A new social network has been quietly erupting in the Z and younger generations, not from Meta.
Headquartered in San Francisco In the air Provides a mobile, social app that allows people to express themselves through music. Users can share their streaming media with friends through a smartphone widget that works with a range of streaming services.
The air leaked funds were founded on Wednesday by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who raised $5 million in funding from early-stage venture capital firm Seven Six Six cents.
The startup has so far more than 15 million app downloads and has 5 million active users per month, of which 1.5 million people launch the app every day. For users, the app provides a way to interact and connect with friends, express yourself and discover new tunes.
This is a combination that top music providers like Apple and Spotify have not yet figured out. Apple has tried and failed to integrate social experiences into its music apps many times. This effort began with a catastrophic Music social network ping,,,,, closure In the early 2010s, a reform attempt called Connect was followed to connect with artists and fans. (connect No lasting either)
Meanwhile, Spotify has been working hard to make its music streaming become More social applications Add it like this Tiktok-inspired feed,,,,, Comment,,,,, Polls and Q&A For podcasts, artists storycollaborative playlist, Message delivery function, And more.
However, neither company found the best choice when it comes to providing a true social network, as building a popular consumer social experience can be difficult and unpredictable.
Fortunately, the co-founder of the Sky Gilles Pattin and Gawen Arabthey have time to iterate over their ideas.
Since college years, Poupardin has been building products for consumers, including Pinterest-like music bookmarking tools, a Smart speakers with voice control (Arrived before Amazon’s Echo debuts) Social audio app called Cappuccino Let friends make mini podcasts together. Meanwhile, the Arabs worked on smart speakers with poufardin and then worked at social app maker Zenly Sold to Snap for $350 million in 2017.
After the Cappuccio team sold the app and its associated IP to a meditation studio called Sociaaal, the startup moved to a widget-oriented app, which gained charging, etc.
“Because I’ve built all these music products in the past, I know that when you ask the user to create a playlist or do something, it’s a lot of effort,” Poupardin explained in an interview with TechCrunch. He saw that the iPhone’s relatively new iOS widgets were popular among teenagers at the time. This made him consider building a widget that shows you the songs your friend is streaming.
“Basically, it’s effortless. You just connect Spotify and then every time you’re listening to something on Spotify, it’s shared in real time.”
Today, Airbuds supports Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud, Musi, Deezer, Amazon Music, and AudioMack.
While the core feature of the charger is still a widget, the app has been built on the experience to offer a range of other social features.
Users can cut photos removed from photos with emojis, stickers, or selfies to react to their friends’ streaming songs. When users scroll through the app’s feed, they can play clips of songs streamed by friends, and even chat with friends through simple built-in Messenger. When you want to stream music but don’t share music, there is a “Ghost Mode” option that makes your listening private before until it is disabled.
The charger will also show friends with similar musical tastes and provide personalized reviews of what you stream, such as Spotify’s popular year-end reviews mini versions of Spotify packages. It is trying a new feature that will allow users to join their school on the app to view top music artists from classmates.
Users can also customize their profile (or “space”) by adding favorite artists, songs, albums, lyrics, pictures, text, etc., or have the app design them automatically.
Poupardin believes this self-expression feature is key to the app’s traction, as about 30% of users can now use the app’s capabilities, rather than just seeing friends streaming.
He said the streamers “give us access to 100 million songs, but no one really cracks the work of identity, the work of self-expression…that’s exactly how they use it.”
However, some charging traction can be classified as its functional gating, which requires users to invite friends to access certain features of the app. For example, you must invite friends to see the top three artists in the review. But poupardin emphasizes not only for growth—the app only works when adding friends.
With the help of new funds, the charger is planning other ways to expand its app, possibly by supporting other types of streaming services, providing artist-to-fan connectivity or design features to attract older users. The team is also testing the subscription feature.
To date, the startup has raised $10 million from investors including A16Z, SV Angel, Dream Machine, Nikita Bier, Antoine Martin, Uncomen and Night Capital.
