MixTape: Daily Music Q&A

One music question a day. Answer with a song, album or artist, see everyone else's, and hit play.

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---ELEVATOR PITCH---

MixTape is a daily music question that binds everyone together. Each day, every user gets the same question, like "What's the first song you remember loving?" You answer with a song, album, artist or story and express who you are through your music. Then you see how your friends and everyone else answered, play their picks on the spot, and find the people who chose the same thing you did.

---WHAT MIXTAPE BRINGS---

MixTape connects people through music in a way no app does today, and viral trends have already proven people want it (see Inspiration). It's more targeted, directed social media: instead of an open-ended "what's on your mind?", each day's question is specific, so it's easy to answer and it sparks a real connection with everyone else who answered it.

• Questions that come at music from every direction --- Movie soundtracks, favorite TV show theme songs, the underrated song from your favorite artist, a lyric that changed you, the greatest concert in history, your four deserted-island albums.

• Answer your way --- Depending on the question, answer with a song, album, artist, poll pick, photos or a ranked list, and add a note on why it matters to you.

• The songs actually play --- Tap any answer and hear it on the spot. You hear the music others love, learn their personal connection to it, and discover new music along the way.

• Me Too --- Something no other social app has: see who else picked your answer, and everyone else who chose it.

• Social the way you'd expect --- Likes, comments and DMs, plus a People section that makes it easy to find friends and new people.

• The Archive --- Missed a day? Answer any past question. New users can fill out their profile on day one.

• Share cards --- Every answer becomes a clean image for Instagram or the group chat. It's the four-albums meme, made for you every day, with a link back to MixTape.

• Streaks and referrals --- Answering daily builds a streak, and inviting friends earns Streak Savers that protect it.

Put together, it's a music ecosystem full of personal connection and expression.

---YOUR PROFILE: A NEW WAY TO REPRESENT YOURSELF THROUGH MUSIC---

Every answer you give lives on your profile, so it grows into a living music journal: the songs, albums and artists that shaped you, and the stories behind them. It's a brand-new way to represent yourself through music on social media.

• Top 10 --- MixTape's version of your Letterboxd Top 4: single out the 10 answers that say the most about you.

• Stats --- They build up naturally as you answer. MixTape keeps track of every song, album, artist, movie and TV show you've answered with, shows how many times you've repeated a pick, and shows which friends have chosen the same answers as you the most.

• Your whole journal in one place --- Scroll back through every question you've answered and see how your taste tells your story.

---INSPIRATION---

People constantly talk about music and relate to each other through it. What's the first song you remember loving? What song from your favorite artist is really underrated? Recently, on a hike, a group of us talked about which four albums we'd each take to a deserted island. It was a great discussion that passed the time for a long stretch of the hike, and everyone had something to say. I've watched the same thing happen online, again and again:

• The 30-day song challenge. A list of 30 prompts went around Instagram and Facebook, one per day: a song that reminds you of summer, a song from your childhood, a song you'd play at your wedding. People posted a song a day to their stories for a month. I loved doing it, and I loved reading everyone else's answers even more.

• The Bill Clinton four-albums meme. A photo of Bill Clinton sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking at a few vinyl records, became a template. People swapped in their own four favorite albums and posted it everywhere, and feeds filled up with everyone's picks.

Both trends took off because people love expressing themselves through music and seeing how others answer. But both faded, because there was no place for them to live.

So I kept coming back to one idea: what if that conversation happened every day, with one question everyone answers together? That became MixTape.

---WHY A DAILY QUESTION WORKS---

BeReal and the New York Times games showed that one shared prompt a day becomes something people look forward to. Wordle turned a small puzzle into a daily ritual people compare with friends. BeReal made one moment a day into a shared event.

MixTape brings that ritual to something people already love talking about: their music. The 30-day song challenge and the four-albums meme proved people want to share it. MixTape gives that impulse a daily rhythm, a permanent home and a feed of friends to share it with.

