One song. One friend. One note. Like a postcard — no feed, no algorithm.
No feed to scroll. No algorithm to feed. You pick a song, you pick a person, you send — and they open it like a postcard. That's it. That's the app.
“this one’s for the drive home”
Like a postcard — no feed, no algorithm.
Pick a song, add a line, send it to a friend. No feed, no algorithm — just one song, handed to one person.
Hush
The Marías
Sent. That's the whole app.
One song, one friend, one note. Do it for real — it takes about ten seconds.
Real songs, real 30-second previews — tap any one.
Grab it. Give it a spin. Every song someone sends you lands like dropping the needle on a favourite track — so we made one you can actually reach out and play with.
Every vibe carries a moment — the 30 seconds you want them to hear first. Spin the record. Drop the needle. Send the exact bar that hit you.
Now spinning "Heat Waves" · Glass Animals
Pick a moment here. Hear it inside the app.
Pick a friend, pick a song, write a one-line note. I'll mint you a Vibes postcard — and a link you can text.
Songs of the Day from real Vibes users this week — the ones who chose to show them here. Tap a card to hear 30 seconds.
Real songs from real people, updated live. Want to be here? Get the app and turn on “Show on homepage” in Settings.
Vibes is being built for Android right now. Drop their email — or yours — and they'll hear first the moment it's installable.
Read the full storyPick a track. Pick a friend. Add a note if you want. Send. They get one song that's just for them — and the native reply isn't a comment, it's another song. Answer back and it becomes a conversation. Want it to land later? Seal it as a time capsule and it opens on the day you choose.
Your Song of the Day sits at the top of your friends' home for 24 hours — and theirs sit at the top of yours. A tiny daily ritual that adds up to knowing people's taste.
Every Sunday: your top palette, your most-shared friend, the lyric that hit hardest.
Find friends already on Vibes by matching your address book — without ever uploading your address book. Phone numbers are hashed on-device with SHA-256 before any network call. I can't reverse them. I can't see who's in your contacts. I just check whether the hashes match.
Turn a send into a bet. Your friend has to actually listen before calling it a 🎯 hit or a 💨 miss — and every verdict builds your taste record. You're 5-for-6 with Maya. Do you risk it?
Not your top 100 songs. Not a year-end leaderboard. Just three small moments — what color your week was, who you sent the most songs to, and the lyric that hit hardest.
Sometimes, all I think about is you
Late nights in the middle of June
A small set of essays on what I did and didn't build, why, and what I learned along the way. None of these have a paywall, an algorithm, or a comments section.
The financial, structural, and stubborn case for staying small. Why Vibes won't take growth funding, won't add advertising, and won't try to be everyone's homepage.
Read post →The shortest answer is that I missed sending songs to people. The longer answer is about what social media did to music and why a smaller channel is worth building.
Read post →A focused argument against algorithmic feeds in social music. Algorithms are strangers, friendship is a graph, and the feed is the wrong unit.
Read post →A long, honest build log — what I shipped, what I cut, what broke me, and what I learned along the way. The kind of write-up nobody publishes anymore.
Read post →Yes — Vibes is iPhone-to-iPhone for now. When you send a song to someone who isn't on the app, they get an SMS link to install it; once they do, the song you sent is waiting in their inbox.
I'm not trying to be a one-way broadcast platform. The whole point is the back-and-forth, so the app being mutual matters.
Wrapped is a once-a-year recap of what you played alone. Last.fm is a public scrobble feed for strangers to find you.
Vibes is neither. It's the in-between: a small, private channel between you and the people you actually know, every week of the year. Your weekly recap shows you what you sent and to whom — not a leaderboard.
Songs you send and receive are stored so the people you sent them to can play them back. Your private listening history (what you play in Apple Music, what you stream when no one's looking) is never read by Vibes — I don't have permission to see it, and I don't ask for it.
Phone numbers used for friend matching are SHA-256 hashed on your device before any network call. The plaintext number never leaves your phone.
Free for the foreseeable future. Connect Apple Music and every vibe already plays as the whole song instead of a 30-second preview — no paid tier needed. If I ever add one it'll be for extras like recap history beyond the current week. The core "send a song to a friend" surface stays free.
Honest answer: I don't know yet. iOS is what I know how to build well, and I want to nail that before I split focus. Drop your email below and I'll tell you the moment Android is real.
Yes — Settings → Account → Delete account. I follow Apple's required deletion path: your account, all songs you sent, all songs sent to you, your follow graph, your weekly recaps, and your phone hash all wipe within 30 days.
Every day, people reach across cities, countries and time zones to send someone a song. A whole world humming along, one vibe at a time.
vibes sent and counting
Join the beta on TestFlight, or drop your email and I'll let you know the moment I'm live.
One more thing
It's one song, to one person, every day. So there has to be a person. Who's yours?