31 — Product Vision 360º (brand · audience · north star · impact)
Active — owner-locked 2026-06-11. Governed by
00-ROADMAP.md(this doc supplies the brand/business layer the roadmap was missing; on scope/sequencing conflicts the roadmap wins). Consolidates and supersedes the brand/business fragments in archived docs 01 (tiers) and 15 (positioning).
Mission (unchanged)
Sonnance is the creative hub for the music industry — versioned audio, time-synced feedback, approvals and sharing in one place, instead of the final_v3_REALLY_final.wav sprawl across Dropbox / WeTransfer / WhatsApp / email.
North star (5-year shape)
The collaboration OS of music. The layer where the industry works together — every track's lifecycle lives here from idea to release: native apps, DAW plugins, distributor integrations, public API, label/management workflows.
Differentiated expansion: the creator business hub. Riding the collaboration wedge, Sonnance becomes the business layer of the people making the music — credits, contracts, splits, royalties, distribution deals — which is also where the B2B audience (below) concentrates its value. Collaboration is how we win usage; the business hub is how we become irreplaceable.
Audience — "professional-led" (owner-locked)
Key insight: there is no consumer here. Every Sonnance user is a music business — solo (a freelance: artist, producer, engineer) or a team (management, studio, label).
- Center of gravity: B2B. Teams — managers, studios, small labels — are the primary focus and the eventual revenue center. This is why the doc-26 layer (sharing identity, Rosters, lenses, internal/external) and the doc-28 credits/ISRC layer carry strategic weight: they are the B2B features.
- Adoption engine: the solo professional. Individual artists/producers adopt through the free iOS review loop and pull collaborators in — bottom-up, product-led. The role cascade (owner/admin/editor/viewer) already models both shapes with one product. One app serves both — no separate "business" product (consistent with the one-dashboard decision, doc 20).
- Implication for sequencing: after the current polish/QA phase, doc-26 (sharing/Rosters) is the highest-leverage build — it is simultaneously the parked UX question and the B2B capability.
Monetization — deferred (owner-locked)
No billing on the roadmap. The Stripe module stays stubbed; the archived tier numbers (doc 01) are not commitments and stay out of active docs. Revisit when product-market signals warrant it — pricing will be designed around the professional-led model (team/roster value, not storage quotas).
Brand — what Sonnance stands for
Two pillars lead everything (copy, design, feature priority); one commitment sits behind them.
- Craft & reverence — the creative sanctuary. Music is treated with reverence; the software is sublime, calm, design-led. This is why the design system is a brand asset (doc 22), and why the moment a state changes is a brand moment — scroll-linked transitions interpolate with the user's gesture, nothing pops (doc 22 §4, owner-locked the same day). Every surface should feel inevitable.
- Professional calm — anti-chaos. One source of truth versus the WhatsApp/Dropbox sprawl. Reliability, clarity, and truthful state (e.g., version-scoped approval, doc 29 — an "Approved" badge may never lie about which audio it approved). Calm is a feature.
The commitment (later phases): fair credit & attribution. Everyone who touched a track is credited and traceable — credits, ISRC/variants (doc 28), and eventually splits/royalties in the business hub. Not a launch pillar; a standing direction the data model keeps preparing for (doc 28's Work/Recording/Release framing, credits, per-version identity). This is the societal impact stance: recognition and fairness in an industry famous for lacking both.
Impact — industry & society (the "4D" view)
- For creators: their work stops degrading into chat-app chaos; review happens against the exact recording; credit is structurally possible.
- For teams/labels: rosters, approvals and delivery in one accountable place — professional infrastructure at independent scale.
- For the industry: as the collaboration OS accumulates truthful who-made-what data (versions, verdicts, credits), Sonnance becomes the place where attribution is born correct — upstream of distributors and collection societies.
- For the craft: software that treats music with reverence raises the floor of how creative work is handled everywhere ("like clouds to the body" — doc 12's sanctuary line, now brand canon).
What this changes in practice
| Area | Effect |
|---|---|
| Roadmap after polish | doc-26 sharing/Rosters/lenses = next major build (B2B center of gravity) |
| Copy & naming | "Roster", "Portal", professional vocabulary; sanctuary tone; no consumer-app language |
| Design reviews | the two pillars are the rubric: is it reverent? is it calm? (+ doc 22 motion principle) |
| Data model | keep preparing credits/ISRC/variant identity (doc 28) even before the business hub ships |
| Billing | out of scope everywhere until owner re-opens it |
Cross-references
- Roadmap & phases:
00-ROADMAP.md· One-dashboard:20 - B2B capability layer:
26-IDENTITY-SHARING-NAVIGATION.md - Credits/variants groundwork:
28-RECORDINGS-VARIANTS-RELEASES.md - Truthful approval:
29-VERSION-SCOPED-APPROVAL.md - Design-as-brand:
22-IOS-DESIGN-SYSTEM.md(+ web doc 12) - Archived inputs: 01 (mission/tiers — tiers not current), 15 (competitive positioning)