Started with a frustration.
Every music app I used was built for an audience of strangers, and it kept burying the one thing I cared about: a song from a specific person who knows what I like. A recommendation from one of the few people whose taste I trust would land in a thread or a feed and then vanish under everything else — plans, screenshots, noise. The thing I wanted was small, and the medium kept eating it.
I tried the workarounds. Nothing felt right because nothing was made for it. Sharing music with a few specific people isn't a use case that scales to an advertiser-supported social product. So I started building the thing I wanted instead.
Two months in, the version that's on TestFlight now is a proper, designed thing built around a single idea: songs deserve postcards, not feeds.
Who's making this
It's just me.
Software engineer who got here sideways — bartending, teaching, and a lot of years making and playing music before the code. Was a founding engineer at an early-stage startup before this. Right now he's the whole company: design, engineering, backend, the support inbox, and the person who remembers to renew the domain.
That's it. That's the company. One person, one laptop, one strong opinion about how music should travel between friends. I'm not hiring. Vibes is a one-person company by design, and that's the plan — no jobs page, no team to scale, no roadmap that requires hiring out of.
What I believe
A small, deliberate point of view.
Music is intimate. The right song at the right moment from the right person changes how a day feels. I want the app to honor that — not turn it into engagement bait.
Algorithms are strangers. When the feed decides what you see, the feed gets credit for the find. I'd rather your friends did. Read the long version.
Software should be small. I'm not trying to be everywhere. I'm trying to be one specific thing, done extremely well, for the few thousand people who actually want it.
Privacy is a feature. The thing the app does — finds your friends — happens entirely on your device. The server never sees your raw contacts. Here's how.