Tech

APP OF THE MONTH: Songdrop makes collecting and sharing music simple

by Knar Bedian

Before the Internet, collecting music was simple. Crates of records, stacks of cassettes, and cases of CD’s all attest to that. But online, it’s a different story: the intangible quality of music—especially in the case of streaming—that comes from countless sources and in a variety of formats makes the gathering of tunes seem almost impossible. But there are some solutions, and Songdrop is one of them.

Songdrop serves as a way to accumulate music by “dropping” songs from sources such as YouTube and Soundcloud into mixes, which are shared with other users. Fittingly, some aspects of the app’s design are inspired by the same easily-collectable formats most of us have left behind; when a song plays on Songdrop, the artwork nostalgically spins like a record. We had the chance to chat with Brittney Bean, co-founder of Songdrop, on the story behind the app.

 

AUX: These days, the difficulty of collecting music from all ends of the interwebs has been frequently voiced. How did you decide Songdrop should allow users to create playlists that take sounds from all types of different sources, and how did you decide which sources to pull from?

Bean: We built Songdrop because of exactly that problem; I still have the email I sent to James, our design co-founder, asking him what he thought about making something like Pinterest for music to keep track of all of the music we were coming across online. I knew loads of people who had the same problem and also a lot of people who were frustrated with not being able to make playlists with remixes and catalogue tracks. We picked the sources based on where we streamed from, so while we were building the prototype we just made a note every time we came across a site we wanted to drop from. There are still sites we want to be able to support, especially some Japanese sites, and we’re adding new ones all the time.

AUX: The web version has charted user mixes, what prompted the inclusion of a popularity chart and why is it not visible on the mobile version?

Bean: We added the charts to make the platform better and to reward people for making popular mixes; it’s also a really great discovery tool. We’re hoping to get the charts into the app soon, but there are only three of us working on Songdrop right now, so just need to find the time!

AUX: Are you hoping to create a particular kind of community with Songdrop?

Bean: We intentionally left some community features of the app out early on, so we could watch how people use the site rather than try to force them into any behaviour. As we’re seeing more traction and getting more feedback, we’re starting to look at how we can build up that community over time and empower the people who use our site. Right now we have a really strong Japanese community on the site, so I’m guessing that will continue to snowball, but we’re not aiming for anyone in particular.