Clubbr
Clubbr is a web app for Brooklyn club nights, with an iPhone app in development. You can find shows, keep a private log of the nights you go to, meet people who were at the same nights if you choose to, and piece together the tracklist of a DJ set with the rest of the crowd.
Meeting through the nights you’ve shared
I also want Clubbr to help people meet through the nights they’ve shared. Today that’s an opt-in Meet section. You choose to be visible and list nights you’ve been to. Clubbr suggests introductions to people you share nights with, giving more weight to rarer nights, and shows what you have in common. You can message each other only once you’re both interested, and only what you add to Meet is used. Your private log is never read.
What I’m exploring next is more choice over those introductions. Someone might choose to see matches only after five shared nights, for example, then reach out with some anonymity at first. I’m still working out what a profile should reveal, whether photos belong in that first introduction, and when people choose to identify themselves.
Then there are the tracklists, which rarely exist for club sets otherwise. A crowd remembers a set differently, so the app has to keep three things apart: whether a track is right, which unknown tracks matter most, and who did the work.
Accuracy comes from reviews
Anyone signed in can propose a track. Other listeners review it as matches, different or unsure, and you can’t review your own proposal. Each track shows where it stands:
- Proposed
- Someone suggests a track, with a link to the exact version they heard.
- Community supported
- Three other listeners review it and say it matches.
- Disputed
- Anyone says it’s a different track. It stays disputed until that’s resolved.
- Verified
- A curator or the DJ checks a source like the artist’s own tracklist or a recording.
Community support isn’t proof, so the app says so: only a checked source makes a track verified.
Votes set priority, not accuracy
Some moments in a set are still unknown. Listeners can vote those up so they get identified sooner. Everyone gets 25 credits a week, and votes cost their square: 1 vote costs 1 credit, 2 cost 4, 5 cost 25. Votes decide which unknown moments get researched first. They never make a guess correct.
Next: credit for the people who did the work
This part is reviewed but not live yet. When you propose a track you’ll be able to tick “Credit me publicly” and choose a public name, which is never taken from your account. Credited tracks link to a contributor page, and other listeners can say thanks.
Thanks are kept apart from accuracy. They don’t change a track’s status or its review counts, you can’t thank yourself, and thanking twice counts once. If you withdraw a proposal, it leaves your page and your totals, along with its thanks. Nothing is credited unless you opt in, including tracks you proposed before.
The open question is incentives. Accounts aren’t identity-verified, so two accounts run by one person could thank each other, and I don’t know yet whether credit brings people back.
Where it stands
The web app is live, with opt-in introductions through Meet, crowd tracklists, reviews and priority votes. Contributor credit is in review. A chosen threshold for shared nights and a partly anonymous first introduction are ideas I’m still working out. If you’re interested in how it works, I’d be glad to talk it through.