Collaboration
Yongolailan: one page that books shows
This one is a collaboration. We didn't build it alone: our part was the front end and technical direction, done alongside the artist's team. Riv Lux Media does not own, host, or operate this site, and the music, films, artwork, and awards described below belong entirely to the artist and to Caribbean Sea Sound.
Yongolailan is a Cuban DJ, producer, and live electronic performer based in New York City. He works across Afro-diasporic rhythms, Afro-Cuban roots, Latin jazz, and contemporary electronic music. His label, Caribbean Sea Sound, operates out of Brooklyn.
The site is a single page. It holds live dates, a nine-release catalog, short films, merch, an About section, a contact desk, and a downloadable EPK.
The problem an artist site actually solves
Most musician websites are built as a shrine. The artist's job is to look impressive, and the visitor's job is to be impressed.
That gets the brief backwards. The people who matter most on an artist's site are bookers, promoters, journalists, and licensing supervisors, and every one of them arrives with a task. A booker needs to know what the act is, see proof it draws, and get a press kit into an email within about ninety seconds. A music supervisor needs to hear a track and find out who owns it.
So the page is organised around those errands. The artist's biography is one section among several.
What that changed
The catalog is a router. Nine releases, filterable by album, EP, or single, each with its year, its credits, and a link straight out to wherever it lives: Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, the vinyl press. The site doesn't try to be the player. Sending people to the platform where a stream actually counts is worth more to the artist than keeping them on the page.
The press kit is a straight download. One click gets the EPK, with no form to fill in and no email gate. Gating a press kit optimises for lead capture at the exact moment you want a journalist to have your material. You end up trading the thing you want for a metric.
The contact form pre-sorts itself. Booking, press, collaborations, licensing, sound design, DJ sets, live performance, general. A working artist gets all eight kinds of message, and they carry very different urgency. Sorting at the point of writing beats sorting at the point of reading.
Recognition is stated once, with specifics. A Cubadisco award, plus festival placements at Bolton, Florence, and EYEIFE, each listed with its category, its year, and the work it was for. Vague acclaim reads as puffery. Dated, attributable credits read as fact, and they're the lines a journalist can quote without checking.
What we contributed
Front-end build and technical direction. The site runs on Next.js as a single page with anchor navigation, so the whole thing arrives at once and every section is a link a booker can paste into an email.
The catalog, films, and merch content and the artwork are the artist's team's, and so is the day-to-day running of the site. We don't have back-end access, and a portfolio page should say that plainly: we helped build this site, and we don't run it.
What this demonstrates
Designing a site around what its highest-value visitor came to do, with the owner's story in second place. And working inside someone else's project as a contributor: a normal, useful way to work, and one that only stays useful if the credit is accurate.
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