what cut is
Cut is where songwriters meet the people who place songs. A discovery marketplace for writers, music supervisors, and A&R.
Writers submit songs. Buyers discover them through heat, a system that turns taste into navigation. The two sides never see the same interface, because what a writer needs to feel and what a buyer needs to find are different things.
Cut sits in the studio's tools line beside Thermal and Ledger. It is a two-sided marketplace, which makes it the studio's most structurally ambitious product, and a strong proof point for the practice.
where it sits in the studio
martori studio runs two engines. consulting and custom builds are the primary business. the portfolio of seven products, across the healing-worlds and tools lines, is the second engine: proof of work and a sales asset, not the revenue center.
Cut is the most ambitious build in the portfolio. A two-sided marketplace with a taste graph and a generative cover system is a serious piece of software, and a serious thing to show a client.
the system
- heat-as-light
- interest rendered as warmth, visible only where it belongs.
- the writer lane
- heat is never shown, so no writer optimizes for a number.
- the buyer lane
- heat is navigation, surfacing songs by real affinity.
- the taste graph
- a dot-product affinity score that learns what a buyer actually responds to.
- generative covers
- an SVG cover system, so every song arrives with a face.
The two lanes are not the same product wearing two skins. The writer's side protects the work from metric-chasing. The buyer's side turns real taste into a way to move through the catalog.
voice and copy
Music-industry, warm and honest. Cut speaks like someone who knows how songs get placed and respects both sides of the table.
June is an advocate, never an assistant. The word assistant does not appear anywhere in Cut. The distinction is the product.
The three bans, studio-wide. No em dashes. No exclamation points. No wellness language.
visual identity
One typeface. Hanken Grotesk, weights 400 to 800, no exceptions. This corrected an earlier drift to other faces, which is now closed for good.
Dark-first, on a warm canvas. Ember carries emphasis, gold carries heat. Clay is the studio signature, carried through every book.
The mark. heat-as-light, an ember becoming glow. the martori gate is the studio mark.
june
June is an advocate. Not an assistant, not a tool, not a concierge. June works for the writer, arguing a song's case to the people who can place it. The distinction is the whole point, and the word assistant does not appear anywhere in Cut.
Because the writer never sees heat, there is no number to chase and no metric to perform for. June advocates, and the system stays honest.
the doctrine
Heat is light. interest is rendered as warmth, and it appears only on the side where it helps rather than distorts.
The dual face. writer and buyer see different products on purpose. the writer never sees the heat.
Consent. a song moves toward a buyer on the writer's terms, and June's advocacy never overrides them.
Netlify-native. TanStack Start, Netlify DB through Drizzle, Netlify Identity, and Netlify Blobs. Supabase is out of production. The iOS path is a median.co wrapper, with Capacitor kept for a later native build.
the roadmap
Cut ships when it is ready, not on a date. Two things changed since the last book: trademark clearance is resolved, and the stack is confirmed Netlify-native. The shared september launch is retired.
the system and the stack, settled.
- heat-as-light, the generative SVG cover system, and the buyer taste graph with dot-product affinity scoring.
- June, advocate only. the dual face, writer heat hidden, buyer heat as navigation.
- stack confirmed Netlify-native, Supabase removed. trademark clearance resolved.
make both lanes whole.
- account management, dashboards, and the chat system rebuilt.
- the buyer-lane overflow bug fixed, the root cause of the two lanes reading unbalanced.
- writer and buyer cohesion across the whole experience.
open the marketplace on both sides.
- ios via median.co wrapper, no rewrite.
- store listing and a quiet testflight beta.
- seed the marketplace, first writers and first supervisors and A&R, the two-sided cold start.
- presence, a working marketplace held steady.
- the taste graph learns, sharpening buyer discovery over time.
- the sweep. a scheduled playbook review in the new year.
brand rules
- one face. hanken grotesk, 400 to 800, everywhere. no other faces, ever.
- clay #b6502e is the studio signature, and the gate is the studio mark.
- dark-first, on the warm canvas.
- no em dashes. no exclamation points. no wellness language.
- heat is light, and the writer never sees the heat.
- june is an advocate, never an assistant. the word does not appear.
- consent. a song moves on the writer's terms.
- ship on readiness, not on a date.