Encore

Encore is the Letterboxd for concerts. Track every gig, add ratings, notes & photos, see stats, streaks, & share your reviews. Remember what you saw, when, and with who. Start your archive today!

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Inspiration

This is a fun story. Four years ago, my friends and I decided to start a music band. We had ABSOLUTELY no idea about music. Nothing. Little by little, we learned how everything worked: how to record ourselves, how to mix, how to produce… Then we discovered TikTok, and we went crazy promoting ourselves, posting 6 or 7 videos a day each. It all led to a peak of over 10,000 monthly listeners and 1.5 million total streams across our songs.

Life happened, and we put it on hold. Then, in December 2024, I discovered Cursor and the “vibe coding” culture, and I got inspired. I started making small projects that never saw the light of day, until I saw it. I realized I had to go back to what I really loved: music, concerts… something that maybe wouldn’t make as much money as a plant identifier or an AI-powered to-do list, but would truly fulfill me. And after many sleepless nights, Encore was born.

What it does

Encore is relatively simple. Its mission is to bring together your phone notes, photo albums, and Instagram stories in one place. Users can easily save and archive every single concert they’ve attended. It also solves a problem many of us have: “I record videos at concerts and then never watch them again.”

How we built it

Encore is 100% built with AI. I don't know anything about Swift, i don't even know how to do a "hello world". I wanted to prove myself and the world that building (and making money) with AI is possible, but also highlight the dangers and the issues this technology has. That's also why Encore is 100% local, i don't want my users to have any security concerns because i thought i could do things like a professional.

Challenges we ran into

Just imagine! If Swift was already an unfamiliar language for me, picture guiding an AI to do everything for you. A real mess. Luckily, I think my way of thinking and structuring the project was key to creating something valuable and avoiding spaghetti code hell. I don’t think someone unfamiliar with programming and logic could have pulled this off.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The day the app launched (August 8), I got my first sale. The next day, thanks to TikTok, I got three more, and the day after that, another four. People from Germany and the United States are buying the app. To me, it’s completely crazy to think that something I made this way can bring so much value to someone that they’re willing to pay for it.

I’m also proud of setting a fair one-time purchase price. I hate the predatory subscription models with dark patterns that many developers add to their apps these days. I don’t care if I make less money, at least I’ll have peace of mind.

What we learned

Making apps is really hard. Literally everything has to be coded, from handling user logins to making sure the “share” button actually works. I never imagined there were so many things that could break. Designing beautiful interfaces is also incredibly challenging. People don’t see the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes. On the bright side, RevenueCat works really well ;)

What's next for Encore

I now plan to market it a lot on my 3 TikTok accounts, but in reality i want to first take some time off it, i pushed 2 updates that fixed bugs and now i want to not touch it again for a month, i just want to promote it and see where it goes, no pressure. In the future i want to make the app way more social, including better stats, shareable insights and AI features (im dying to actually do my job here)

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