SoundVent

Founder & Lead Engineer

SaaS

Music

Social Network

Ecommerce

Real-time

Video

Streaming

Creator Tools

Next.js

React

Supabase

PostgreSQL

Stripe Connect

Mux

TailwindCSS

shadcn/ui

Zustand

Radix

Vercel

SoundVent is a unified music and creator platform built from the ground up to solve the fragmentation artists face across Spotify, Instagram, Shopify, TikTok, YouTube, and Ticketmaster. Designed by musicians and engineered with modern, high-performance web technologies, SoundVent blends social networking, real-time messaging, media streaming, and a fully featured product/merch engine into a single cohesive application. Over 5 months, the product evolved into a 10-in-1 ecosystem: profiles, feeds, video, messaging, ecommerce, events, analytics, discovery, merchandising, and more — all production-ready and scalable.

Overview

SoundVent began as a decade-old vision: a unified platform where artists could share music, build community, sell merch, host events, and connect directly with fans — without relying on a messy patchwork of third-party tools. As Founder & Lead Engineer, I architected and built the entire application solo over 5 months, combining modern frameworks like Next.js and Supabase to deliver a fast, robust, real-time experience. The platform launched with a fully integrated social network, real-time messaging system, music/video upload pipeline, and a complete Shopify-grade product creator and merch system.

Architecture

• Next.js 14 App Router for server components, streaming, and hybrid rendering • Supabase (Postgres + Auth + Storage + Realtime) powering: • Profiles & roles • Real-time feed • Follower graph • Social posts, comments, likes • Messaging system • Products, variants, categories, inventory • Events + ticketing foundations • Mux for video encoding, streaming, thumbnails, analytics • Stripe Connect for multi-vendor commerce and payouts • Custom REST actions & RLS-secured APIs for write operations • Zustand + React Query for UI state and caching • Tailwind + shadcn/ui for a scalable design system • Optimized media manager with albums, tags, bucket routing, and TipTap integration • Unified schema for music, video, posts, comments, likes, merch, events • Elastic real-time notifications via Supabase channels • Robust RLS policies ensuring artist/fan permissions and private data protection

UI/UX

• Built a mobile-first UI with smooth transitions, animations, and a cohesive music-oriented aesthetic • Designed a full social feed experience with real-time updates • Built a complete merch/product creator UX rivaling Shopify's variant editor • Designed artist dashboards, analytics UIs, event pages, and follower sections • Implemented dark mode, persistent music player, drag-and-drop media management • Created a clean, modern brand identity using SoundVent's emblem and gold-on-black theme

Challenges & Solutions

Challenges: • Building 10+ major modules as a solo dev • Architecting a real-time social network + messaging system • Handling large media uploads (images, video) with secure access • Designing 30+ database tables with tight RLS policies • Balancing SSR, client components, caching, and reactivity • Crafting a Shopify-level product/variant system from scratch • Managing Supabase quirks, middleware edge cases, and hydration issues • Creating a unified UI that didn't feel overwhelming despite massive feature depth Solutions: Leveraged modern Next.js patterns, modularized DB schemas, wrote custom Supabase helpers, implemented structured state management, tested extensively, and iterated rapidly while maintaining scalable architecture.

Impact

• Shipped a production-ready beta in 5 months of solo development • Delivered a unified creator ecosystem unprecedented in indie music tech • Built a platform capable of supporting future: • Mobile apps • Live streaming • Ticketing • POD merch • AI-assisted tools • Attracted immediate interest from artists, creators, engineers, and investors • Created one of the most fully featured indie SaaS platforms in the music space