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Founder story

The camera I built in the hardest month of my life.

By Con, founder of Music Wide Selfie · Sydney, Australia

From September 2024 I posted almost every day, often several times a day: short videos about mindset, health and getting through hard times. A few people told me those videos helped them through some very dark moments. That kept me going.

I filmed nearly all of it the same way: phone at arm’s length, the widest front view I could get, music playing in the background. Me and the world behind me, in one frame, with a song I loved under my voice. It sounds small. It was my whole way of making things.

July 2026

In July 2026 I lost my uncle. Two weeks later, I lost my cousin. Anyone who has had a month like that knows it doesn’t feel real. You go to one funeral and you’re still in shock when the next phone call comes.

In the same week, Snapchat, the app I filmed everything on, blocked my phone. One message, a support code, and no explanation I could do anything with. I remember answering a support email on my way to my uncle’s wake, dressed in black, because the work I’d built there meant that much to me. I spent weeks trying to get a straight answer. I never got one.

I couldn’t control what happened to my family. I couldn’t control a company’s decision. But I could control what I built next.

What I actually lost

It wasn’t really the account. It was the way I filmed. I tried other camera apps. The ones I tried that went wide stopped my music. The ones that kept my music didn’t go wide. Nothing did the simple thing I needed: open the camera, keep my song playing, film wide, record my voice and the music and the room, and save it straight to my Photos.

So I started building it myself. At first it was just for me. I called it WideSelfie.

From one fix to a real app

Then it grew. Once the wide view and the music worked, I wanted both cameras at once. Then my screen and my face in one video. Then a teleprompter, a camera that waits until I’m in frame, and a check that tells me the take actually saved with sound, because when you film alone, there’s no one to tell you it didn’t. Build after build, tested on my own iPhone. The version on my phone today is build 170, and it’s become Music Wide Selfie.

It isn’t released yet. Some features have passed early testing on my iPhone, some are still being tested, and some are only planned. Every page on these sites says which is which, because I’d rather be honest than impressive.

Why I’m telling you this

Because the toughest weeks of my life gave me the clearest idea I’ve ever had. If you’ve ever lost access to the thing you used to create with, or you just want to film yourself wide with your music on, I built this for you too.

And because there’s a bigger reason behind all of it. You can read about that here.

Thank you for reading.
Con

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