Why I Stopped Trying to Build Our Music Community From Scratch

For a long time our open mic crowd lived in about five places at once: a mailing list for gig news, a group chat that never stopped buzzing, a spreadsheet for performer slots and a shared photo album nobody could ever find. Every Monday I spent an hour copying the same information from one to the other. So when I started looking for a proper home for us, the last thing I wanted was to build one from scratch 🎶

Here's why UNA ended up as the backend we went with, written by someone who plays bass, not someone who writes code.

The basics were already there: profiles, an activity feed, groups, events, messaging and connections between members. That covers pretty much everything a music community needs, and none of it had to be built. I set up our first listening party event in about ten minutes. It can still look and feel like us, too. You can change the branding, switch modules on and off and, if you have a patient developer friend (I do, bless him), build custom ones. We don't need a jobs board, so it's off, and the gig calendar sits front and centre.

The part that really sold me: the new web front end built with Next.js and the mobile app built with React Native both talk to the same UNA backend through its API. When I post an open mic night, it shows up on the site and in the app at the same time. Goodbye, Monday copy and paste.

There's also an active community and a marketplace for extra modules and themes, and most of my questions had already been asked and answered by someone else. Regular updates and security patches mean I'm not lying awake worrying about our members' data, which leaves more energy for the actual music.

If you run a community of any kind and you're drowning in tools, have a look at what you could stop building yourself. Happy to answer questions from a very non-technical point of view! 🎸