Brazilian app SoundShare is a social network that provides users with an easy way to share the music they like. In addition, it also offers a private API that could be used by music streaming services such as Pandora and Rdio.
The best way to get started with SoundShare is to connect it with your Twitter and Facebook accounts. This will help you find friends who are already using the app, though you can also decide to follow other SoundShare users you didn’t know yet.
When your contacts share songs, the name of each track will show up in your Songs Feed. If you click on it, you will find a link to buy the song on iTunes. Most of the time, it will also include a link to a YouTube video for that song, which will let you go beyond the short preview that iTunes provides.
You can also share your own favorite songs in 3 simple steps, as explained below.
Overall, the app’s navigation is very intuitive, making good use of Apple’s swiping and touch features. Sharing aside, you can also discover new songs and artists thanks to the app’s Trending tab, but also to other users’ Profile pages, where you will be able to see which songs they have shared. Additional features include comments, likes and favorites.
According to SoundShare’s CEO and developer Matt Abras, whom we met at TNW Conference Latin America last month, he likes to think of his app as “what Ping should have been.” While Ping is not quite dead yet, it seems that some people in Cupertino agree with him:
“I showed [SoundShare] to a bunch of different Apple engineers during WWDC and they all loved it. I also showed it to John Geleynse (Director of Technology Evangelism & User Experience Evangelist at Apple) during the WWDC Bash and he was blown away,” Abras recalls.
More recently, the app was also featured on the App Store’s Brazilian home page, which seems to confirm that SoundShare has supporters within Apple.
One thing is for sure, the app is particularly well executed – which will help it compete with competitors such as MusicBunk, not to mention Last.fm, which also includes advanced social networking features.
Yet, its main asset to compete against bigger players is probably its API, which will let developers integrate its features into other platforms, such as music players. At the moment, the API is still private, but you can request access by sending an email to api@soundshareapp.com.
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