As you may know about me, I like to make things in what little free time I have. Often that is music, but lately it’s been apps. Since I also like collecting vinyl records, I have been making apps that fill gaps or fix annoyances along those lines.
For a while now I’ve had this small, recurring desire: I put on a record, it sound so good in the moment, and I want to tell somebody. Not broadcast it. Just tell one or two people who’d actually care that the pressing sounds incredible, or that nobody ever mentions side B and they really should.
There’s nowhere to really do that, so I started thinking about how to solve that.
Facebook groups are mostly repetitive memes and complaining people, and whatever you share is buried or removed by overzealous mods. The hashtag thing everywhere else (Bluesky, Mastodon) is a bunch of collectors posting #nowspinning into the ether, not really to each other. The gatekeeping on Reddit vinyl subs is just too ridiculous to bother with (not to mention that whole site is just a bot-filled, AI training ground these days).
So I made Wax Spinner.
It’s a small social site for people who collect vinyl. You connect your Discogs collection (no retyping your whole library, thank god), post whatever you’re playing, add a note if you feel like it, and it lands in a centralized feed with everybody else’s posts. People can like it, leave a comment, or tell you you’re wrong about liking Record Store Day releases. That last part is the entire reason it exists: the conversation. Bluesky and hashtags never gave me that.
The feature I like the most, and the reason I kept at this one instead of shelving it like half my side projects: every spin you post turns into its own share card. Share the link anywhere that does previews, like Bluesky or Discord or a group text, and it pulls in the cover art, the artist, the year, your note, in a nifty feature card that links to your post. No screenshots or cropping necessary. Sharing a record finally looks like something instead of a naked URL or shitty photograph of your turntable.
When you see something in the feed you want, every spin points right back to its Discogs page, so adding it to your Wantlist is about one tap. That creates a fun way to find records you didn’t know you wanted.
But wait, there’s more
It’s completely free, and I intend to keep it that way. No ads, no selling anybody’s data, and no premium tier sitting in the wings waiting to charge you for the parts that matter. I built it because I wanted it to exist, and I’d take a small room full of actual record collectors over a growth strategy any day.
It’s brand new, so right now it lives or dies on whether people show up. If you’re into vinyl, come mess around with it. Hook up your Discogs, post what’s on the turntable, and tell me what sucks or what’s missing. I’m listening.