Splidi
Splidi
What happens when a musician
decides the music industry’s broken—
& Builds a solution from scratch?
Splidi started as an attempt to solve the struggles I faced every day as a musician. With no formal design background, I built a tool to help others like me—one iteration at a time.
“Oh dude, we can crank this out in like a week.”
An iteration a day gets the users to stay
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Desktop Dashboard V2
A little on the busy side, but this was a big step in streamlining the user flow.
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Desktop Dashboard V3
A bold pivot after some late-night brainstorming (and a little whiskey). White space became my best friend.
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Current Desktop Dashboard
What do users want to do? Upload files! Sometimes progress means scrapping literally everything and starting fresh.
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Desktop Dashboard V1
Ahh–the starting point. While it doesn’t quite hit the mark, this was the foundation for rethinking usability and visual hierarchy.
The catalyst
Why Splidi Matters
The music industry is known for its challenges, but after working professionally as an artist, songwriter, producer, session musician, and more, I realized just how deeply flawed it truly is. Over the years, I’ve faced repeated situations where I was underpaid, uncredited, or outright exploited.
One moment stands out: I played keyboards on a track for a highly notable record, yet received neither credit nor payment. Another turning point was when one of the world’s top K-pop groups infringed on a pitch song we created specifically for them–still dealing with it! These weren’t isolated incidents—they were part of an ongoing pattern of undervaluing creators across the industry.
Even as a Grammy-nominated musician (with credits on Candydrip by Lucky Daye, nominated for Best R&B Album), I found myself constantly battling to get what I deserved, both financially and in terms of recognition. It became clear that the system wasn’t just flawed—it was broken. And it felt like solving these problems would be easier than continuing to fight against a machine that seemed designed to exploit.
This is where Splidi came in. With some long-time friends and fellow frustrated musicians, we decided to found a startup. Queued for launch on the app store and DWEB by the end of January, 2025, Splidi seeks to empower musicians by giving them a platform which allows them to share their music files and collaborate on songs–while protecting their intellectual property behind a legally enforceable music contract.
The first Splidi concept (formerly Prodivy)—My initial attempt at simplifying and showcasing credits was born directly from the chaos I faced as a session musician.
My Roles
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My Roles *
As the Chief Design Officer and Cofounder of Splidi, I have worn many hats in transforming this ambitious idea into reality:
Product Management & Strategy: Shaping the overall vision and roadmap for Splidi.
Information Architecture: Designing modular workflows, organize content hierarchies, and collaborate on scalable data structures.
UI/UX Design: Sole end-to-end designer, including user flows, wireframes, prototypes, and final interfaces.
Front-End Development: Implementing design elements to ensure seamless functionality.
Backend Strategy: Collaborating on database architecture and ensuring designs align with technical capabilities.
Brand Development & Copywriting: Crafting Splidi’s visual identity, voice, and messaging to reflect its mission.
While I was at the DMV that day, I wondered, ‘Can I teach myself basic web development?’ By the time I got home, I had built my first coded page. This Slack screenshot captures the moment I shared it with the team—proof that even a painfully long wait can lead to something productive.The problem
Musicians Deserve to Be Paid for their work.
Splidi set out to solve a simple but urgent issue: ensuring musicians are paid for their work. In the music industry, underpayment—or no payment at all—is shockingly common.
Creators are often left vulnerable without enforceable agreements.
The current standard of relying on lawyers to protect intellectual property is not economically feasible for independent musicians. Splidi aims to provide a solution that levels the playing field, empowering creators to take control of their rights without the prohibitive costs.
An excerpt from our white paper in progress—these insights explore the deeper challenges within music and payment systems, with a focus on metadata issues.
The journey of Conceptualization
The alias was our idea to address intricacies with crediting naming conventions and different DBAs in the music industry. This addition had app-wide implications, most notably pertaining to contracts (Splids)–we strived to create a system in which one person could have many separate aliases conducting their own business, and have them be distinct and universally linked simultaneously. This problem specifically is an industry-wide pain point.
From Simple Idea to Complex Solution
When we first started working on Splidi, the core idea seemed simple: enforceable legal contracts attached to audio files. On that very first day, one of my cofounders—our coding mastermind—said something we’ll likely never forget: “Oh dude, we can crank this out in like a week.” Hilariously, he couldn’t have been more wrong.
