WAV Media
WAV Media
WAV Media
Scaling a curated livestreaming platform into an open creator marketplace — while keeping quality high enough that fans actually stayed.
Reached #1 in Music on the App Store.
Scaled from 5k to 225k Users
WAV Media is a music and tech startup built for independent artists. Founded by parent company NAVER, one of South Korea’s top tech companies, WAV Media is a digital creative community with a shared love for music, WAV enables users to create engaging content, collaborate with others and interact through exclusive experiences. For this project, my role was to bring this creation to life, from research, wireframing, prototyping, & delivering the designs to development.
WAV Media is a music and tech startup built for independent artists. Founded by parent company NAVER, one of South Korea’s top tech companies, WAV Media is a digital creative community with a shared love for music, WAV enables users to create engaging content, collaborate with others and interact through exclusive experiences. For this project, my role was to bring this creation to life, from research, wireframing, prototyping, & delivering the designs to development.
The Challenge
A curated model hitting its ceiling
WAV's initial model relied on a small group of in-house artists. It ensured high-quality content — but it created a hard ceiling. Limited content volume meant weak discovery for new artists and low repeat engagement for fans. The business needed to open up.
At the same time, emerging artists faced systemic challenges: high effort required to create engaging content, no early monetization pathways, and difficulty standing out on saturated platforms.
The core challenge: how do you bootstrap a two-sided creator marketplace where both supply and demand are weak at the same time — without sacrificing the quality that makes the platform credible?
The Research
What the Artist and Fans were saying
We conducted qualitative interviews with artists and fans — both remote and in-person — across both sides of the marketplace. What we found was some of the biggest challenges with how independent music works.
What Artists Were Actually Dealing With
Being an independent artist in 2019 meant being a one-person agency. Before a single note reached a listener, an artist had to write and produce the music, film content on their phone, learn video editing, design their own visuals, and build a social media presence across multiple platforms — each with its own format, algorithm, and audience. The creative work was the smallest part of the job.
Creating a single piece of shareable content meant writing a song that could hook someone in seconds, producing a music video to go with it, then generating a separate wave of social content to promote both. Weeks or months of work for one release cycle. Most artists described it as genuinely overwhelming — not because they lacked talent, but because the volume of skills required had nothing to do with music.
Monetization made it worse. YouTube required a subscriber count most independent artists wouldn’t see for years. SoundCloud charged fees just to upload your own music. Spotify streaming payouts were fractional. Artists spent years building an audience and generating content at a loss — not because they weren’t serious, but because the economics of the existing system were designed for scale, not for getting started.
What Fans Actually Wanted
On the fan side, passive browsing wasn’t creating any real connection. The platform was closed and content-limited, so there wasn’t much to engage with. The experience felt quiet.
The exception was live content. When artists went live, something different happened — fans were talking directly to artists, artists were responding, people were reacting in real time. That interaction was what fans kept coming back for. It wasn’t about the music alone. It was about proximity to the artist — feeling like you were part of something, not just watching from a distance.
Fans also described a gap that Spotify and Apple Music couldn’t fill. Streaming gave you the music, but not the person behind it. No lifestyle, no context, no relationship. Fans wanted to get closer — to understand how an artist lived, what influenced them, what their world looked like. The music was the entry point, but the person was the reason to stay.
Key Insights
Creation Friction Was The Primary Bottleneck
Artists weren’t blocked by distribution — they were blocked by the effort required to produce engaging content. Writing and producing music was the smallest part of the job. The rest was video editing, visual design, and content tuned to every platform’s format and algorithm. Most lacked the tools to create compelling videos at the volume the system demanded.
Discovery Alone Did Not Drive Retention
Users could discover new artists, but passive browsing didn’t bring them back. Fans kept returning when artists went live — when they could talk directly to the person behind the music and react in real time. The music was the entry point, but the person was the reason to stay. Engagement required participation, not just consumption.
Early Monetization Was Critical For Artist Retention
Emerging artists were significantly more motivated by immediate, tangible earnings than long-term exposure. The existing platforms were built for scale — YouTube needed subscriber thresholds most never hit, SoundCloud charged fees to upload, Spotify payouts were fractional. Artists spent years generating content at a loss because the economics were designed for already-successful musicians, not for getting started.
How might we design a ecosystem that simultaneously increases content supply, maintains quality, and creates repeat engagement in a two-sided marketplace?
Opportunity
Three decisions, each targeting one side of the problem
Each of the three root causes required a distinct intervention. The strategy was to address them in parallel — because solving one without the others wouldn't move the platform forward.
