Thingmo

A research-driven music discovery tool that builds playlists from artist lineages, historical charts, and scenes defined by time and place. No algorithm. No feed.

Status: In development — core search and playlist generation functional

Overview

The Problem

Streaming recommendation engines optimize for engagement. They are good at keeping you listening to things you already like. They are not good at helping you find music that connects to something specific — an artist's stated influences, a moment in a city's music history, a scene you read about but never heard.

Thingmo is built for a different kind of curiosity.

Approach

How it works

Instead of recommending music based on behavior, Thingmo builds playlists from real-world inputs: artists and the records they explicitly pointed to, historical charts tied to specific dates and locations, and scenes defined by time and place.

Each search produces a clean, playable playlist that can be exported to services like Apple Music and Spotify.

You can search things like:

Tom Waits — Jamaica 1963 — Los Angeles punk 1978 — Chicago blues 1955 — Bristol sound 1994

Principles

Design principles

Tool, not platform No accounts, no feeds, no social features. This is a tool for answering a specific question, not a destination designed to maximize time on site.

Documented history, not inference Results are grounded in documented history, not behavioral inference. The same search returns the same kind of result — no algorithmic drift.

Fast path to listening Fast path from idea to something you can hear immediately. Export-first: the goal is music in your player, not time on the site.

User intent over system intent Music discovery tools are mostly built around what the algorithm thinks you want next. Thingmo is built around what you're actually curious about.