I have spent most of my working life in and around music, working with artists at different stages of their careers.

One thing I have seen consistently is just how much artists are expected to hold together themselves.

Making the music is only part of it. There are shows to organize, people to follow up with, opportunities to pursue, audiences to reach and relationships to maintain. Most artists already have their own ways of doing this: notes, spreadsheets, folders, messages, memory and a collection of tools that do not naturally work together.

None of those things is particularly difficult on its own. There is just a lot of it. And when everything has to run through the artist, it takes time, attention and energy away from the music.

Working closely with Arjuna Oakes made that especially clear. We were constantly finding ways to keep things moving: another spreadsheet, another list, another workaround. The problem was not a lack of effort or ambition. It was the weight of having to be the artist and the person running the artist’s career at the same time.

Since then, we have spoken with artists about how they actually work. What we have heard is not a request for another platform, another content plan or another set of tasks to complete. Artists want to stay connected to the people and opportunities that matter, without being asked to become full-time marketers or administrators.

That is why we are building harprr.

We want it to work quietly in the background: to help an artist remember an important person or moment, make a natural follow-up easier, and keep relationships from being lost when life, work and the next show take over.

harprr is not about turning fans into numbers or creating more work. It is about helping artists build and sustain the relationships around their music, while protecting more time and headspace for the music itself.

Gary, Neil and Lee