story · 2 min
lev talish had an idea: put locations on a map. in june 2025 we started turning it into a product. i took the concept, the user journeys, the mechanics and the art direction; lev built it.
the question behind it: where do you actually go to find good music in a city? not where the seo is best. so every place on the map is chosen by our team and by people who live inside a local scene — labels, radio stations, promoters, artists. the launch post said the selection is based on "all the events attended and glasses drunk". (3935)
the teaser in april 2026 said: 50+ curators, 4 partners, 4 cities, 200+ places. we had bought a hosting plan for 1,000 visitors and promised to buy more if the post got 100 reactions. it got 140. (3918)
how it works: open the map → choose a city and a date → find an event → buy a ticket. (3961)
what's on it now: 8 cities, 215 places, 50+ curators, around 2,000 users. curators include kurs radio, expose, grain, гост звук and цк. some layers you won't find on other maps:
- grain's compilation "grain fields": 19 tracks made from field recordings, each pinned to the place where it was recorded, from armenia to sri lanka, and playable in the map's radio (4144)
- obninsk, added with station obninsk for the am-0 festival: the city's venues from the 1970s to today (4282)
- a weekly digest of events, which we started before the map: "our selection isn't wide, but picky." (3561)
nine days after launch we wrote honestly: "we need visitors." we asked for reposts and feedback, and invited people to become curators and moderators. (3965, 3966) later, businesses started asking to be added, and some paid for placement.
the team: lev talish (idea, development), me (product owner, art direction), nadya khudyakova (web design), vika vinogradova and nastya timonina (pr, smm) and three moderators.
paprika map is now the working prototype for sceneindex.
links paprika-map.com · launch post