Apptisan #030 — Building the Goodreads of Music - An Indie Developer’s Five-Year Journey to Create a More Beautiful Alternative to Rate Your Music
For our 30th edition, we welcome Mattias Hinderson, an independent developer from Sweden.
Name: Record Club
Developer / Team: Mattias Hinderson
Platforms: Web, iOS
Read this newsletter issue in Chinese (中文) .
Please describe your product.
Record Club is a social network for music. That’s the pitch, basically. The obvious comparison is Goodreads or Letterboxd (or even Rate Your Music), so if you’re familiar with those, you’ll feel right at home on Record Club.
But it’s also a powerful tool for personal music organization. You can track what you want to listen to, what you’ve already heard, what you liked or disliked, and even keep tabs on upcoming releases you’re excited about. These set of features were crucial in the development process, especially since I’m not personally someone who regularly shares my opinions on music (though I do have a few spicy takes!).
It also serves as an excellent old-school platform for recommendations. A digital record store, if you will. Instead of relying on A.I. and algorithms like the big players in music, Record Club is built on the belief that your friends (or people whose opinion you trust) are the best source for discovering new music.
Was there a pivotal moment that inspired your product’s creation?
There’s a couple of moments.
As a fairly big music nerd, I meet up with friends every year to recap and rank the year in music. It’s basically our IRL record club. We each have our own systems for tracking what we’ve listened to – anything from spreadsheets to Notion to handwritten journals. But I was personally missing a comprehensive digital system that was not only easy to use, but also a pleasure to use. That’s when the initial ideas for Record Club started to take shape.
Back in 2011, I was an early beta tester for Letterboxd and kept wondering when someone would create a similar platform for music. Something more curation and journal based – not just focused on stats like Last.fm, and definitely more modern than Rate Your Music. It seemed like an obvious and promising idea.
But it never really happened.
After Letterboxd kind of blew up during the pandemic, a wave of contenders emerged, but none quite hit the mark for me.
So after a decade of thinking about it, I finally started sketching ideas and researching whether a bootstrapped social network app based on music was feasible. While continuing my day job, I spent five years working on the design and development during nights and weekends, and this year, I launched a closed beta.
What makes your product unique compared to others in the market?
There’s obviously a lot of feature overlap with similar apps: reviewing, rating, creating lists, and so on. Record Club offers these and many other features, but with a unique approach – some things are just a bit different, while others are quite a lot different. The biggest differentiator, however, is likely the user experience and design, driven by my interest in digital design. Another thing is the site’s commitment to using open data from MusicBrainz.
I also take pride in communicating openly and transparently, which helps foster a community that values authenticity and connection – something you definitely want when you’re trying to build a great social network.
How have you marketed your product, and what key lessons have you learned?
Not much yet, honestly. As a solo entrepreneur, I have very limited time for marketing.
So far it’s mostly been word of mouth, and I’m fortunate enough to know some people who have been big supporters of what I’m doing. The number of signups for the beta has already exceeded my expectations, so I consider myself fortunate in that regard.
Once Record Club exits beta (early next year), I’ll need to explore more traditional marketing efforts. I might do a Product Hunt launch, and with the iOS app releasing in a few weeks, I’m hoping for some organic ASO magic to help it grow. I’m not a fan of things like growth hacking, so I’ll likely stick to more conventional marketing approaches – but still relying heavily on word of mouth.
What has been some memorable feedback since your product’s release?
I’ve gotten some incredible feedback from people saying that since joining Record Club, they’ve never listened to as much music in their lives – and that’s exactly what motivated me to start this thing in the first place.
I’ve also received a lot of valuable input on things I hadn’t considered before. It became clear early on that users interact with the app in ways I hadn’t anticipated, often using it a bit differently than I would. Being able to quickly act on that feedback as a one-man team, without dealing with stakeholders or bureaucracy, has been incredibly rewarding.