Establish Quality While Scaling Supply
Anchor the feed in curated, high-quality content while introducing personalized discovery. Maintain perceived quality while opening up supply to new creators.
Unlock Content Supply — Reduce Creation Cost
Build tools that lower the production barrier for artists. Give creators the capability to produce engaging content without requiring production expertise.
Incentivize Artists Through Immediate Monetization
Enable artists to earn from day one. Remove the threshold that causes creators to abandon a platform before they've had a chance to build an audience.
Establish Quality While Scaling Supply
Hybrid feed — curation anchors, personalization discovers
A fully algorithmic feed wouldn't work at this stage. Content volume was low and behavioral signal was weak. A fully editorial feed wouldn't scale. The answer was a hybrid that used each approach for what it does best.
We redesigned the home feed with high-quality, partner-driven content at the top as a trust anchor — content from brands like Fader, Mixmag, and OWSLA that established cultural credibility immediately. Below that, personalized and genre-based modules handled discovery as the catalog grew.
We introduced supply gradually rather than opening the platform all at once. This maintained the quality bar while the creator base scaled.
Tradeoff
Slower full democratization of content — but significantly stronger early retention and perceived quality. The right call at this stage of the platform.
Unlock Content Supply
Sound-reactive visualizer — lower the production barrier
The biggest constraint for artists wasn't creativity or distribution. It was production capability. We built a tool that let artists upload audio, generate dynamic sound-reactive visuals automatically, and export content instantly.
No editing software. No production skills required. The tool standardized a baseline level of quality across creator content while dramatically reducing the time required to post.
There was also a growth loop built in: exported videos included a WAV watermark, which meant every piece of content distributed externally drove acquisition back to the platform. The visualizer was simultaneously a creation tool, a quality floor, and a growth mechanism.
What didn't work
Some artists perceived the output as limiting creative expression. The tension between quality consistency and creative control led to partial adoption — a tradeoff we never fully resolved in this version.
Incentivize Artists Through Immediate Monetization
Digital gifting economy — earn from day one
Most platforms delay monetization until creators hit a threshold. For emerging artists, that threshold can feel unreachable — and the lack of early earnings is what causes them to abandon the platform before they grow.
We introduced a sticker-based digital gifting system. Users received free stickers at signup and could send them during livestreams. Artists earned revenue on an 80/20 split — deliberately creator-favorable to signal the platform was on their side.
We paired this with a creator dashboard to track earnings, monitor content performance, and withdraw funds via PayPal. Visibility into earnings reinforced the platform's value and gave artists a concrete reason to keep posting.
What didn't work
The sticker economy had uneven participation — a small percentage of users drove most revenue. Auto-spending mechanics required more onboarding explanation than we anticipated, causing early drop-off.
Key Tradeoffs
Open platform vs. content quality
Opening too quickly risked degrading the experience. We introduced supply gradually and seeded high-quality editorial content to hold the quality bar while the creator base grew.
Monetization vs. user trust
Auto-spending mechanics required careful onboarding. We underestimated how much explanation the gifting model needed — and early confusion caused drop-off we could have avoided.
Algorithm vs. editorial curation
We delayed full algorithmic reliance in favor of structured discovery to solve the cold-start problem. This worked — but created a personalization ceiling that needed to be addressed as volume scaled.
Creative control vs. quality consistency
The visualizer standardized a quality floor but limited creative expression for artists who wanted more control. Partial adoption was the result — a tension never fully resolved.
in Music
What didn't work / Challenges
Early feed experiments leaning too heavily on personalization reduced perceived content quality. Working across time zones with a South Korea-based engineering team required restructuring communication and design handoff to maintain velocity.
Reflections
Reducing creation friction is more impactful than improving distribution
The bottleneck wasn't getting content in front of people — it was making content in the first place. Tools that lower the cost of creation unlock supply in a way that better distribution alone never could.
Early-stage marketplaces need controlled environments before full scale
Opening a platform too quickly degrades the quality that attracts users in the first place. Seeding high-quality content and maintaining an editorial layer during the cold-start phase were critical to preserving credibility while supply scaled.
Monetization can be a retention tool, not just a revenue stream
Enabling artists to earn from day one changed their relationship with the platform entirely. When creators see tangible value immediately, they post more and stay longer. Delayed monetization is a design decision with real retention consequences.
Content ecosystems need intentional scaffolding before they can self-sustain
Algorithms need signal. Communities need norms. Quality needs anchors. None of these emerge on their own — they have to be designed and seeded deliberately until the ecosystem generates enough momentum to sustain itself.