We didn’t start with a card game.
We started with a feeling.
You know the one—the instant a song hits and suddenly you're back. Back in the car, windows down, singing a verse you didn’t even know you remembered. Back in your best friend’s kitchen. Back on the dance floor. Back in the moment you made a choice, fell in love, changed direction, broke apart.
That’s the power of music. And that’s what we were chasing when we launched VNYL.
VNYL never meant to be just another music app.
It was born out of frustration with the way streaming services turned discovery into data and playlists into formulas. We wanted something human. Something emotional. A place to post not just what you were listening to, but why it mattered. To build mixtapes that weren’t just collections—they were confessions.
So we built the VNYL app. It was beautiful. It worked. And slowly, thousands of people downloaded it. They posted tracks, built playlists, tagged songs with stories, and shared them with friends.
But as much as people loved it, we couldn’t shake the feeling: we weren’t getting anywhere. No press coverage. No buzz. No real traction. Just quiet appreciation. And for a while, that hurt.
Because when you put your whole heart into something and the world shrugs? That kind of silence is deafening.
Still, we kept going.
But then came the technical limits—the moment every founder dreads. Streaming APIs were capped. Most users could only hear 30-second previews unless they logged in through their personal streaming accounts. Some songs didn’t play at all.
It broke the magic. It made the experience clunky. And no matter how many workarounds we tried, the tech just wasn’t giving us the freedom we needed.
So we had a choice: shut it down… or change direction entirely.
And we made a decision that felt both ridiculous and obvious at the same time: We printed cards.
Physical cards. Real-world prompts. Tangible, playable conversation starters
that asked people to respond to music, not just consume it. And instead of fighting for full tracks, we embraced what we had all along—the 30-second preview. We made that the moment. The feature, not the flaw.
Each card became a challenge: Tell the story behind your pick. Call out the sample. Play a song that hits like summer in the '90s. Your song plays.
The room reacts. The moment lives.
We printed our first batch with our own money.
We boxed them up. We held our breath.
And something happened.
The moment those cards left our hands, people got it.
They laughed. They cried. They argued. They played.
We sold out our first print run almost instantly. And for the first time, we didn’t just have users—we had believers.
That was when we knew we had found it. The connection. The spark. The thing we’d been trying to reach with lines of code, but that only existed when people held something real, gathered together, and let the music speak.
VNYL became more than an app. It became a bridge.
Now, when people scan a card with the app, they don’t ask where the rest of the song is. They ask: “What are you playing next?”
Because that’s the magic—30 seconds is all it takes. Just enough to unlock the story, trigger the laugh, start the memory.
We stopped trying to compete with streaming platforms. We built something they can’t. We made music playable again—not just in your headphones, but in your life.
And that’s what VNYL is now:
A music-based card game powered by emotion, driven by taste, and made for people who remember what a mixtape really meant.
We didn’t give up. We flipped the format. And the second we did, people showed up.
So if you’ve ever played a song for someone just to explain how you feel, VNYL was built for you.
Grab your deck at www.vnyl.games.
The music’s in the cards.
VNYL is how you press play.