How we built a music app the whole family can actually trust
From the first sketch to launch day — the choices, the cuts, and the unexpected moments that shaped Psalmix into the family-safe streaming experience we wanted for our own kids.
The first time I tried to play music for my kids in the car, I closed the app within forty seconds. The lyrics on track three weren’t bad, exactly — they just weren’t what I wanted my six-year-old quoting back to me at the dinner table.
That afternoon, I started a list in my notes app called what would a family-safe music app actually do? I didn’t know it yet, but that list would become Psalmix.
Starting from the wrong question
For the first six months, I asked the wrong question. I kept asking, “How do we filter out bad content?” — and every answer was a wall of complexity.
Eventually a friend asked the better question: What if we just curated forward instead of filtering backward? Pick songs we love first. Build the catalog up from yes, instead of down from no.
Curate forward instead of filtering backward.
— The line that changed everything about how Psalmix gets built.
The three rules we keep coming back to
- Lyrics first. Genre, BPM, mood — all of it matters less than what the song is actually saying.
- Edge cases get a real human. Not a checkbox. A person who has read the lyric and decided.
- Default to no when in doubt. A family-safe library is a promise.
If you’re using Psalmix, the best place to tell us what you want next is the in-app feedback button. It comes straight to a real human (often me).