Mfarhanonline Social Media News: If you feel the need to compete in every sector of your life, you’re in luck — because a new iPhone app that melds gameplay with music discovery just hit the scene. AudioVroom iTunes link — born from the energy drink-fueled morass that is Music Hack Day — is an app powered by music intelligence platform The Echo Nest and packed with jams courtesy of 7digital that lets you interact with your radio stations — and your friends. “Our inspiration came from our desire to share music with each other, but due to the copyright issues and limitations of file-sharing, we came up with the idea, almost two years ago, to stream music in subscription format and simply exchange preferences, which is completely legal,” says co-founder Marcos Lara. Upon installing the app, you can choose to let it dig through your iTunes, better tailoring future listening to your preferences. Then, much like Pandora, you can search for artists and create a radio station of similar bands, which you can then rate: “love,” “wtf?” and “fail.” (You get 6 skips per hour, folks.) Loved songs are added to a list for easy re-listening, and stations are also catalogued for later use. Every time you rate a song, you get points, which you can use to listen to still more music. Everyone starts out with a cache of 1,000 points upon download (you can also buy points — $40 per year garners you unlimited listening). Points are key to AudioVroom if you want to keep listening for free, and a lot of point-garnering is about interacting with others, both online and in the “meatspace.” Digitally, you can add friends by inviting people via your phone’s contact list or via email (we yearn for Facebook integration), and IRL, you can add friends by bumping phones. Bumping also transfers! your fr iends’ favorite songs to your device and creates a playlist based on your mutual preferences. Like any good social game, you can also score badges via bumping: “First Bump” occurs when you bump with your inaugural friend, and scores you 250 points, “Slow Dance” is meted out when you bump with the same person four times, which nets you 100 points. “Shake Baby, Shake” means you’ve bumped 10 times, and garners you 500 points. Moreover, you can search for nearby DJs and check out what they’re listening to, tapping into their playlists and adding your own jams. Co-founder Marcos Lara plans to try out a new feature called “DJ Mode” at San Francisco Music Hack Day this weekend. DJ Mode creates a station based on the preferences of everyone in the room with AudioVroom installed and allows all users to manipulate the playlist. Right now, users can only “join” said DJ sessions; “host” capabilities are coming soon. As it stands, this app seems more like an aural game than a venue in which one would actually linger in order to listen to music. We can see if being a hit at parties and among music-loving groups of friends, but not really a go-to for the passive listener (for one, it lacks caching, which is rather essential for a mobile app — but Lara says that could come later). However, that might be okay. There are tons of music subscription services out there, and not many based on fun and interaction (with the exception of Rdio). Therefore, AudioVroom’s allure lies in differentiation. Lara and fellow founder Sanem Alkan have managed to score an undisclosed amount of funding from angel investors for SocialGenius, which was founded to distribute the app, so we’ll see what future iterations of AudioVroom have in store. Photo courtesy of Flickr, Finding Josephine More About: audiovroom , mobile apps , music For more Media coverage: Follow Mfarhanonline Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the M! edia cha nnel Download our free apps for Android , Mac , iPhone and iPad Social Media reviews series maintain by Mayya
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