Product, mobile, payments, token · 2019–present
A music discovery app that hit #10 in Music in its first month, still shipping five versions later.
- #10
- App Store Music, Aug 9, 2019
- 20,000+
- Users by Sep 10, 2019
- 5
- Major versions
A location-based music platform for independent artists that I have built as founding engineer since 2019: native apps, two Flutter rebuilds, Node and Go services, payments, a token era and the 5.x line shipping now. 20,000 users in the first seven weeks of the 2019 launch, with RapTV’s founder as marketing partner.
- Business
- Limelight Music
- My role
- Founding software engineer
- When
- 2019–present
How I got in
Limelight is where my engineering career really began. The idea was simple: help people discover music from artists near them, so independent artists could be heard based on where listeners actually were. I built the first prototype, called Locartist, in May 2019 around my day job at Trackem; it was renamed Limelight that month, in beta by July, and incorporated as Limelight Music Discovery that summer.
The problem
Independent artists had no way to reach local audiences. The big streaming algorithms favoured major labels and the open platforms were oversaturated. Nothing said: here is what is being made around you right now. Artists in Toronto, Lagos, London and Manila were making great music with no way to surface it to the people nearby who would care.
What I built
A cross-platform Flutter app with Node.js and Go services behind it, payments through Stripe for creators, machine-learning autotagging, and ERC20 smart contracts on Ethereum: the LMLT token presale in November 2021 and its launch in early 2022. Five major versions so far: the 2019 launch, the February 2020 relaunch, the 2021 Flutter rebuild, the 2024 rebuild, and the 5.x release shipping now with an Android relaunch in 2026.
The results
800 users before launch on July 2, 2019; 1,700 by July 22; 3,200 in the 24 hours after RapTV’s pages launched it on July 26, two days after it went live on the App Store. On August 8 one @rap post from RapTV, whose founder Daniel Snow had signed on as marketing partner that month, moved it from 3,900 to more than 10,000 users in a day; the post itself drew 58,300 likes and 818 comments. 14,000 users and about $900 USD a month by August 16; 17,000 by August 28; 20,000 by September 10, with roughly 200 paying artists and about $1,500 a month by October. On August 9 it was #10 in Music on the App Store, up from #89 on July 27. Every one of those numbers is from my own messages on the day, not a memory. The product is still live and still shipping: iOS 5.0.9 is on the App Store, 5.2 is in TestFlight and a macOS build is prepared for submission. It proved that one person could build, ship and keep a consumer product alive for years, and the skills from it are the foundation of everything I build for clients today.
Built with
- Flutter
- Node.js
- Microservices
- Stripe
- Ethereum
The services involved
Websites
Hand-built in Next.js, fast on a phone, and structured so search engines can read every page. No templates, no page builders, nothing that breaks when a plugin updates.
What it involves BuildAI & automation
Chat that qualifies leads while you sleep, intake forms that fill your CRM, reminders that send themselves. I have built AI into products since before most people had heard of a prompt.
What it involvesDates, user counts and revenue as recorded at the time (2019–2026); App Store Connect (September 2026) lists iOS 5.1.0 and macOS 5.0.2; the public store shows 5.0.9 and 5.2 is in TestFlight.