Dodek — Music Taste Intelligence

The Insight

Expert DJs have invisible frameworks. Dodek makes them visible.

Every experienced DJ carries a mental model that connects curation, performance, and learning. They refine it every gig, adjusting what works, dropping what doesn't. But that framework is effortful to build, invisible to others, and locked inside their heads and opaque library tools. There is no language for it, no way to see its shape, no way to share it.

the conviction gap — stated vs. revealed preference

# What you curate is not what you play.

Curation score:  how many playlists a track appears in
Play count:      how often you actually reach for it

# The delta between these two numbers is your conviction gap.
# High curation, low plays → you think you like it.
# Low curation, high plays → you actually need it.

The gap is the story. It reveals who you really are as a curator,
not who you think you are.

The Dodek

Twelve faces of musical identity

Your Dodek is computed from twelve behavioral dimensions. Each face measures something different about how you relate to music. The shape they form together is your type.

Face 1

DNA

Core genre root(s) your library grows from

Face 2

Descriptors

Qualitative texture tags beyond genre labels

Face 3

Mood

Emotional register and feeling-space

Face 4

Set Phase

Where tracks live in a set arc (opener, peak, closer)

Face 5

Energy Shape

How energy changes over a track's duration

Face 6

Groove / Stance

Physical posture the track demands

Face 7

Vocals

Vocal character and presence

Face 8

Mix Mechanics

How a track transitions: builds, drops, loops

Face 9

Genre Modifiers

Deviation from genre center

Face 10

BPM

Tempo range and distribution

Face 11

Energy Level

Absolute energy intensity (1 to 10)

Face 12

Conviction

Curation score vs. play count — the gap between intention and action

Curator Types

Eight archetypes, emergent from the twelve faces

Your type isn't assigned from a quiz. It's computed from which faces dominate your profile. The shape of your Dodek determines your name.

The Tunneler

2-3 faces massive, rest small

Deep conviction in narrow lanes. Plays what they curate. Knows exactly what they are and doesn't waver.

The Cartographer

Many medium faces, none dominant

Always exploring, rarely committing. Maps territory others haven't found yet. Broad but never shallow.

The Architect

Energy Shape + Set Phase + Mix dominant

Designs journeys, thinks in arcs not tracks. The set is the instrument, each track a structural element.

The Collector

High curation, low play counts

Accumulates everything. The conviction gap is the story. Taste as aspiration, not practice.

The Channeler

Mood + Groove + Vocals dominant

Feels music physically and emotionally, not by genre. Selects by body, not by brain.

The Purist

DNA face massive, Modifiers tiny

One genre, deep. No deviation. The commitment is the art. Everyone else is tourists.

The Alchemist

Genre Modifiers + Descriptors dominant

Lives between genres. Constantly hybridizing. The edges of categories are where the interesting things happen.

The Archaeologist

High plays on old tracks, low new curation

Digs the existing collection. Rarely adds, always rediscovers. The library is a living archive.

Core Concept

The Conviction Gap

Stated Preference

What you curate. Playlist membership, crate organization, tags you assign. The identity you construct.

↔

Revealed Preference

What you play. Play counts, gig selections, the tracks you actually reach for under pressure.

The delta between these two is where musical identity actually lives. Not in what you think you like — in what you do when it counts.

Product Vision

From analysis to ambient identity

Dodek Analysis

Static taste map and type assignment from library data. Upload or connect, see your twelve-face profile.

v1 (live)

Dodek Live

Real-time Dodek shift during a live set. Watch your profile change as you play, track by track.

v2

Dodek Social

Share, compare, find compatibility. Discover DJs whose profiles complement yours for b2b sets.

v2

Dodek Ambient

Wearable or phone glow at festivals. Taste as visible color, computed from your profile in real time.

v3

Dodek B2B

Lineup analytics for labels, venues, and promoters. Understand the taste landscape of a crowd or a roster.

v2-v3

Stack

Built with the simplest things that work

Visualization

Taste Map

HTML/CSS/JS + Canvas API
Static JSON payload (321KB)

Intelligence

Kinjia CLI

Python 3, Click, Flask
Genre ontology discovery

Data

Cross-Reference DB

SQLite — 2,370 tracks
251 playlists, 9 dimensions

Sources

DJ Libraries

Lexicon DJ (SQLite)
Serato crates, Notion playlists

Hosting

Cloudflare Pages

Auto-deploy from main
Zero backend in v1

Scripts

Gig Prep Pipeline

Bash + Python
Sync, verify, dedup, pre-gig

Thesis Fit

"You Are an API" — DJ taste is locked in their heads and in opaque library tools. Every platform that touches music — Spotify, Serato, Rekordbox — builds its own model of you. You can't see it, can't port it, can't share it. Dodek extracts that intelligence into something visible and portable. The curator becomes the API, not the platform.

Wherewithal Ventures — Business Model Inversion thesis

Studio Vision

What this project explores

Questions

Can musical taste be decomposed into measurable dimensions without losing its soul?

Is the gap between stated and revealed preference the most interesting thing about identity?

What happens when invisible expertise becomes visible and shareable?

Can taste be ambient? Can you wear it? Can two strangers recognize resonance without speaking?

Is a dodecahedron the right metaphor for something as fluid as taste?

Bets

DJs want a language for what they already know intuitively but can't articulate.

Behavioral data (plays) is more honest than self-reported data (playlists), and the tension between them is the richest signal.

Taste visualization can be as compelling as music visualization — the spectrum analyzer for identity.

Social features in music should be built on taste compatibility, not follower counts.

The festival wearable isn't a gimmick — it's the purest expression of computed identity in a physical space.

The Vision

Taste as visible light

Silent disco proved people love visible taste affinity in a crowd. Xylobands proved synchronized light wearables work at scale. Dodek Ambient combines both — but your color is computed from your taste, not chosen from three channels or controlled by the artist.

Two people glowing the same shade didn't pick the same channel. Their Dodeks are resonating with the same dimensions of the same track at the same moment. The color isn't decorative. It's diagnostic.

Not what you chose to signal. What the music revealed about you.