A new social network has quietly blasted with Gen Z and the youngest, and is not from Meta.
Based on San Francisco Air navigation It offers a mobile, social application that allows people to express themselves through their music. Users can share what leaks with friends through a widget smartphone that operates with a series of streaming services.
On Wednesday, Airbuds announces the increase of $ 5 million in funded by the Early Stage Business Company Seven Seven Six, founded by co -founder Reddit Alexis Ohanian.
The start has seen over 15 million applications up to this point and has 5 million monthly active users, 1.5 million of which start the application daily. According to App Intelligence, Appfigures company, Airbuds also has a feeling of positive ratings of 96% in the last 30 days in 9,400 scores.
For users, the application offers a way of socializing and connecting with their friends, participate in self-expression and discover new melodies, all in one place.
This is a combination that top music providers such as Apple and Spotify have not yet understood. Apple has tried and failed many times to integrate a social experience into her music applications. This effort began with the devastating music social network Ping, which closed in early 2010, followed by a renewed attempt known as the Connect, with the aim of connecting artists and fans. (Connect Also did not hold.)
In the meantime, Spotify is working to make streamer music a more social application with additions, such as Tiktok flows, comments, polls and Q&As for podcasts, artist stories, collaborative playlists, messages and much more.
However, no company has found the sweet spot when it comes to offering a real social network, because building popular consumer social experiences can be difficult and unpredictable.
Fortunately for Airbuds co -founders Tower and ArabicThey had time to repeat their ideas.
Poupardin has manufactured consumer products from the days of his college, including a Pinterest-like bookmark tool, a smart speaker controlled by the voice (reaching right in front of Amazon’s debut) and a social sound called Cappuccino. The Arabic, meanwhile, had worked on the smart speaker with Poupardin and later made a stint in Zenly, the social manufacturer of applications sold on Snap for $ 350 million in 2017.
Following the sale of the Capuccio team of the application and the relevant IP to a meditation studio called Sociaaal, the start was transferred to a widget -oriented application, resulting in aircraft.
“Because I built all these music products in the past, I knew that when you ask users to create a playlist or do something, it is a great effort,” Poupardin explained in an interview with TechCrunch. He saw that the iOS widgets, which were still relatively new on the iPhone at the time, were popular with teenagers. This led him to think of building a widget that would show you what songs your friends were left.
“Basically, it’s effortless. You just connect your Spotify, and then every time you hear something on Spotify, it’s going to be shared at real -time airports,” he says.
Today, Airbuds supports Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, Musi, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audiomack.
While the basic functionality of Airbuds remains widget, the application has been built above this experience to provide a number of other social characteristics.
Users can react to their friends’ songs with emojis, stickers or selfies cut by photos with the background to be removed. As users move the flow flow, they can play clips from their friends’ streamed songs and even chat with a friend through a simple, built -in messenger. When you want to convey your music but not share it, there is a “Ghost Mode” option to keep your listening private until it is turned off.
Airbuds will also show friends with similar musical preferences and deliver a personalized weekly recapitalization of what you have broadcast, such as a tiny version of the popular review of Spotify, Spotify, Wrapped. And he is experimenting with a new feature that will allow users to participate in their school in the application to see the musicians of the leading artists from their classmates.
Users can also customize their profile (or “Space”) by adding favorite artists, songs, albums, lyrics, images, text and much more or let the app automatically design for them.
This characteristic self-expression is the key to the traction of the application, Poupardin believes, as about 30% of users are now dealing with the features of the application beyond seeing what friends flows.
Streamers said: “It gave us access to 100 million songs, but no one really broke the identity piece, the self-expression piece … and that’s exactly how they use it,” referring to new Airbuds users, who are mainly students and students in the US (the UK).
However, some of the attraction of Airbuds can be converted to its feature, which requires users to invite friends to access some of the app functions. For example, you need to invite friends to see more of your top 3 artists in the summary. But Poupardin stresses that it’s not just for growth – the app works only if you add your friends.
With the new hand funding, Airbuds is designing other ways to expand its implementation, possibly supporting other types of streaming services, providing fan artists or designing features to attract older users. The team also tries a subscription feature.
To date, the start has raised a total of $ 10 million from investors, such as A16Z, SV Angel, Dream Machine, Nikita Bier, Antoine Martin, Uncommon and Night Capital.