What we quickly realized is that the intricacies of this problem run incredibly deep, something only people entrenched in the music industry can fully grasp. While the contracts and negotiations were always at the heart of our value proposition, new challenges surfaced almost daily. What about this situation? What about that edge case? We had to dive into the weeds of every imaginable deal scenario in the music industry to ensure Splidi could handle them all.
Core Challenges
Session Musicians and the Group Contract Dilemma:
One of our toughest challenges was structuring the database around a “group contract” system, where all contributors on a song are tied to one unified agreement. Downloading would become accessible after the fulfillment of the contract. Session musicians—who often join later in the process and need to download the song to record their parts—posed a massive challenge. Our primary design principle was to restrict downloads until payments were secured, yet this clashed with the practical needs of session players. Finding a balance between payment security and usability was no small task.Turning Complexity into Simplicity:
Music contracts are notoriously complex, filled with endless variables and edge cases. One of our most significant hurdles was translating this complexity into a functional, intuitive interface that feels approachable to users. Even more, we wanted the interface to go beyond functionality—it had to be sticky. Our goal was to make users not only feel empowered but excited to use the platform, despite the traditionally daunting nature of music contracts.Modularity and Edge Cases:
We’ve conceptualized every edge case you can imagine in the music industry—from producers to session players to cover songs—and iterated on multiple versions of the app to account for backend complexities.
I was tasked with turning complex data solutions into a polished, intuitive designs that anybody could understand. This example is from the Pre-Splid interface, a creation for protecting intellectual property without having an extensive contract with fixed terms. User education has been of vital importance for a nuanced project like this.
The second of four separate Figma projects–virtually everything you see was rendered obsolete. The app is primarily for mobile now, and not a single one of the mobile designs is in this page. The iterations have truly been endless.
My process is messy–I brainstorm, iterate, brainstorm, iterate, and eventually I turn this pig-sty of a project you see into a polished, consolidated, professional product. I imagine some designers would see this and puke, but it’s my process and I stand by it. For some reason, whether it’s a blessing or a curse, I thrive in the chaos of an overflowing Figma file. 🤷🏼♂️
And in case you were wondering–messy doesn’t mean disorganized. Hiding in the madness that you see here is a lovely Splidi component library…
Ahh–here it is. What was I saying about iterations?
Relentless Iteration
Splidi has been through 3–4 distinct design and maybe 7-8 database versions, each refined to address a specific problem that surfaced during development. After countless cycles of conceptualize → trial → error, we’ve finally settled on a system that accounts for the modularity of the music industry. Whether it’s a remix deal, a late-stage session musician, a producer who also wants a mixing fee, or just an unusual revenue split, Splidi now works how it needs to in every edge case.
The Result
This iterative process hasn’t just shaped the product—it’s shaped us as a team. We’ve worked relentlessly to ensure Splidi isn’t just functional but inclusive of every type of musician. Because in an industry this fragmented, every musician should have a tool like this.
Deeply intuitive, incredibly modular music contracts: We’ve created a system that allows for all types of music agreements, from work-for-hire deals to simple songwriter splits–our flagship product, the Splid, truly does it all.
Top-notch music project management: Working in parallel with our Splids, the project management on Splidi is a state-of-the-art way to collaborate–allowing for versioning songs and Splids, multiple contributors of different types, organization, notifications, and even payment all within the interface.
Secure file storage & organization: Like Dropbox or Google Drive, we allow users to store, organize and share their files seamlessly.
Created a top-notch music collaboration app: Similar to apps like Untitled or Samply, we allow people to seamlessly upload, collaborate, revise, and listen to their music in a cross-functional, deeply organized system. The difference is, this is a secondary value prop for us.
A modern, aesthetic, approachable interface: Despite deep multi-dimensional functionalities, the design is intuitive and eye-catching.
Creating Splidi has been my entire life for the past 6 months. It is a project I’m deeply passionate about, and have put an unreasonable amount of time into. Founding Splidi, alongside my relentless drive to enact positive change, has turned me into a full-fledged product designer–and I’m excited to share my work with you.
Simplifying Negotiations
This early prototype, created before our latest data structure updates, became the vision for ease of use in Splidi’s contracts. It set the foundation for simplifying complex deals and shaping our final design.
Explore the evolution of Splidi’s negotiation features in the next case study.
THE SPLIDI DASHBOARD
THE MUSIC PLAYER
THE PROJECTS TAB
THE SPLIDS TAB
THE SEARCH PAGE
THE LIBRARY
