SoundCircle is a digital music platform connecting listeners with the stories, culture, and context behind the music they love. Built on the model of crate-digging, it provides a virtual space where users can explore and engage with the stories and backgrounds of tracks and artists, offering a richer experience than centralised music platforms. Since my last contextual report, SoundCircle has evolved with the addition of an artist page, a culture page featuring various music tribes, and continuity measures to sustain its impact. In this report, I’ll dive into these updates and how they’re helping to build community-driven engagement through the lens of Online Tribes.
SoundCircle’s goal was always to create a nostalgic, immersive experience that feels like exploring a record store—a place to browse, learn, and connect with music on a personal level. I found that classmates responded well to this story-driven approach, which felt refreshingly unique from traditional streaming platforms.
The theoretical foundation of the Splinternet, an internet that is no longer unified but divided into smaller, self-sustaining ecosystems, has guided SoundCircle’s approach to offering a niche, independent experience. By creating a decentralised platform that really emphasises community engagement, SoundCircle can thrive as a dedicated space for music discovery. This set the groundwork to continue growing as a culture-driven platform, offering a community-focused space for exploring music’s deeper stories and influences.
The first major challenge in the process was finding a platform that allowed for the customisability SoundCircle required. Webflow provided flexibility to create an interactive site without coding, offering more engagement than a standard social media account would. So, Webflow University became an essential, centralised resource that helped me overcome technical barriers from the learning curve. The result was an interactive design with scroll animations and album unwrapping’s—a set-up which encourages users to linger, explore, and connect with SoundCircle’s unique community-focused experience.
As SoundCircle’s content grew, generating album descriptions manually became time-intensive. ChatGPT V4o streamlined this, allowing for quick scaling while keeping SoundCircle’s authentic voice intact. Instead of navigating traditional gatekeepers like paywalls, time cost and the attention economy, I could use AI tools to access information quickly and efficiently. With prompt engineering to shape the tone and style, the content felt organic and cohesive with SoundCircle’s vision.