A Better Place to Buy, Sell and Share Independent Music

WAVjunkie has been busy. Over the past few weeks, we’ve made a series of changes across the platform - some obvious, some deliberately invisible - all with the same goal: making WAVjunkie a better place for independent artists to sell their music and for listeners to discover, buy, keep and share it.

Rather than treating each update as a separate feature, we thought it was worth looking at what they add up to.

More ways for artists to sell

Independent artists don't all sell music in the same way. Sometimes someone wants to buy a single release. Sometimes they want everything you've ever made. Sometimes a fan wants to support you with a little more than the asking price. And sometimes you want to give your music to someone as a gift.

WAVjunkie now supports all of those.

Sell your whole catalogue

Artists with three or more releases can now offer their entire discography at a discount of between 5% and 50%. Fans see the saving before they buy, while releases they already own are automatically excluded from the calculation. It turns a catalogue from a collection of individual releases into something a fan can buy as a whole.

Let supporters pay more

Every release still has its normal artist-set price, but listeners can now choose to pay more.

They can enter their own amount or use quick supporter options such as +$3, +$5, +$10 or +$20.

The additional amount isn't hidden or treated as something separate. It carries through the cart, purchase, artist earnings and receipt.

Because sometimes a listener wants to say, I like this, and I want the artist to get a little more.

Give music as a gift

Gift Baskets take that idea a step further. Artists can now bundle their own releases together, choose the price and create a private link or short redemption code to share with whoever they like.

That could mean sending two albums to a friend, giving someone your entire catalogue, putting together a selection for Christmas, or simply making a bundle for people who might not otherwise discover your work.

The recipient redeems the basket and the releases appear in their Downloads. It's a simple idea, but it gives artists another way to turn their existing catalogue into something they can actively share.

Music, the way you actually want it

Buying digital music shouldn't mean being given one arbitrary file format and being told that's it. WAVjunkie downloads now let listeners choose between the original WAV, lossless FLAC or MP3 320.

The conversions are made from the original WAV rather than from another compressed format, with checks performed before the converted file is saved. Artists still upload WAV files. Listeners simply get more choice over what they take away.

And once you've bought something, it's yours. Your Downloads library keeps your purchases together, with the ability to download individual tracks or entire releases and re-download them from any device.

Crates: make your own listening experience

Not everything needs to be a purchase. Crates let artists create curated listening collections from music across WAVjunkie.

You can combine albums, EPs, singles and individual tracks, arrange them in whatever order makes sense, add a title and description, and share the result through a private link.

They could be used for recommendations, introductions, playlists, DJ selections, influences, new music, or simply a collection of things you think somebody else should hear.

And importantly, Crates remain listening-only. There is no shopping cart hiding inside them, and they don't appear in WAVjunkie's public browsing or search.

They're simply a way to say 'listen to this'.

A player that gets out of the way

The listening experience has had an overhaul too. The new full-screen 'Now Playing' view gives the music considerably more room, while bringing artwork, controls, lyrics, artist information, credits, release details and what's coming next into one place.

The bottom player has been simplified, and signed-in listeners can now play through an entire release without manually starting every track. There are keyboard shortcuts on desktop too, because sometimes the best interface is the one you don't have to look at.

And the dashboard finally feels like one place

The artist dashboard has also been brought together into a single workspace with a proper side menu.

Studio, Money & Library, Audience and Account now have clear homes, while Earnings, Downloads and Crates have their own dedicated sections.

On desktop, the menu can be collapsed when you want more room. On mobile, it's available from the top of the dashboard.

It sounds like housekeeping. It isn't.

As a platform grows, the difference between having lots of features and having a product that is actually pleasant to use becomes increasingly important.

We'd rather have one dashboard that makes sense than six clever places you have to remember how to find.

The least visible change might be the most important

Underneath all of this, WAVjunkie has also been rebuilt on a more robust backend. That's not the sort of thing that normally makes an exciting product announcement. It should, however, make everything else better.

Pages load more consistently. Playback and downloads are more dependable across desktop and mobile. Missing files fail gracefully rather than taking the page with them, and share links remain reliable as artists, releases and tracks change.

The platform was tested end-to-end before the new foundation went live. In other words, some of the biggest changes are the ones you aren't supposed to notice. You're just supposed to notice that things work.

So what's actually changing?

The individual features are useful. Together, they point to something bigger.

WAVjunkie is moving further away from being simply a place to upload and sell music.

It's becoming a place where independent artists can build a catalogue, present it properly, sell it in different ways, share it privately, give it away selectively, let supporters contribute more, and give listeners a permanent library of the music they've bought.

That matters because independent music doesn't need another system designed around making artists fit somebody else's model. It needs better tools for artists to do things their own way. That's what we're building.

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