Case Study · Zero-to-One · Subscription Media

A two-sided subscription product connecting aspiring creators to a Hollywood producer

Designing The Man Behind The Music from web MVP to native apps - with an architecture that kept revenue and data in our hands instead of the app stores.

Role

Senior Product Designer

Company

The Man Behind The Music

Platforms

Web · iOS · Android

Focus

Two-sided MVP · Subscription · Cross-platform

The Man Behind The Music - desktop and mobile — desktop view

The Man Behind The Music - desktop and mobile — mobile view

The challenge

The Man Behind The Music needed more than a fan site. Creators wanted a credible way to get tracks in front of a real Hollywood producer; podcast fans wanted subscription-only access to his playbook for landing placements in TV and film.

Off-the-shelf subscription tools couldn't handle that dual reality under one brand and one producer - without slipping into "yet another social music app" across web, iOS, and Android.

Users and ecosystem

I anchored the experience around three primary groups:

Creators - Aspiring artists uploading tracks with basic metadata (title, genre, reference show/film) and tracking review status.
Subscribers / fans - Podcast listeners paying for industry breakdowns, sync-packaging guidance, and behind-the-scenes footage.
Producer + team - Tank Thornton and staff, who need a focused submission queue and lightweight tools to review, respond, and publish.

TMBTM ecosystem map showing creators and subscribers connected through the producer — Ecosystem map - two distinct flows anchored on the same producer.

MVP scope and product evolution

We phased the product to prove the model on web before investing in depth and native.

v1 - Web MVP. Creator onboarding, track upload, expectation-setting submission flow, subscriber paywall, and Stripe billing end-to-end.
v2 - Depth for both sides. Structured content library, batched producer alerts, direct messaging, and SMS review notifications.
v3 - Native parity. Full iOS and Android apps once web traction was proven and funded.

We deliberately excluded social-graph features, multi-producer marketplaces, and rights/contract tooling - noise and legal overhead for what needed to feel like a focused channel to one producer.

Key product and platform decisions

A few deliberate calls shaped the experience and the business:

Web-first, then native. Launching on web let us validate pricing, content format, and upload behavior; native came in v3 after hundreds of paying subscribers proved the model.
Own the billing system. We kept all subscriptions on Stripe instead of Apple IAP - extra work through Apple review, but it preserved revenue margin and pricing control.
Unambiguous submission feedback. Creators didn't know what happened after Submit, so I added immediate email/SMS confirmation stating Tank was notified and when to expect a review, mirrored in-app.
Cross-platform continuity. We aligned core flows and terminology across web and apps, with account creation and subscription on the site and auto-login back in the app to avoid double entry.

Creator submission flow diagram from onboarding through reviewed notification — Creator submission flow - Onboard → Upload → Confirm → Under review → Reviewed → Notify.

Outcome and impact

The staged rollout turned TMBTM from a podcast spinoff into a functioning two-sided product.

Validated demand before heavy investment. Web-first gave us real subscriber and submission data without app-store timelines; hundreds of paying subscribers green-lit native funding.
Clearer expectations for creators. The redesigned submission and notification flow set a professional tone for every interaction with Tank and his team.
Higher leverage for the producer. Review queue, alerts, and messaging let the producer batch work and decide which creators to pull into deeper conversations.
Sustainable business mechanics. Owning billing preserved revenue, kept pricing experiments open, and avoided a future migration away from IAP.