Your Questions, Answered

  • ostinata is a music discovery app where you create directed graphs — visual maps showing how you got from one artist, album, genre, or idea to another. it's for people who believe the journey of discovery matters as much as the music itself.

  • a journey is a directed graph (DAG) — a collection of nodes (artists, albums, genres, emotions, concepts) connected by edges. each edge can include reasoning text explaining why those two things are connected.

  • tap the + button on the journeys screen. give it a name, then use the add button on the canvas to search for artists or albums via musicbrainz. drag nodes to position them, tap a node and hit connect to draw an edge to another node.

  • the arrows show direction — the path you took through music. "radiohead → aphex twin" means radiohead led you to discover aphex twin, not the other way around. you can reverse an edge by tapping it and hitting reverse.

  • tap a node to select it (red border), then tap delete. for edges, tap the edge line or its midpoint arrow to select it, then delete. you can also swipe left on a journey in the list to delete the entire journey.

  • when adding a node, tap the album tab at the top of the search screen. type the album name and results will appear from musicbrainz with cover art thumbnails.

  • - artist — a musician or band (searched via musicbrainz)

    - album — a release (searched via musicbrainz, includes cover art)

    - genre — a musical genre (manual entry)

    - emotion — a feeling or mood (manual entry)

    - concept — an idea, place, or anything else (manual entry)

  • a bounty is a discovery challenge. you set a topic (e.g. "find the link: kraftwerk → detroit techno"), a reward amount in resonance, and optional seed nodes as starting points. other users can form guilds to tackle the challenge.

  • a guild is a group of exactly 5 users who work together on a bounty. once 5 members join, the guild activates and can begin collaborative work.

  • resonance is the community currency. bounties offer resonance as rewards, and your total resonance reflects your contribution to the community.

  • your data is stored in your personal icloud account via apple's cloudkit. it syncs automatically across your devices. we cannot see or access your private data.

  • yes. your data is stored locally and syncs to icloud when you're back online. musicbrainz search requires internet, but you can create genre, emotion, and concept nodes offline.

  • go to the profile screen (tap ※ → profile), then tap your name to edit it.

  • if the node is an artist or album from musicbrainz, you'll get a prompt to open its musicbrainz page in safari.

  • journeys are public by default. private/public visibility toggling is coming in a future update.

  • email us at contact@ostinata.app