BRDG Music

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brdgmusic.com

Music Tech. Royalties. AI. SaaS.

Apex Inc.

2019 - Present

Apex Inc.

Overview

BRDG was created to solve one of the most persistent pain points in music: metadata and royalty splits. The problem became personal when I saw my younger brother, an independent rapper, lose out on thousands of dollars because his viral tracks weren’t registered properly. That moment crystallized a systemic issue: artists weren’t failing because of talent, but because of broken metadata workflows.

As the founding designer and product lead, I defined the vision for BRDG: a platform to make royalty splits and metadata management seamless, transparent, and dispute-free. Over several iterations — from a broad metadata platform to a focused splits-first MVP — I led the end-to-end journey: product research, UX design, low-code prototyping in FlutterFlow, building the database in Supabase, and investor-facing validation.

My Roles

Founder & Product Designer — Set vision, strategy, and roadmap while translating music industry problems into actionable product flows.

UX Research Lead — Conducted interviews with artists, managers, and label execs to identify pain points around royalties and metadata.
Design System Architect — Created a scalable, persona-driven design language that spoke to creators, collaborators, and industry professionals.
Low-Code Builder — Delivered interactive prototypes and early MVP builds in FlutterFlow and Supabase, accelerating testing and investor pitches.

Tools & Stack

Research & Strategy: UserTesting, surveys, stakeholder interviews

Design: Figma, Artboard Studio (design systems, modular UI components)
Build: FlutterFlow, Supabase (auth, storage, versioning)
Automation: Zapier, Airtable for workflow validation
Marketing/Comms: Framer, Flodesk, pitch decks for VC review

The Problem

Royalty splits are critical to how artists, producers, and songwriters get paid — yet the process is broken.

Through research and direct interviews, I mapped three recurring failures in the workflow:

Artists often wait weeks or months to finalize splits, creating disputes and delayed registrations.
Metadata entry is error-prone and inconsistent, leading to unclaimed royalties and misallocated revenue.
Collaboration is fragmented — files, texts, and emails result in conflicting versions of the truth.

The existing solutions (spreadsheets, emails, PDF split sheets) are outdated and fragile. At scale, this leads to billions in uncollected royalties across the industry.

Research & Discovery

I spoke with independent artists, Grammy-winning songwriters, managers, and industry executives. Each group confirmed the same friction points: lack of trust, delayed collaboration, and the absence of a central system for split management.

Key insights:

Artists want confidence: they need a tool that ensures they’ll get paid fairly without legal back-and-forth.
Managers/execs want standardization: splits need to be finalized quickly and formatted for PRO submission.
Trust is fragile: any ambiguity in ownership erodes relationships between collaborators.

From these insights, I defined guiding principles: transparency, simplicity, and automation.

The Solution

The BRDG MVP streamlined split creation into three clear steps:

Invite Collaborators: Each contributor enters their own role and share.
Confirm Splits: Transparent dashboard shows roles, percentages, and publishing details.
Finalize & Submit: Digital signatures lock the split, generating a PRO-ready document.

By design, BRDG eliminated ambiguity, reduced disputes, and gave artists confidence that their royalties were secure.

UX Process

I led multiple iterations of BRDG:

BRDG (full launch vision, 2019) — A broad platform to manage metadata across the entire ecosystem. This version proved too ambitious for a lean founding team.
BRDG Tap2Split (2023) — A strategic pivot to focus on split sheets, using NFC-enabled verification. While novel, it was too dependent on hardware adoption.
BRDG Splits MVP (2024–present) — Focused the product on splits alone. Built a conversational onboarding flow, a transparent version history, and automated PRO-ready submissions.

Design decisions included:

AI-Assisted Flows — Conversational interface guided collaborators step by step.
Version Control — Built-in history log for splits to resolve disputes.
Transparency by Default — All collaborators had equal visibility into roles, percentages, and status.

Reflection

Designing BRDG taught me the importance of narrowing scope to create impact. The original platform vision was too broad — metadata at scale required industry adoption. By focusing on splits as the wedge, I was able to deliver a meaningful product that solved a painful, universal problem for artists.

As a founder-designer, I learned to balance vision with iteration: start small, prove value, and expand strategically. The next chapter for BRDG applies these principles to integrations with PROs and DSPs, creating a transparent metadata layer that scales from independent creators to major labels.

BRDG Music

brdgmusic.com

Founder & Product Designer — Set vision, strategy, and roadmap while translating music industry problems into actionable product flows.

UX Research Lead — Conducted interviews with artists, managers, and label execs to identify pain points around royalties and metadata.

Design System Architect — Created a scalable, persona-driven design language that spoke to creators, collaborators, and industry professionals.

Low-Code Builder — Delivered interactive prototypes and early MVP builds in FlutterFlow and Supabase, accelerating testing and investor pitches.

Research & Strategy: UserTesting, surveys, stakeholder interviews

Design: Figma, Artboard Studio (design systems, modular UI components)

Build: FlutterFlow, Supabase (auth, storage, versioning)

Automation: Zapier, Airtable for workflow validation

Marketing/Comms: Framer, Flodesk, pitch decks for VC review

Royalty splits are critical to how artists, producers, and songwriters get paid — yet the process is broken.

Through research and direct interviews, I mapped three recurring failures in the workflow:

Artists often wait weeks or months to finalize splits, creating disputes and delayed registrations.

Metadata entry is error-prone and inconsistent, leading to unclaimed royalties and misallocated revenue.

Collaboration is fragmented — files, texts, and emails result in conflicting versions of the truth.

The existing solutions (spreadsheets, emails, PDF split sheets) are outdated and fragile. At scale, this leads to billions in uncollected royalties across the industry.

I spoke with independent artists, Grammy-winning songwriters, managers, and industry executives. Each group confirmed the same friction points: lack of trust, delayed collaboration, and the absence of a central system for split management.

Key insights:

Artists want confidence: they need a tool that ensures they’ll get paid fairly without legal back-and-forth.

Managers/execs want standardization: splits need to be finalized quickly and formatted for PRO submission.

Trust is fragile: any ambiguity in ownership erodes relationships between collaborators.

From these insights, I defined guiding principles: transparency, simplicity, and automation.

The BRDG MVP streamlined split creation into three clear steps:

Invite Collaborators: Each contributor enters their own role and share.

Confirm Splits: Transparent dashboard shows roles, percentages, and publishing details.

Finalize & Submit: Digital signatures lock the split, generating a PRO-ready document.

By design, BRDG eliminated ambiguity, reduced disputes, and gave artists confidence that their royalties were secure.

I led multiple iterations of BRDG:

BRDG (full launch vision, 2019) — A broad platform to manage metadata across the entire ecosystem. This version proved too ambitious for a lean founding team.

BRDG Tap2Split (2023) — A strategic pivot to focus on split sheets, using NFC-enabled verification. While novel, it was too dependent on hardware adoption.

BRDG Splits MVP (2024–present) — Focused the product on splits alone. Built a conversational onboarding flow, a transparent version history, and automated PRO-ready submissions.

Design decisions included:

AI-Assisted Flows — Conversational interface guided collaborators step by step.

Version Control — Built-in history log for splits to resolve disputes.

Transparency by Default — All collaborators had equal visibility into roles, percentages, and status.

As a founder-designer, I learned to balance vision with iteration: start small, prove value, and expand strategically. The next chapter for BRDG applies these principles to integrations with PROs and DSPs, creating a transparent metadata layer that scales from independent creators to major labels.