It's true: social media engagement is led by music. But efforts to get on board the anticipated trend of synchronized listening and chat have not resulted in big winners… yet. The makers of the Playlist app for Apple iOS believe their product could be the one to finally crack the code.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Social music app Playlist lets you listen to music with others in real time <a href="https://t.co/s0UwwizLMC">https://t.co/s0UwwizLMC</a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/sarahintampa?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@sarahintampa</a> <a href="https://t.co/u5AQj7xSOn">pic.twitter.com/u5AQj7xSOn</a></p>— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) <a href="https://twitter.com/TechCrunch/status/1067542039510827011?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 27, 2018</a></blockquote>
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As profiled at TechCrunch, Karen Katz and Steve Petersen are serial entrepreneurs with a track record of successful start-up companies behind them. As Stanford engineering grads they incubated their latest Playlist app through Stanford StartX and are looking to make their free app go viral. Although only available as an Apple iOS download so far, an Android version is anticipated. Last year's beta version pulled a half million early adopters and their mature release already has close to 80,000 downloads installed.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">What is ‘social' music in the streaming age? Some thoughts on past flops, current success stories, and opportunities for the future – plus the challenges here for Spotify, Apple Music and co <a href="https://t.co/6AdjFmNmJh">https://t.co/6AdjFmNmJh</a> <a href="https://t.co/jBcbzslig3">pic.twitter.com/jBcbzslig3</a></p>— Music Ally (@MusicAlly) <a href="https://twitter.com/MusicAlly/status/1027831445572780034?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 10, 2018</a></blockquote>
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"The world has gone social, but music has been largely left behind," said Katz. "That's a real gap."
There are already many ways to listen together. Facebook's listen with friends feature hoped for a breakthough in 2012, and Spotify has received requests for the feature for years but not introduced it. Group Play for SoundCloud raised hopes as well as complaints when first efforts to use it glitched with a message reportedly referring to being in "development mode." The frustrations have probably deterred more developers from trying to break into what many believe is still an idea with great potential for growth.
Based on Playlist's successful beta testing, their engineers are targeting under-21 users, especially high school students, with features based on feedback. Their business relations also enabled them to launch with a library of 45 million songs, available without a paid subscription. Filled with fun clickable features especially requested by their younger users, Playlist is an entrant worth keeping an eye on in a space that has seemed poised to take off for years. If Katz and Petersen have succeeded in designing a breakthrough app, you can bet competitors both new and established will jump on board.
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