Inspiration

In Ghana, amazing indie talent gets buried under data-heavy global apps. We wanted to build a home for Afrobeats that works on low data and puts artists first. That's why we built AfroDownload.site — African Music, Your Way. 415 Family.

What it does

AfroDownload is a mobile-first PWA streaming platform:

Discover Page (Screenshot 1):

Filter by All / Afrobeats (currently 103 curated demo tracks)
Artist of the Week spotlight — e.g. Bnxn profile with bio, born in Lagos with roots in Akwa Ibom, and featured tracks section
Clean black & gold design with bottom nav: Home / Search / Library / You

Library & Playback (Screenshot 2):

Latest Music grid with cover art, play / like / offline save buttons
Tap ↓ on any song to save for offline play — built for low-data
Uploads Locked — Founder access only (tap logo 5x) to prevent copyright abuse. Only approved artists can upload.

Landing (Screenshot 3):

AFRO DOWNLOAD — The Home of Afrobeats
One-tap Launch App button + Get Android App / Free Download
Logo from afrodownload.site

How we built it

Frontend: Next.js / React PWA, Tailwind CSS (black + gold theme #FFC400) Backend: Firebase / Supabase for auth, storage, and likes Audio: HTML5 Audio + background playback + local cache for offline Hosting: Vercel + afrodowload.site domain Design: 【entity-Figma¦canonical_name=Figma】 — built for mobile first, PWA installable

Challenges we ran into

Background audio stopping on Android — fixed with PWA media session API
Cover art loading slow on 3G — added lazy loading + WebP compression
Preventing pirated uploads — built "Uploads Locked" founder gate and manual approval flow
Encoding issue you see in screenshot: Ypee-%25E2%2580... — fixed URL decoding

Accomplishments that we're proud of

103 songs streaming with offline save in <2s
PWA that installs as native Android app
Founder-only upload system to stay copyright safe
Fully responsive, <30MB footprint vs 100MB+ for 【entity-Spotify¦canonical_name=Spotify】

What we learned

How to build a streaming UX for low-bandwidth users, how to handle audio caching safely, and why copyright protection has to be built in from day one.

What's next for AfroDownload

Real artist portal with rights confirmation + MoMo tipping
Search with lyrics, mood and genre AI
Paystack payout dashboard for artists
Launch with 50 Ghanaian indie artists from 415 Family

Legal Note: All tracks in production are original uploads where we have artist permission. Major artist profiles in screenshots are for UI demo purposes only — placeholder bio data. We enforce takedown on request.