a fleeting, historic art form, yet its record is completely broken. At any given concert, hundreds of phones are recording every second from every conceivable angle. Yet, the vast majority of those videos are never uploaded anywhere.
People feel uncomfortable posting raw concert clips on traditional social media because they worry their broader friend groups won't care or that it will clog their feeds. As a result, millions of hours of historic cultural documentation sit stranded in individual camera rolls, eventually deleted or forgotten. Soundwave was born to solve this by creating a dedicated, judgment-free social media exclusively for live music footage. This would encourage users to comfortably contribute to a global, searchable database organized by artist, album, and song.
Stage 2: The Social Catalyst (Frictionless Proximity)
Once the foundation for a localized concert archive was set, the next evolution became obvious: the shared energy of music is the ultimate human connector. Going to live events can be incredibly isolating if you are going alone, and while concerts are packed with people on the exact same wavelength, social anxiety or feeling intrusive makes it incredibly intimidating for shy or anxious people to approach a stranger in public. We introduced event-specific digital chat rooms to act as an immediate, low-pressure icebreaker. By providing a digital space to coordinate rides, meet up for drinks beforehand, or buy/sell extra tickets, Soundwave began transitioning from a passive video vault into an active tool for real-world friendship.
Stage 3: Expanding the Digital Canvas (The Media Journal)
As I built out the profile architecture to support these concert experiences, I realized that I should continue to build on the profiles’ potential. To give people a complete home to express their unique point of view, I decided to expand Soundwave’s features beyond just an app designed to be a concert archive. Because music fans are typically passionate about all forms of art, I introduced a way to add reviews of media. Recognizing that music lovers are almost always film, TV, and book lovers as well, I organically expanded this feature into a complete Media Journal. Adding reviews makes Soundwave the premier place to review media.
Other apps and websites used to review media are hyper focused on film, music, OR literature; Soundwave combines all that. Having reviews on the app means people will comeback to the app because there is always something new to review. As people review media on Soundwave, the app will establish itself as a home for a users reviews and users will continue to come back to this place where their thoughts are immortalized.
Stage 4: The Ultimate Destination (The Anti-Loneliness Engine)
What began as a niche solution to archiving concert videos culminated into a comprehensive ecosystem built to combat the modern loneliness epidemic, particularly for younger crowds and college students.
By pulling our event infrastructure, localized media tracking, and social profiles together, we unlocked the final piece of the puzzle: the “Groups” section. These groups are meant to connect people with similar interests and allows people to create their own groups. For example, we have a “Fashion” group, with this group students at a university can interact with people whoa re also into fashion. These groups function as icebreakers to interact with fellow students. These ways to connect are not new, but Soundwave focuses on making these groups easy and effortless to join. College kids and youth deserve a way to make friends in the modern age and they simply didn’t have that without Soundwave.
We didn't build a massive social app by trying to do everything at once; we built it by following the natural thread of human connection, starting at the front row of a concert. Ultimately, the app is an icebreaker for making connections effortlessly and without feeling like a corporate social media meant to get engagements.
The Design:
Soundwave is not only about its features. The design and harmony of the app were crucial to its creation. The UI in most apps is currently minimal and bland. As a younger person with knowledge of online trends and what is “current”, I understand that the younger crowd has expressed distaste in this minimalism aesthetic that has infiltrated all tech UI and design. When making Soundwave we considered all of this and added little details to combat this. For example when you click an image the image floats in an empty space. We want to feel fresh and new, in order to do this we have emphasized a sort of 3D UI that feels futuristic and ready for the future of tech such as VR. Design is just as important to Soundwave as the app features.
