A directory is worthless, a registrar isn't | Building Products [Mischa Sigtermans](https://mischa.sigtermans.me) Menu Close [Thoughts](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/thoughts) [Books](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/books) [Consultancy](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/consultancy) [About](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/about) [← Thoughts](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/thoughts) September 18th, 2026 · Product A directory is worthless, a registrar isn't =========================================== Anyone can build a list of artists. The only part of TAP that's hard to copy is a person checking who's allowed to change it. Verified means we checked. Nothing more, and nothing less. In its first month, more than 500 artists claimed a profile on [TAP](https://tap.fm). On 8 September, seven of them were verified. Seven. The site was live, the free pages worked, [926 Stagent press kits](/thought/the-press-kit-outgrew-stagent) were waiting to move across, and the verified count was a number you could count on your hands. That's on purpose. The verification is the product. Everything else is a directory, and a directory is worthless. Anyone can build a list ----------------------- A list of artists with bios, photos, and links is the easiest thing in music tech to build. Spotify has one. Every booking tool has one. Every festival app, every promoter's database, every link-in-bio service. I built one myself inside [Stagent](https://stagent.com) and ran it for three years. The problem with all of them is the same. Anyone can create the entry. A fan, an old manager, a promoter who needed a page for a flyer, someone who wants a handle before the artist gets there. The data looks official until the day it matters, and then nobody can say who put it there. A directory answers 'what does this artist look like?' It can't answer 'who's allowed to speak for them?' And that second question is the one every platform, label, and promoter needs answered before they trust the first. The thing TAP does that a directory doesn't is check. Verified means we checked ------------------------- The copy on TAP's verification page is the most carefully written text in the product. It's short on purpose: 'Verified means we checked.' What it means: TAP checked that the people behind this profile are the artist or their team. Apps that read the artist don't check again. They read the date it was verified. The name and the handle lock from then on, and a change goes past TAP first. What it doesn't mean: that the bio is true, or that the pages are complete. That the artist is popular, signed, or booked. That the person at the door is who they say they are. The footer line under all of it: 'Nothing more, and nothing less.' Most verification badges drift into meaning 'important'. A check next to a name starts as 'this is really them' and ends up as a status symbol, or something you can buy with a subscription. The moment it means popular, it stops meaning checked. So the list of what verified does not mean is as important as the list of what it does. A person, not a script ---------------------- The method behind it is a registrar. A person reads the profile, weighs the signals, and decides. Email, phone, and domain count as signals. A request needs a verified phone number, and only an owner can make one. If you prove you own the artist's domain with a DNS record, that counts. None of those grant the badge on their own. They weigh in a decision a person makes. I'm deliberately vague about the rest. One of TAP's principles reads: 'We say that we check, never how.' The methods are ours to choose and change. A published checklist is a checklist someone can game. Here's why the person matters. One of the signals has the artist invite TAP onto their team on a streaming platform, and that platform sends TAP a mail confirming the invite. It looked like a clean automatic signal. Then we noticed the mail names the team, not the artist. A team called after any artist could claim any handle. So the rule became: the platform never grants on its own. A registrar accepts the invite, looks at the artist inside the team, leaves again, and says so before the badge lands. A script would have granted it. A person noticed. The cost is the moat -------------------- Human verification is slow and it doesn't scale the way a signup form does. That's the point. I've written before that [the hardest layer to copy is the one where time is the only input](/thought/generic-ai-is-a-commodity). For vertical AI that's accumulated data. For TAP it's accumulated checks. Every verified artist is a small decision, dated, made by someone who looked. A competitor can clone the pages in a weekend. They can't clone the dates. It's also why everything else in TAP can be free. The handle, the pages, the team, and the verification are free for artists. Apps that read artists at volume are the ones who pay, and what they pay for is the right to stop checking. 'Apps and platforms that read the artist do not check again.' That sentence is the business model. Reachable, not listed --------------------- There's one more principle I like because it says what TAP refuses to be: 'Reachable, not listed.' Every artist has an address. Nothing on TAP is a directory to browse. You can't scroll TAP. You can't search it for artists in a genre. You can only reach an artist whose address you already have, and when you do, you know who stands behind what you're reading. More than 500 profiles in a month. Most of them aren't verified yet, and that gap is the point. A profile is a claim. The badge is the check. It'll grow slower than a directory would. Anyone can build a list of artists. Only one of them can tell you who's allowed to change it. *thanks for reading* Hi, I'm [Mischa](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/about). I've been *shipping products* and *building ventures* for over a decade. First exit at 25, second at 30. Now Partner & CPO at [Ryde Ventures](https://ryde.ventures), an AI venture studio in Amsterdam. Currently shipping [Stagent](https://stagent.com), [TAP](https://tap.fm) and [Steddle](https://steddle.com). I [write](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/thoughts) about what I learn along the way. [More about me](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/about). Keep reading: [The most skeptical about AI haven't shipped with it](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/thought/ai-skeptics-havent-shipped-anything). [← Thoughts](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/thoughts) Connect ------- [X](https://x.com/mischamartijn) [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/mischasigtermans) [GitHub](https://github.com/mischasigtermans) © 2026 Hold My Beer B.V. · [RSS](feed:https://mischa.sigtermans.me/feed)