Music Sharing App like Earbuds – A Gimmick or A Groundbreaking Idea?

Music, as personal as it is — is also a massive social sport that is best enjoyed with others. In-person, via a messaging app, or via livestream, word-of-mouth music discovery is always a special experience.

Indeed, there have been several efforts to create social networks solely dedicated to music, because music lovers are always on the lookout for new songs and artists.

In the end, however, none of these music-focused social services has been successful — except one. 

Which we’ll talk about in a minute.

But we also need to know that in the absence of a good social listening app,  people gravitate to general-purpose networks like Facebook Groups, Reddit, Twitter, Clubhouse rooms, and the like for social music discovery, because that’s where their friends are.

See also – Create video sharing app like Cameo

However, social listening has the greatest chance of taking off in the future if it is used at the point of origin. Streaming music services like Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, and others have the potential to become the modern-day equivalent of record stores.

But they’re not quite there yet.
They do have social listening capabilities that could help you discover what your friends are listening to and share your tastes with others.

While other applications are only giving us bits and pieces of the social listening experience, there is one platform that has the potential to change the entire social music listening scene forever — EarBuds.

Before we talk about it in detail, what is social listening in the first place?

What Is Social Listening?

Music listening with friends and family is not a new concept. 

This happened way back in the days of the gramophone. However, it was not until the advent of modern technology in the form of earphones, MP3s, low-cost smartphones, and computers that listening to music became a completely private affair.

In this trend, personalized earphones are especially significant because they allow people to listen to music whenever and wherever they want for the first time. Despite the popularity of solo listening, people are still looking for ways to enjoy music with others. In this case, social listening is a viable option to consider.

You’ve probably already heard of social listening, though different contexts and for a different purpose. The term “social media monitoring” refers to the process of keeping an eye on online mentions of specific brands, products, and services.

Finding out what customers think of them online is the goal. They can make changes to their product or marketing strategy based on the information they collect.

When it comes to music streaming services like Spotify, you can ignore that definition. In this context, the definition is much more concise. The term “social listening” here refers to the practice of listening to music while conversing with others. The idea is to have an online channel where people can all listen to music together, not just press the play button at the same time.

What Is EarBuds Doing In The Social Listening Space?

Well, to start with — with EarBuds, you & your friends can share music and audio clips from live events. The EarBuds app also allows you to share audio-only moments in real time with virtually anyone.

The simplicity of the setup is what makes the concept work.

A variety of methods and means are used by EarBuds to connect its users. Music is the primary medium through which creators and users connect. It’s possible for users to search by interests, find trending music curators, and subscribe to curators.

Each stream has a chat system, as well as live audio and sharing tools for distribution to other social networks. Music selected by curators can be saved to a user’s Library or added to a Playlist.

Users must have a Spotify or Apple Music subscription to use Earbuds since they are the only compatible apps as of now. However, in the future, Earbuds will be compatible with paid subscriptions to Amazon Music and Pandora. As well.

These partnerships are what allow the app, which is available on iOS and Android, to stream music. However, listeners can take advantage of the social features on Earbuds, listening along to live playlists and commenting with other listeners regardless of the platform they use.

You can easily import your existing playlists once you’ve linked your Spotify account. After that, you can add voice clips to the app to provide commentary on your song selections. Users can save a playlist to their streaming service or post it as an Instagram story while listening to a stream.

EarBuds’ Success So Far.

In August 2021, Earbuds raised their first funding of $3 million under the Series A round led by Ecliptic Capital with additional investment. Moreover, the company received some additional investment from Andre Agassi Foundation along with LFG Ventures.

How Other Players Are Doing In The Social Listening Space?

Spotify and Apple Music both have ways to access third-party social listening apps. However, we must stress that before you can use the social listening app or website, you must first have an account with one of the two services. 

It’s also important to exercise caution when it comes to downloading potentially harmful applications, as not all of them are.

• #1 — Spotify

With over 144 million subscribers worldwide by 2020, Spotify will be the most popular music streaming service. With so many people using a music streaming app, it’s amazing how much people around the world love music. 

To continue the theme of adoration for music, did you realise you can get it directly from the streaming service, Spotify? 

With a Premium Spotify account, you can do just that, and here’s how to get Spotify music directly on your device.

How do you do it?

• Open the Spotify application on your phone or computer. Play a song of your choice. The Connected Devices icon will appear in the lower right corner of your screen. This icon resembles a computer screen with an iPod hidden behind it.
• Under the Airplay or Bluetooth button, click “Start a group session.”
• Choose Invite Family and Friends from the Friends drop-down menu. You will find the following information below:
• Share the url link on your social media pages that are affiliated with it.
• To send a link to another social media app, select Copy Link.
• You can provide your friends with a Spotify code they can use on their mobile devices (if physically present).
• Invite your friends to join the group by having them click on the link they’ll receive. Anyone who joins the group has the ability to add and remove songs from the playlist, and to leave the session by clicking on Leave Session. If you are the moderator, click on End Session to end the session.

• #2 — Apple Music

Apple Music is another popular music streaming service. Globally, the company has more than 72 million subscribers, according to 2020 reports. 

Apple Music, like Spotify, has a social listening feature that lets you play music with your friends in real-time. At this point, the feature is simple enough to comprehend, but it’s sufficient to enable remote listening.

How do you do it?

• Open the Apple Music application on your phone or tablet.
• Choose “Listen Now” from the drop-down menu.
• Listen Now’s upper-right corner displays the following text:
• For iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users: To take a photo, click on the Photo icon on your toolbar.
• When using an Android device, you should do the following: Press the More button to see all of your options.
• Then, select “See What Your Friends Are Listening To” from the drop-down menu that appears.
• Create a username, then look for and follow your pals to share your playlist with them. Another option is to join an already-made playlist of your friends.
• Then click Done.

 

Suitable Tech Stack To Develop A Music Sharing App

• Application and Data– Node.js, Redis, Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Socket.IO, Underscore, Amazon Aurora
• Utilities– Twilio, Redash
• DevOps– GitHub, Jenkins, AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)

Wrapping Up

It’s always more fun to listen to music with others, but that’s not always possible. 

This is why social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, and others have apps to make communicating across geographic distances easier. 

However, as effective and useful as these programmes maybe, they were not created for live streaming with people who aren’t physically present. It’s time to switch things up with social listening.

Frequently Asked Questions To Build A Music Sharing App (FAQs)