---STREAKS AND STREAK SAVERS---

The daily question comes with a streak. Life gets in the way sometimes, so Streak Savers protect your streak on a day you miss.

• Earned for free: 1 Saver for every 7 days of your streak. Invite a friend and you each get 1 when they join. Free Savers stop at 7.

• Used automatically: one Saver covers one missed day, and a covered day still counts toward your streak.

• Or bought when you need them: a pack of 3 for $0.99, purchased in the app through RevenueCat.

• Fair by design: you can hold at most 10, and you can only buy when you have 7 or fewer. Nobody is pushed to stockpile. It's a small, honest safety net, not a paywall. Every question, song and social feature is free.

RevenueCat handles the purchase end to end. The app links the purchase to your MixTape account before the buy button appears. RevenueCat's webhook confirms each purchase with our server, which adds the Savers exactly once per transaction, even if a message arrives twice.

---HOW I BUILT IT--- This is the first app I have ever built. I'm a solo developer with no prior experience, so I learned as I went, and it has been a challenging and time-consuming process.

I built MixTape with AI tools as my engineering team. Claude Code writes the code and Lovable hosts and deploys it. I made the product decisions, tested every flow on my own phone, and learned how the pieces fit as I went.

Challenges

• Doing it all solo, from zero. With no prior experience, every part was new: product decisions, design, testing, the database, the App Store. I had to learn each piece before I could build it.

• Making every song play. Finding the right 30-second preview for any song, and the right version (not a live cut, remix or clean edit), took several music sources working together.

• Getting streaks right. Time zones, missed days, Streak Savers and deleted answers all had to add up correctly, every time.

• Testing on a real phone. Some problems only appeared on the iPhone, not on a computer, so I tested every flow on my own phone and fixed what broke.

• Shipping to the App Store for the first time: review, signing, in-app purchase setup and the RevenueCat connection.

What I learned: I could build this without any prior experience, as long as I put in the effort and believed in the idea. From the start I decided I was going to see this through to the best of my ability, no matter what, and that's what carried it to launch.

---WHAT'S NEXT---

My focus is simple: make MixTape as fun as possible and get it into as many hands as possible. The launch starts with the people I already talk music with, and the share cards help carry it from there.

• Launch and grow through friends, family and share cards on Instagram and in group chats.

• Apple Music integration for even better song matching and previews.

• Faster share cards. Make share card images appear instantly, so sharing an answer feels immediate. Share card images render completely after 8-10 seconds currently and then immediately on the second render but I want to make the first render instant.

• Phone number sign-in. Let people sign up and log in by confirming their phone number, so joining is faster and friends are easier to find.

• Sustainable revenue once there's an audience: Streak Savers are the start. Anything added later will keep the core daily question free.

• ***A makeover, with help from people more experienced than me. I'd love experienced designers to refresh the look, and experienced developers to review the backend and find where I've gone wrong. I know there are people who could improve greatly on my work, and I'd welcome it.

---FOR JUDGES: TESTING ACCESS---

MixTape is free to download and use. Every question, song and social feature is free, with no paywall.

The one purchase: Streak Savers (3 for $0.99). To try it free, redeem offer code SHIPATON2026. Either open this redeem link on your iPhone, or on the streak screen tap "Have a code? Redeem it" and enter the code.

Getting started (about 3 minutes):

  1. Download MixTape from the App Store: apps.apple.com/app/id6776854667 and create an account.
  2. Answer today's question.
  3. Open the Archive and answer a few past questions. This is the best way to see how answers fill out your profile and how Me Too works.
  4. Follow @tanner02 (the founder) and the three demo accounts to fill your feed.
  5. Tap play on any answer, open a Me Too, and make a share card. About the demo accounts: MixTape is brand new, so I created three clearly labelled demo accounts, @demo_beats, @demo_indie and @demo_riffs. They show what a lively feed looks like. They answer each day's question with real songs and are clearly marked as demo data. Some of their answers match mine, so you can see Me Too in action. I'll remove them after judging.

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