Melomi: AI Custom Song Gifts

Say what happened. Melomi turns it into a song they can keep.

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Inspiration

Some feelings do not fit in a text message, and most people cannot turn a memory, apology, inside joke, or celebration into a song themselves. Melomi exists for that moment: tell it what happened, and it turns the story into a personalized song gift the other person can replay and keep.

What it does

Melomi lets someone talk or type their story, choose a vibe, voice, and length, and receive a finished song with timed lyrics, artwork, downloads, sharing, and a gift link that plays in any browser. Siri support also makes creation hands-free. The result is not just generated audio; it is a complete gifting experience built around the emotional reveal.

How we built it

Melomi is a native SwiftUI app for iOS 17+ with StoreKit 2 and a server-confirmed credit ledger. RevenueCat observes verified purchases, maps subscriptions to the Studio entitlement, and provides subscription lifecycle and revenue telemetry. It is connected to App Store Server Notifications and an authenticated, idempotent webhook. RevenueCat never unlocks Melomi ahead of the existing server acknowledgement.

The production catalog includes weekly and yearly Studio subscriptions plus optional credit packs for active subscribers. PostHog records privacy-safe onboarding, paywall, activation, and retention events while excluding prompts, lyrics, song titles, email addresses, Apple identifiers, transaction payloads, and other user content.

Challenges we ran into

The hardest part was adding modern billing observability without weakening an already fail-closed purchase system. StoreKit transaction recovery, server activation, credit grants, and entitlements all had to remain idempotent during duplicate, delayed, and out-of-order events. We also needed analytics useful enough to explain the path from first open to first completed song without collecting the private stories people entrust to Melomi.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Shipped a native iOS app publicly during the Shipaton window.
  • Preserved server-confirmed StoreKit purchasing while adding RevenueCat lifecycle visibility.
  • Built durable webhook replay protection and independent critical alerts through push, Telegram, and email.
  • Made the product journey feel like an emotional reveal, with timed lyrics, warm artwork, gifting, browser playback, downloads, and Siri creation.
  • Created judge access that provides one free month without automatic renewal.

What we learned

Revenue analytics and product analytics answer different questions. RevenueCat is the subscription truth; product analytics explains the behavior leading to and following a purchase. Keeping those responsibilities separate made the system easier to reason about and safer for users.

What's next for Melomi

Next we will use verified funnel data to simplify the path from idea to first song, improve purchase recovery, and learn which gifting moments create real retention. Native paywalls stay in place until there is enough traffic to justify controlled experiments rather than speculative redesigns.

Judge access

Redeem MELOMIJUDGES2026 at https://apps.apple.com/redeem?id=6791931563&code=MELOMIJUDGES2026 for one free month of Studio Yearly. The offer does not automatically renew and expires October 15, 2026.

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