⭐️ The Golden Era of Ideas: Skills and Budget Are No Longer the Bottleneck

It’s been a while.

Lately, I’ve been drifting into what I’ll call my vibe-coding era.

I was planning to spend some time in Barcelona to learn something new. Due to last-minute curriculum changes, that fell through. Unfortunate, but it pushed me to explore how far you can take vibe coding in music and books instead. Something different, but just as exciting.

Going forward, I want to spend more time showing how easy it has become to gather data, form an idea, and turn that idea into something tangible you can ship, test, or share. Often in days. Sometimes in hours. We all know, in fast-moving industries like music and publishing, that speed matters.

Not long ago, the barriers were very real: budget, time, technical skills, access to developers or designers. Even the mental overhead of getting started. Those constraints shaped what got built, and what quietly stayed in notebooks.

Building something as simple as a Spotify API-connected tool meant clearing budgets, hiring external teams, and waiting weeks or months before seeing anything usable. The same applied to internal scraping projects or basic data visualisations, often blocked by headcount, tooling, or design limitations. The real cost wasn’t just money. It was momentum.

Today, most of those barriers are gone.

The tools are cheap (or free). Inspiration is everywhere. And with AI-assisted coding and design, you no longer need deep technical expertise to experiment. The real bottleneck now isn’t technology or budget, it’s critical and creative thinking. Knowing what’s worth exploring, what to question, and what story the data actually tells (and doesn’t).

To push myself in that direction, I’ll be sharing small vibe-coding projects where I deliberately don’t overthink or overbuild. The goal isn’t polish, it’s speed, curiosity, and learning. Build something, put it out there, see if it resonates. If not, move on. If it does, there’s always room to expand.

What excites me most is that the playing field in music, books, and creative industries has never been flatter. Access to data is no longer the differentiator. Creativity and clarity of thought are.

So, what does that look like in practice?

Book Trails – Where Non-Fiction Leads

A visual exploration of how nonfiction books connect through shared readership on Storytel. Built quickly using Lovable, with publicly available data, and focused on storytelling rather than dashboards. Inspired by The Pudding.

This project is about proving that engaging, editorial data experiences are no longer reserved for big teams, deep technical skills, or big budgets.

👉 Book Trails – Where Non-Fiction Leads

Spotify Charting Dashboard

A lightweight dashboard shell built on top of all Dutch Spotify charting data. Third-party tools charge serious fees for this, yet access to the underlying data has never been easier.

If you want to use analytics as a unique selling point toward artists or creators, it has to be genuinely good. The playing field is more equal than ever, and that’s exactly what fuels competition; pushing everyone to build better, sharper, more creative tools.

👉 Spotify Charting Dashboard

(This one is already tempting me to expand it further.)

Thanks for reading. Many ideas, so more very soon.

Bo

If any of this resonates and you’d like help thinking through digital or data strategy, feel free to reach out by replying to this e-mail.