Tech

MUSIC APP OF THE MONTH: Seamless

by Sam Sutherland

Seamless solves a problem you didn’t even know you had – the bummer sensation of stopping your favourite song halfway as you shut your laptop and head out to the door to your job, fumbling with your phone to recapture the positive, caffeinated feeling that M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” or whatever was giving you before you stumbled out into the daylight and had to wait fifteen minutes for the stupid streetcar.
Seamless moves your song, ahem, seamlessly from computer to iPhone, filling a niche you only discovered once you downloaded it. The idea, crafted by Five Details founder Brian Ameriage, was so good that, by the time we reached out for an interview, he had already be poached by Facebook.

AUX: What was the genesis of the idea for Seamless? How long did it take to develop?

Brian Amerige, Five Details Founder and Software Designer: I love music. It’s one of those things that runs deep with pretty much everybody. And you know that feeling you get when you’re really into a song? You know how it totally consumes you? It resonates with you. I built Seamless out of respect and honor for that feeling, because it’s totally destroyed when you have to pause a song — even for a moment! — and I knew we had the technology to do better. I didn’t have any intent to release Seamless publicly at first, but it became obviously pretty quickly that it was something a ton of people would love. I did the initial implementation in a single night. It worked, but it was rough. It took about 9 months to polish it to perfection.

What was the biggest obstacle in executing the concept of Seamless in a way that was consistent with your vision for it?

As is usual with the kind of products I like to build, the hardest part is always being laser focused on the primary use-case and refusing to compromise it for anything at all. Seamless is just about perfect at what it does, and that’s because everything in it defers entirely to its (only) purpose. There were also a bunch of smaller challenges that prompted some really cool innovations under the hood, but I obviously can’t talk about those.

Having recently moved to Facebook, do you envision any updates or similar projects in the future?

I don’t have any plans for updates, but that’s not because I’m working at Facebook now. Seamless is exactly the product I envisioned it to be. It’s rare that a product is simple and pure enough that actually being happy with it is even possible, but that’s the case with Seamless. I love it.

How do you cut through the noise in the App Store?

I don’t really try, to be honest. Seamless got a bunch of press when it launched because I worked with Adam Lisagor to make a fantastic video [http://fivedetails.com/seamless/] that explained what Seamless was and how it worked in a succinct and fun way. People who discover it tend to absolutely adore it and share it with their friends, so it spreads by word of mouth these days.
But in general: there’s nothing special about the App Store. You win on the App Store in the same way you win in any other market: make fantastic products that people love.