The Hook
Every day, thousands of music producers make beats, samples, and loops that never leave their hard drive. Meanwhile, brands, filmmakers, and other artists are paying agencies hundreds of euros for stock audio that sounds nothing like them.
Rythm closes that gap: a marketplace where creators sell samples directly, license them instantly, and get paid — no agency, no gatekeeping.
The Problem
- Independent producers have no simple way to sell and license their sound
- Buyers need proof of licensing rights — a verbal agreement or a Dropbox link doesn't hold up legally
- Existing marketplaces are either bloated stock-audio libraries with no community, or informal Discord/Instagram deals with zero structure
The Solution
Rythm is a marketplace built around three things stock-audio sites don't have:
- Instant licensing, not just downloads. Every purchase generates a real, downloadable license document — buyer, project, license tier, timestamp — so creators and brands both have paper trail from day one.
- A community, not a catalog. Artists have real profiles, a shared feed, and an AI assistant that recommends samples based on a project's mood — searching the actual live catalog, not a hardcoded list.
- Creator-first economics. Anyone can publish and start selling in minutes — no approval queue, no exclusivity contracts.
What We Actually Built (not just mockups)
In this hackathon we didn't stop at a UI prototype — we built and tested end-to-end:
- A real authentication system (scrypt password hashing, signed JWT sessions, rate limiting) — zero third-party auth dependencies
- A live marketplace API: publish, browse, search by genre, purchase, and auto-generate a license file — all verified with real requests, not fixtures
- Real-time audio preview generated live in the browser via the Web Audio API — actual synthesized sound, not stock mp3s
- A production roadmap already mapped out: Postgres schema written, Stripe checkout + webhook integration coded and ready to connect
This isn't a Figma file. It's a running server you can node server.js and test right now.
Why Now
The creator economy is exploding, but the tools economy for independent audio creators hasn't caught up — Splice and Beatstars still feel like 2015. There's room for a platform that treats licensing as a first-class feature, not an afterthought.
The Ask
We're looking for feedback on two things: the licensing-first angle, and whether judges see this as strong enough to take to a real launch — starting with a web release, with a native mobile app as the next milestone once the payment layer (Stripe + Apple/Google in-app purchase compliance) is fully wired in.
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