Late Hours.
A streaming product built for independent artists who refuse to play the algorithm game. Design system, web app, motion language. 80,000 users in the first six months.
- Client
- Independent music platform
- Year
- 2026
- Scope
- Product · Design system · Web app · Motion
- Duration
- 20 weeks · 5 people
The challenge.
The founders had built a working MVP that nobody could love. Tracks were getting uploaded, payouts were honest, the tech was sound — but the product felt like every other streaming app, and artists weren't sticking around to grow their listener base.
The mandate was clear: "Stop trying to be Spotify with better royalties. Be the thing Spotify can't be." We took that literally.
Fig. 01 — Player screen. Waveform replaces the obligatory album art slot when you tap it.
Approach.
We rebuilt the product around discovery, not retention. Every screen was redesigned to answer one question first: how does an artist nobody has heard of get heard tonight? The home isn't a Spotify-style "for you" — it's a literal radio dial of what's playing live in the platform right now.
- Now Playing tower · real-time feed of every track being listened to, anywhere on the platform
- Artist OS · full back-office redesigned to feel like a control room, not a dashboard
- Motion language · audio-reactive transitions across every surface
- Sound identity · 5 custom UI sounds, no royalty-free library nonsense
- Royalty receipts · per-stream breakdown visible to the listener, not buried
Design system.
The palette is built around the brand's thesis: it is most alive at night. Deep black base, one warm signal colour for everything interactive, and an off-white for editorial moments. No second accent. No theme switching. One product, one voice.
Build & launch.
We shipped the web app first, native to follow. Real-time audio infrastructure runs on a tight WebSocket layer with edge replication — the "Now Playing" tower needs to feel instant or the metaphor dies. Twelve weeks of design, eight of build, two of soft launch with 200 alpha artists.
- Stack · Next.js · WebSocket edge · Cloudflare Stream · Stripe Connect
- Latency · sub-100ms first byte on the Now Playing feed, worldwide
- Handover · design system in Figma + Storybook, fully tokenised
"Bitchen didn't try to make us look like a startup. They made us look like a label, an instrument and a platform at the same time. That's the only reason any of this works."Co-founder — Music streaming platform