45 guests, noon to 3 a.m.: the party where I wasn't the DJ

At every party, there's one guy glued to the speakers. Usually, that's me.

You start a playlist thinking it'll just run. Twenty minutes later it falls flat, someone asks you for a song, someone else wants "something that moves", and you spend your evening staring at your phone. You throw a party and you watch it from a distance.

For my birthday, on August 14, I wanted to try the opposite: not dealing with it. At all.

Orfeo, in three sentences#

Guests suggest songs and vote from their phones, with nothing to install. A brain decides what to play, and when. A Mac plugged into the speakers drives Apple Music and keeps things going on its own.

I built it in eight weeks, with the birthday as the deadline — the kind of deadline that doesn't move. The last week was dress rehearsal and load tests: run the thing as if it were the big day, and fix everything that blew up.

But I'm keeping the technical side for the next articles. Here, I just want to tell you about the day.

August 14#

There were forty-five of us. The music started at noon. It stopped at three in the morning.

In between: 203 tracks played, and only 2 repeats.

On arrival, a QR code. You scan, you're in: you search for a song, you suggest it, you vote for other people's, you leave a dedication if you feel like it. No account, no app to download.

And me? I changed the phase by hand when the mood changed. That's it. That's literally everything I did all day, music-wise.

I never took over. Not once in fifteen hours. No song thrown on in a panic, no dead air to rescue.

What scared me most were the lulls. At a party there are long stretches where everyone is talking, eating, dancing — and nobody takes their phone out. In those stretches, Orfeo picks on its own. I was expecting weird transitions.

Nope. It was smooth, and in the right mood. From lunch to the dance floor, the music followed the day.

The guests#

They used everything. Suggestions, votes, dedications — all of it. I expected half the features to sit in a corner, like they always do. Not even.

The best moment was when some of them figured out I was the one who had built it. One guest goes:

"But this is excellent! Honestly, you should make this a public service."

I'm a modest guy. So I won't comment.

(It does feel good, though.)

What got in the way#

Onboarding. That's the weak spot, and it's a clear one.

Some guests were in private browsing. Result: Orfeo lost their session, and they became strangers to the app again. Not a disaster, but not the welcome you want to give someone who just scanned your QR code.

Two other bugs came out in real conditions. Nothing that cut the music, and I fixed them within two days. But that's the lesson of the day: a real party finds what no rehearsal finds.

What I take from it#

The app fit the event. The music was smooth, in the right mood at the right time.

And above all: the DJ's mental load, gone. That's what I was after, really. Not a good automatic DJ — just not having to think about it anymore. I spent my birthday with my guests.

Next up is opening Orfeo to people other than me, so anyone can do the same at their own party. It's not launched yet. And guest onboarding will be the first thing to redo.

In the next articles, I open the hood: how the brain picks a song, what the rehearsal week brought up, and what happens when a hundred and forty simulated guests show up at once.

— Pato