The Challenge
Glowy Music came to SpaceDev with a clear mission: build a mobile app that transforms how fans engage with the music world. The platform needed to do more than stream music; it needed to connect fans with artists, events, industry professionals, and breaking news, all in one place. The vision was ambitious, and the founding team needed an engineering partner who could help translate that vision into a real, shippable product.
The biggest challenge wasn’t technical complexity in isolation; it was the combination of a broad product scope and a tight timeline. The Glowy team was launching first in Argentina with plans to expand quickly across Latin America, which meant every architectural decision needed to account for future growth while still delivering a high-quality experience on day one. There was no room for a bloated MVP that would need to be torn down and rebuilt.
The founding team also needed help thinking through the product itself. Which features should be in the MVP? Where does the scope stop? These product strategy questions had to be answered before a single line of code was written.
Our Approach
SpaceDev began with a product refinement process alongside the Glowy team, working to define an MVP scope that balanced completeness with speed to market. This wasn’t a formal Discovery Sprint, but a close collaboration to pressure-test assumptions, prioritize features, and establish a clear roadmap before development started.
Once scope was locked, we assembled a dedicated cross-functional team: a senior mobile developer, a senior backend developer, a semi-senior full-stack developer, a QA tester, a project manager, and a product designer. This setup allowed us to move across the mobile app, backend, and admin panel simultaneously without creating handoff bottlenecks.
On the mobile side, we built the fan-facing app in React Native, covering music discovery, artist profiles, event listings, and real-time industry engagement. The backend was built in NestJS with a PostgreSQL database hosted on AWS, designed to handle the scale that comes with a regional launch. In parallel, we developed a Next.js backoffice for the Glowy internal team, giving them control over user management, content, events, advertising, and push notifications from a single interface.
Throughout the engagement, we maintained tight alignment with the founding team through regular reviews, adjusting priorities as the product took shape.
Results
The Glowy Music MVP launched as a polished, fully functional mobile experience. Fans can discover new music, follow their favorite artists, browse upcoming events, and stay connected to the industry in real time, all from a single app. The user experience prioritized simplicity and engagement, making it easy for fans to go beyond passive listening.
Behind the scenes, the Glowy team gained a robust admin platform that gives them direct control over every aspect of the product: who’s on the platform, what events are listed, what news gets published, and how ads are delivered. Push notification management was built in from day one, enabling targeted communication with the user base.
The platform launched in Argentina with the infrastructure in place to support expansion. The technical foundation (a scalable backend on AWS, a cross-platform mobile app, and a flexible admin system) means the Glowy team can move fast as they grow into new markets without rebuilding what already works.
Tech Stack
The stack was chosen to support a cross-platform mobile experience with a robust backend and a capable internal tooling layer. React Native enabled a single codebase for iOS and Android. NestJS provided a well-structured, maintainable backend, and Next.js handled the admin panel. PostgreSQL was used as the primary database, with everything deployed on AWS.
