Sampled Planet

Strategic Gaps

A missing layer of music discovery

Streaming platforms organize music by artist or recording. The melody that travels between cultures rarely has a home of its own. “La Mer” becomes “Beyond the Sea”; familiar songs reappear in languages a listener might never encounter otherwise.

The product begins at that moment of recognition: this song sounds familiar. It connects the versions, making cultural discovery a reason to keep listening.

Participation without a sign-up wall

Voting and submitting a song should feel as easy as pressing play. The goal was to preserve curiosity in the first thirty seconds while keeping the resulting data useful.

Design Logic

One song, many versions

A song is the parent object. Each cultural version sits beneath it. Votes, comparisons and submissions connect to that shared parent. This structural choice keeps a growing catalogue coherent and makes comparison feel natural.

Listening as comparison

On mobile, versions stack vertically. On desktop, the same content opens into a side-by-side view. A persistent player keeps sound available as the listener moves around the product.

Color as culture

Country-linked colors give each version a visual identity while the rest of the interface stays quiet. Adding a country becomes a data task without requiring a redesign.

Design through the build

I took the product from first idea to working web app: strategy, data model, user experience, visual system, hosting and security. AI tools helped move the work forward, while product and design decisions stayed with me.

The Experience

Impact

The original case study describes a completed product before its public user launch. It does not establish verified adoption or commercial outcomes.

The early questions are specific: do people listen to multiple versions in a session, vote without signing up, and submit songs from their own culture? Those are the behaviors the product was designed to measure.

Reflection

The work connects product ownership and design craft. One small structural decision — organizing around the song rather than the artist — shapes the data, the interface and the reason for the product to exist.