Overall, the willingness of people to take time out of their day to share their thoughts and ideas with me has been such a happy surprise. Sometimes, the internet can really be a wonderful place.
Are there any products out there that you feel deserve more recognition?
Is it too lame to say Apple Notes? I know it’s trendy to love that app now, but it’s truly my favorite tool. I use Trello as my kanban board for roadmap stuff, but for everything else, I’m all-in on Notes. An undermarketed killer app by one of the biggest companies in the world.
Other great things I’m loving right now includes Posts by Read.cv, TablePlus, Linear, and Plausible. Apps that do their thing very well.
Are there any creators you admire? What outstanding qualities have you observed in them?
There’s tons. But I’m especially impressed with the Read.cv team and what they’ve accomplished in a very short time with a very small team.
I also want to mention Swedish design studio Open Purpose, where my friend Joakim Jansson is Head of Design. They’ve consistently been making incredibly well-made product design for a while now, and they just keep getting better. Not only are they very good at what they do, but they’re also remarkably prolific and good at showcasing their work publicly – which makes their accomplishments even more impressive.
I noticed on your Record Club profile page that your Top 5 favorite albums include works by Prince and Brian Eno. I’m curious, do you have any interesting stories or memorable experiences associated with these albums?
It’s nearly impossible to make an all-time Top 5 list, isn’t it? The only two albums that were no-brainers for me are these.
Another Green World is a masterpiece that perfectly bridges Eno’s two creative periods in the ’70s: his earlier, more song-driven work and his later ambient explorations. Just a perfectly balanced album for me and my tastes.
Sign o’ the Times is my favorite album, and Prince is my all-time favorite artist (now also my 3-year-old son’s favorite!). I love telling people this, because they don’t know what to make of it. What does this say about me and my taste in music? It’s hard to pin down, which I love. But “Sign” is a sprawling double album that captures everything I love about music, created by one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
Prince is also one of my earliest musical heroes. Like most kids my age, I was a huge fan of Batman in the mid-’90s. This was during the animated Batman TV show era. So I got the Batman ’89 soundtrack on cassette (!) because, well, it had the Batman symbol on it. And instead of getting the classic Danny Elfman score, I was introduced to a bunch of sex jams that were only tangentially related to the movie. I was blown away.
Since the beginning of 2024, have you discovered any new artists that have really impressed or surprised you?
This has arguably become the defining story of the year (except for “brat”, of course), but I have to say Cindy Lee. I was a fan of Patrick Flegel’s earlier band, Women – I even saw them live at Primavera Sound back in 2009 – but I hadn’t really explored Flegel’s later work as Cindy Lee until recently.
The music is of course incredible. But the way in which it was released is also a big part of the appeal: as an In Rainbows-style pay-what-you-want MP3 download on a throwback GeoCities-style website. No streaming platforms, aside from a demonetized YouTube video with no individual track breakdowns. It really forces you to engage with the album on its own terms, rather than treating it as just another streaming link to throw on a playlist. It kind of reminds me of the early days of The Weeknd, where mysteriousness and lore became almost as big as the music itself. It’s definitely the album I’ve revisited the most this year.
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you envision for the future.
I’m Mattias, a developer from Malmö, Sweden. I’ve been doing things on the web since the late ’90s, which doesn’t exactly make me feel young (I’m 39). I’ve always had a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit. In fact, one of my earliest projects was a fan site dedicated to a (now disgraced) musician, which became quite big for the era. Over the years, I’ve done a bit of everything – from (accidental) game development to traditional agency work and design.
I occasionally share my journey as an indie developer on Posts and X, so feel free to follow me there for the latest updates on Record Club. You can also stay in the loop through the app’s official channels on Threads, X, or Instagram.
About Apptisan
Apptisan is a portmanteau of “application” and “artisan”, signifying “a weekly exploration into the world of apps and the passionate artisans who create them.” Each issue is a conversation with global creators, aiming to uncover and present intriguing products to a wider audience.
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