I made a place for people who have a song for everything
Hello!
For a while now, me and my friends have been sending each other songs over iMessage, whatsapp, instagram dms, wherever; replying, recommending, losing our minds over a song… and then a week later wanting to find that one again and having to scroll back through some forgettable corner of a group chat to dig it out. That made me think about building a platform for people who have a song for everything, for people who want to discover music in a social way, and not just through spotify algorithms.
So.. over the past year and a half I've been building: www.disc-jock.com
Instagram as well here: https://www.instagram.com/discjock_/
It's ended up a bit like a mix between Reddit and Letterboxd, but for music. You get your own profile where you build your musical identity: your current anthem, your desert island album, the dead artist you'd resurrect for one night. And everything else on there is built around actually talking about music together. So it's for people who can be insufferably pretentious about music, and for people who don't really care that much about music but somehow always have the perfect song anyway. If that's you, please tune in :)
The way it works: you post a track or album from Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Tidal, whatever you're on, with maybe a bit of context, and it turns into a thread anyone can jump into and reply to with their own. So it's less algorithm feed, more a shared table where people keep bringing songs and going "ok but have you heard this one."
Here are a few real threads from the site:
- A dance/music style born from an accident
- When two completely different genres make a baby
- The best DJ's best set
- To be played naked under an olive tree
- One album, always
The site is split into a few sections:
- Threads: the core of it. post a track or album with a bit of context and it becomes a conversation people pile into with their own finds. You can hit play and listen through every song in a thread back to back, or shuffle them.
- Profile: your musical identity, Letterboxd-style: your current anthem, your desert island album, the dead artists you'd resurrect for one night, and a feed of everything that defines you musically speaking.
- Highlights: a weekly nominate-and-vote section for everyone's favourite songs and albums (there's an "Album of the Week").
- Mixtapes: share a playlist you created or found, tagging the genre and mood.
Everything plays inline whatever platform it's from, and on the web version there's a mini-player so you can let a song keep running while you wander to different pages reading what people wrote. And if you're on spotify premium, connect your account and spotify songs play in full on web, not just the 30-second previews.
The next thing I want to build is being able to follow / add friends, so you can also just post within your own little circle, a bit like the following page on Instagram.
It's early obviously and potentially a bit janky in spots (it's mostly just me + my friend claude building it ;)), and I've just started to release it to my circle of friends + beyond. So the biggest thing that would help right now is, which I am asking you all to help me with, is (if you want) to make an account and post something :)
Start a thread, nominate a song or album, or drop your favourite playlist. Even one post makes the whole place feel more alive, and it's how I would love for the disc jock community to grow.
I'd love to know what you all think, what works, what's annoying, and any tips at all, whether about the app itself or how you'd even go about growing a thing like this.
Anyways, hope you stumble on something good in there.
Fariba :)
disc-jock.com