BMS Live
A community music platform that puts Bradford's grassroots scene — artists, venues, promoters and fans — in one place.
Role
Product & UI/UX Lead
Community
85+ members · 50+ artists
Coverage
15+ venues · 140+ gigs
Status
Live & in active build
The Problem
Bradford has a dense grassroots music scene, but no single place to find it. Gig information lived across scattered social posts, venue pages and word of mouth. Artists struggled to get discovered, venues struggled to fill rooms, and fans routinely missed shows happening a street away.
BMS Live grew out of Bradford Music Scene — the editorial and design platform I founded in 2021 — as the product answer to that problem: a listings and identity layer for the whole local ecosystem, built around the way the scene actually works rather than a generic ticketing template.
Approach
Research
Conversations with artists, venue bookers and promoters to map how gigs actually get announced, promoted and filled in a small city.
Design
Mobile-first user journeys and UI in Figma — four distinct roles sharing one navigation model, with a dark, poster-led visual identity carried over from the BMS print work.
Build
Iterative shipping with real users in the community, starting with listings and profiles, then layering RSVPs, open mics, photos and reminders.
Key Features
Four-sided profiles
Artist, venue, promoter and fan accounts, each with their own dashboard, permissions and role switcher.
Gig listings & discovery
Browse by date, genre, venue or artist, with a 'Tonight' strip, a personalised For You section and full-text search.
RSVPs & social proof
Fans RSVP, favourite artists and see who else is going — turning a listing into an actual signal of interest for promoters.
Open mic hub
Recurring open mic series with host claims and in-app signup sheets, so performers can grab a slot without a Facebook thread.
Event pages with life
Comments, countdowns, post-gig photo galleries, reviews and gig reports keep a page useful before and after the night.
Venue map
An interactive Leaflet map of participating venues so people can see what's on near them.
AI-assisted listing entry
Paste a raw gig announcement and it's parsed into a structured draft event — cutting admin time for a volunteer-run platform.
Shareable artwork
Auto-generated event posters, share previews and QR codes so promoters get on-brand assets without opening design software.
Email & reminders
Gig reminders, profile nudges and transactional email with a queue, unsubscribe handling and suppression list.
How It Was Built
BMS Live is a React application built on TanStack Start with server-side rendering, so every gig, artist and venue page is a real indexable URL. The interface is Tailwind CSS with a Radix-based component library, designed mobile-first around a bottom nav for people checking listings on a phone in a pub.
The backend is Postgres with row-level security, so each role only touches its own data. Serverless functions handle the jobs that can't live in the browser: AI event parsing, Stripe supporter checkout, scheduled email sends, open-graph share images and the sitemap. A separate Remotion pipeline renders motion graphics for social.
Front end
- React 19
- TanStack Start (SSR)
- Tailwind CSS
- Radix UI
- Leaflet maps
Back end
- Postgres + RLS
- Auth & roles
- Serverless functions
- File storage
- Stripe
Content & AI
- AI event parsing
- Poster generation
- QR & share cards
- Remotion video
Design
- Figma
- Illustrator
- Photoshop
- After Effects
- Lovable
Design & Identity
The visual language came from the print side of Bradford Music Scene — the monthly gig guides and posters. Dark surfaces, high-contrast type and poster-scale headings carry across from paper into the product, so the app looks like the scene it documents rather than a generic listings site.
- Single token-based theme shared across every role and dashboard
- Mobile-first layouts with a persistent bottom nav and search overlay
- Consistent card system for events, artists, venues and promoters
- Accessible contrast and clear hierarchy for quick scanning on a phone
Outcome
Members
85+
Artists listed
50+
Venues
15+
Gigs published
140+
BMS Live is running as the day-to-day listings platform for the Bradford scene, with new features shipped continuously based on feedback from the artists and venues using it.
See it live
The platform is public — have a look around, or get in touch if you'd like to talk through the product decisions behind it.