A new social network is quietly flying General Z and less, and it’s not from Meta.
Based on San Francisco Airbuds A mobile, social app offers that allows people to express their music. Users can share what is streaming with friends through a smartphone widget that works with a range of streaming services.
On Wednesday, Airbus is announcing an increase of $ 5 million from an early -stage venture firm Seven Six, founded by Reddate co -founder Alexis Ohian.
Startups have seen more than 15 million app downloads to this location, and has 5 million monthly active users, of which 1.5 million are launched daily. According to the App Intelligence Firm, more than 9,400 ratings in Airbuds also have a positive rating of 96 % in the last 30 days.
Consumers, the app offers a way to social and connect with their friends, engage in self -expression and discover new lyrics, and they are all in one place.
This is a collection in which high music providers like Apple and Spotifs have not yet known. Apple has repeatedly tried and failed to integrate a social experience within its music apps. The effort began with its destructive music social network Ping, which closed in the early 2010’s, and then a new attempt was made known as Connect, which aims to connect artists and fans. (Roots Was also not the last.
In the meantime, the spotifies are working to create a more social app with spataf, its music strategy, comments, pools, and questions such as podcasts, artist’s stories, playlists with mutual support, a messaging feature and much more.
Nevertheless, no company has a sweet place when it is offered a real social network, as building consumers’ famous social experiences can be difficult and unexpected.
Fortunately for the co -founders of Airbuds Galls Popardon And Gowan ArabsThey have time to repeat their thoughts.
Poparden has been producing products for consumers since its college days, which includes a Pennasty -like music bookmarking tool, a voice -controlled smart speaker (exactly before the Amazon’s Eco -Debu), and a social audio app called Capechino that gives friends a mini -pod. Meanwhile, Arab worked with Popardon on a smart speaker and then later made a stunt in Zenley, which the social app maker sold in 2017 SNAP 350 million sold to Snap.
When the Capacchu team sold the app and its related IP to a meditation studio in a meditation studio called Sasia, the startup went to a widget -based app, which resulted in airbuds.
“Since I had made all these music products in the past, I knew that when you ask consumers to make a playlist or do something, this is a great effort,” Papardon explained while interviewing Tech Crunch. He saw that the iOS Veget, which was then new to the iPhone, was popular in young people. Because of this he was forced to think about making a widget that would show you which songs your friends are playing.
They say, “Basically, it’s easy. You just connect your spots, and then whenever you are going to hear something on the spot, it will be distributed to the airbuds in real time.”
Today, Airbuds supports spataf, Apple Music, Sound Cloud, Moses, Desar, Amazon Music, and Audiomic.
Although the basic functionality of Airbuds is a widget, the app has offered a range of other social properties in the upper part of this experience.
Customers can react to their friends’ stamid songs with emojis, stickers, or selfies, which produces the background photo removed. When users scroll the app’s feed, they can play clips of their friends’ stamped songs and even communicate with a friend through a simple, built -in messenger. When you want to stream your music but don’t share it, there is a “ghost mode” option to keep your hearing private until it is inactive.
Airbuds will also show friends with similar music tastes and will provide a weekly recovery of what you streamed, such as a small version of Spatif wrapped at the end of the famous Spatif year. And it is experimenting with a new feature that will allow users to join their school on the app to see their school peers.
Users can also customize their profile (or “place”) by adding favorite artists, songs, albums, lyrics, photos, text, text and more, or allow the app to automatically design for them.
Papardan believes that this self -expression feature is the key to the app’s traction, as 30 % of users are now engaged with the app features of what friends are running.
“Starters provided us with access to 100 million songs, but no one cracked the identity piece, self -expression pieces … and so they use it,” referring to young users of Airbuds, who are mostly high schools in the United States and college students, and some of the students in the UK, Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, and Aussie.
However, some of the airbids’ traction can be brought to the costume of its feature, which invites users to invite friends to access some of the app functionality. For example, you have to invite friends so they can see more than the 3 artists above you. But Popardon emphasized that this is not just for growth – the app only works if you add your friends.
With new funding, Airbuds are planning other methods to expand their app, potentially supporting other types of streaming services, artist -to -fan contacts, or designing features to attract older users. The team is also examining the subscription feature.
To date, Startup has collected a total of 10 million from investors, including A16z, SV angel, Dream Machine, Nikita Beer, Anton Martin, extraordinary and night capital.