Active music explorer with Astro + Astro DB

Summary:

• Web app to encourage users to engage with music more actively and find cool new sources.
• It allows you to save articles that you want to check out and link them to Spotify music items.
• It also allows you to save sources (blogs and websites) that you want to check out periodically.
• I built this using Astro and Astro DB.

Why I did this project, why it’s exciting

• I have always been a big music fan, but in the last couple of years I’ve been in a lull where I haven’t been exploring new music much. I’ve been listening to the same music over and over again.
• When I was a teenager, I was always seeking out new music and new sources of music. Even though music is more freely available now thanks to platforms like Spotify, it can be harder to find sources of music, and it can be harder to engage with music actively. It’s easy to just listen to Spotify’s radio recommendations and keep listening to the same thing over and over again.
• Spotify’s recommendation algorithm is set up to recommend similar music to what you like, rather than challenging you to listen to music outside your comfort zone.
• I want to build an app that encourages more active music exploration. Rather than just recommending more of what you already like, I want something that will encourage me to listen wider, and to ‘open my ear’ to new music. I believe that an app could help people form habits around their listening and exploration, and
• I also think there is potential for some interesting social features - eg. sharing music with friends, exploring new music with friends, competitions and challenges to explore more music.
• I have started building this app using Astro and Astro DB.
• Rather than the app recommending music that you might like, it is more of a tool that you can use to save music that you want to check out. In this way, it is encouraging you to do the exploration, rather than bringing the music to you.

Running into limitations with Astro DB

• With this music discovery app, I am keen to build in some social features - eg. friend requests, collaborative lists, and shared challenges. As I started to build some of these out, I ran into some tricky issues.
• As Astro DB is quite a new library, and it is a fairly simple implementation of SQLite, you need to implement features like authentication and authorisation yourself.
• I was able to implement authentication using Lucia, but in order to implement more complex permissions (eg. collaboration on playlists), it feels like quite a lot of work to do yourself. It seems like more ‘batteries-included’ frameworks like Laravel make this easier.

Future ideas

• If I continue building this app, I will probably switch to something like Laravel that handles more of the authentication and authorisation for me. That way, I can focus on the unique value of the app rather than tripping myself up with complex database schemas etc.
• I want to explore building more social features, as I feel like this is something that Spotify is missing. Being able to send music to your friends and discover new music together is exciting to me.