Song of the Day

Overview

Song of the Day is a mobile app designed around constraint. Instead of constant posting or endless feeds, users share exactly one song per day and see what their friends chose.

The goal was to create a calm, repeatable ritual that makes music feel social again without turning it into a performance. Over time, those small daily moments become personal archives—calendars that reflect moods, phases of life, and shared experiences.

Screenshots

The Design Problem

Most social platforms incentivize frequency, visibility, and competition. Music apps, meanwhile, can feel like infinite scroll with no reflection.

I wanted to explore the opposite question: What happens when social sharing is limited, intentional, and quiet? Could a single, simple constraint make connection feel easier instead of heavier?

My Role

Song of the Day is an end-to-end solo project. I was responsible for:

• Product concept and feature definition
• UX and interaction design
• Frontend development (Expo / React Native)
• Backend architecture (Firebase Auth, Firestore, Storage)
• Privacy design, security rules, and data modeling

Core Experience & Systems

The core loop is intentionally simple:

• Once per day, post a single song.
• View friends’ daily songs in a clean, chronological feed.
• Watch weekly and monthly calendars fill in automatically.
• Get notifications when you and a friend share the same song or artist.

This structure removes pressure to constantly post while still encouraging habitual engagement. Users return not for novelty, but for continuity.

Designing for Calm Social Connection

Song of the Day includes familiar social mechanics—likes, follows, and “friends” (mutual follows)—but uses them gently instead of competitively.

• Likes are lightweight reactions, not a public scoreboard.
• Follower and following counts are tucked away inside a Connections view, not surfaced as a primary status metric.
• “Friends” exist mainly to power coincidences and notifications, not clout.

The intent is to support social connection and self-expression without pushing users toward performance or comparison.

Privacy, Trust, and Scalable Architecture

Because this is a social app, privacy was treated as a first-class design constraint. Visibility of data is limited by default, and users have clear expectations of who can see what.

Under the hood, the app uses a scalable Firebase architecture:

• Firestore data models structured around users, posts, and connections.
• Strictly scoped security rules to protect user data.
• Support for growth in user count and social graph size without major structural changes.

Designing, testing, and validating these rules was one of the most challenging— and most educational—parts of the project, especially as my first serious backend experience.

Technical Challenges & Growth

Song of the Day was my first project built with Expo, React Native, Firebase, and GitHub in a production-minded way. Several systems required significant iteration:

• The friend system evolved from a pure follow model to a hybrid follow/friend structure to support coincidences and notifications.
• Legacy code and racing logic from early prototypes had to be untangled and refactored to keep behavior predictable.
• Deep links, Apple Music metadata, and push notifications all had to fit together cleanly in the overall UX.

The result is a calm user experience sitting on top of a more complex, scalable social back end.

Project Status

Song of the Day is now available on Android via Google Play, with an iOS release coming soon.