Airbuds is the social network of Apple and Spotify Wish that built

A new social network exploded quietly with General Z and the youngest, and it is not from Meta.

It is based in San Francisco Moisturizer It provides a social application that allows people to express themselves through their music. Users can share what they do with friends through a smartphone interface element that works with a set of broadcasting services.

On Wednesday, Airbuds announces an increase of $ 5 million in financing from the early investment capital company Seven Seven Six, founded by the founder of Reddit Alexis Ohanian.

The startup witnessed more than 15 million download an application to this point, and it has 5 million active users per month, 1.5 million of them launch the application daily. According to App Intelligence Appfigors, Airbuds also has 96 % positive morale over the past thirty days over 9400 days.

For users, the application provides a method of social communication, communication with their friends, engaging in self -expression, and discovering new melodies, all in one place.

This is a mix that music provides like Apple and Spotify yet. Apple tried and failed several times to integrate a social experience into her music applications. This effort started with a catastrophic Ping Social Networkand That was closed In early 2010, it was followed by a renewed attempt known as Connect, aiming to link artists and fans. (Call It also did not last))

Spotify, and at the same time, make its own music More social application With additions such as Tiktok inspired ritualsand commentsand Opinion polls, and Q & AS For podcast, artist storiesCooperative operating lists, a Correspondence feature, And more.

However, none of the company found the beautiful place when it comes to providing a real social network, because building social experiences for famous consumers can be difficult and unpredictable.

Fortunately for Airbuds founders Popardine generation and Join Al -ArabiThey had time to repeat their ideas.

Poupardarin has been building products for consumers since his university studies, including a reference signal for music that resembles Pinterest, a The sound amplifier dominated by sound (Arrival before the appearance of the Amazon resonance), and Social audio application is called Cappccino This allows friends to make the mini broadcast together. Meanwhile, Arabic worked on a smart audio amp It was sold to $ 350 million in 2017.

After the Cappcccio team sold the application and the associated IP to a reflection studio called Sociaaal, the start starting to the directed wave application, which led to the air rules.

“Because I built all these musical products in the past, I knew that when you asked users to create a playlist or do something, this effort is great,” Bobardin explained, in an interview with Techcrunch. He saw that IOS devices, which were still relatively new on iPhone at the time, were common in teenagers. This prompted him to think about building a user interface element that would explain to you the songs that your friends were flowing.

“Basically, it’s easy. You are just connecting your Spotify, and then every time you will listen to something on Spotify, it will be shared on the actual time,” he says.

Today, Airbuds Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud, Musi, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audiomack.

Although the basic functions of Airbuds remain the piece, the application was built above this experiment to present a set of other social features.

Users can interact with the songs of their friends that were broadcast with emojis, stickers or personal photos that were cut from the photos with the background removal. While users pass the summary of the application, they can play clips from the songs of their friends who have been broadcast and even chat with a friend through a simple and compact messenger. When you want to flow your music but do not share it, there is a “ghost mode” option to keep your own listening until it is disabled.

Airbuds will also display friends with similar music tastes and present a weekly summary of what you broadcast, such as a mini version of the famous end of the year from Spotify, and Spotify cabbage. It experiences a new feature that allows users to join their school on the application to see the major music artists from their schoolmates.

Users can also customize their personal file (or “space”) by adding artists, songs, albums, songs, pictures, pictures, texts and more, or allowing the application to automatically design it.

Poupardin believes that this self -expression feature is the key to attracting the application, as about 30 % of users now deal with the application features beyond seeing what friends flow.

He said that the banners “allowed us to reach 100 million songs, but no one really collides with a piece of identity and a piece of self -expression … and this is exactly what they use”, referring to young Airbuds users, most of whom are high school students and university students in the United States (the application also has some traction in the United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil and Mexico.)

However, some Airbuds traction can be classified into its feature gates, which requires users to invite friends to reach some application functions. For example, you should invite friends to see more than 3 best artists in the summary. But Popardine stresses that it is not only for growth – the app works only if you add your friends.

Through new financing on hand, Airbuds plans other ways to expand its application, and perhaps by supporting other types of broadcast services, providing artist communications to artist, or designing features to attract older users. The team also tests the subscription feature.

To date, the startup raised a total of $ 10 million of investors including A16z, SV Angel, Dream Machine, Nikita Bier, Antoine Martin, Unclomon and Night Capital.

The phases available on IOS and Android.