The Honey Groove
The social marketplace for vinyl collectors.
I spent 6 years as a product manager in health tech and fintech. I shipped vendor portals, consumer healthcare platforms, and payment products. It was a good career. But I kept coming back to the same frustration as a vinyl collector: the tools available to us are terrible.
If you collect vinyl, you know the drill. Discogs to catalog your records. eBay to buy and sell. Reddit or Facebook groups to find community. Instagram to share your collection. Four platforms, none of them talking to each other, none of them built for how collectors actually experience this hobby.
Vinyl is a $1.4 billion market in the US alone. 18 consecutive years of growth. It outsells CDs. And yet there is no dedicated social platform for the millions of people driving that growth.
So I built one.
The Honey Groove is a social marketplace for vinyl record collectors. It combines:
Collection management (import your Discogs catalog in one click, see your collection's value)
A social feed (share hauls, listening sessions, and discoveries with other collectors)
A peer-to-peer marketplace (buy, sell, and trade with built-in buyer/seller protection)
Curated community rooms (spaces organized around artists, genres, and eras, including a very active Taylor Swift vinyl room)
Discovery features (find records you did not know you wanted and collectors who share your taste)
Every marketplace transaction is protected by our Mutual Hold system, which places authorization holds on both sides of a trade and releases them when both parties confirm receipt. No more trusting a stranger on Reddit to actually ship your record.
Where I am now:
100+ beta users
Fully functional PWA (React, Python/FastAPI, MongoDB, Stripe Connect)
Marketplace fees: 6% on sales (4% for premium members). Trades without cash are free.
Premium tier: $4.99/mo or $39.99/yr for power collectors
Pre-revenue, preparing for public launch
Total invested to date: under $5,000
Solo founder, no employees, no outside funding
What I have learned so far:
The biggest surprise has been how much collectors want the social layer. I expected the marketplace to be the draw. Instead, beta users spend most of their time in the feed and community rooms. They post photos of their weekend hauls, argue about which pressing of Rumours sounds best, and hunt for rare Taylor Swift variants together. The commerce follows the community, not the other way around.
The second thing I learned: vinyl collectors are incredibly loyal once they trust a platform. Our beta retention has been strong because collectors invest real time building their digital collection. Once your Vault has 200 records in it, you are not leaving.
What is next:
Public launch. I have a 10,000+ following on TikTok and Instagram in the vinyl and music space (@katieintheafterglow), which is my primary distribution channel. No paid ads planned. The vinyl community is tight-knit and word of mouth is the strongest channel.
I am also preparing an Indiegogo campaign to fund user acquisition and marketplace growth incentives for the first 1,000 users.
Happy to answer any questions about building a niche marketplace, bootstrapping a consumer social product as a solo founder, or the vinyl market in general.
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