By Kira Grunenberg

Soundwave, a fledgling company based out of Dublin, Ireland, has stepped into the digital music arena with their namesake app. They offer music listening, discovery, liking and sharing, much like any other music app out on the market already – but Soundwave has got the formula laid out in a surprisingly different and very cool way.

Much in the way that Twitter has – for better or worse – led to a greater importance of the speed of dissemination of information, Soundwave’s “Music Map” feature also emphasizes instantaneous awareness and real-time coexistence of music through the world’s digital devices. Anyone logged into and actively scrolling through Soundwave will see artists and songs in the feeds of those they follow. The songs shown are often playing at that very moment, and the rest is backlog of what one’s followers were listening to farther in the past as one scrolls downward. The map feature turns the user into that of a virtual musical jet-setter. 

Want to see what’s playing, this very second, in all of Africa? Hit the “draw” button on the map and a free form tool activates, converting the drawing of a simple circle with one’s finger, into a designated search area. Soundwave refers to these as “sound circles.” If there are any Soundwave users within the hand drawn area, Google Maps-style dropped pins appear and one can either zoom in, to see exactly where the music is active, tap the pins right from the map to see the where each song is playing right off the map, or, hit the results tab and see the songs in list form for immediate perusal. Might not seem like much of an adventurous undertaking at first but, just start exploring the world –by continent, country or crowded metropolis, and it becomes very hard to pull away.

Despite the internet’s reach, the fact that it still takes a considerable amount of effort or communication simply to find out what native artists are popular in another country says a lot about how segmented the global music scene still feels –particularly when searching within the US.

Once a user has compiled a sizable feed full of likes they have put on others’ tracks, “giving back” and building one’s own library might incite a bit of frustration. “Where’s the upload button?” “Where’s the mic feature to identify and convert music playing at my local bar?” Soundwave has neither of these. This begs the question of how tracks come to be in the app at all. The answer is that there are no buttons or converters to deal with whatsoever. (It took me a little while to figure this out because I skipped the initial intro pages, believing the interface would be self-explanatory). The only requirement to build oneself up as an avid Soundwave user, is to listen to music. That’s it –really. The only catch to that is that the music has to be played on the device loaded with the Soundwave app. The app automatically detects when a user has music playing on their device’s native music app and after a song plays, the information is quickly and accurately retrieved and put in one’s Soundwave activity feed. Listening to an hour long mix during a workout at the gym? That’s an easy 9-10 tracks added to your feed by the time the playlist ends. Music you are finding and enjoying in the app from others can also be played while it is minimized and you are doing other things. Users can also access their in-phone cameras to pull different photos to use as their profile image.

The rest of Soundwave’s features are very comfortable and familiar. The usual jargon of “Like” and “Follow” have been mentioned but “Buckets” and “Humdingers” are two terms new to the scene. The former term acts like a sharing feature. Hit a song to play and if that song is something you want another user that you follow to hear, tapping the “Bucket” feature will bring up a list of one’s followers and a single tap will “drop” the currently cued up track into that person’s bucket. So long as the filter to hide bucket activity is not turned on, the next time the selected user logs in, the bucket symbol with the chosen song will be in their feed, telling them the song came as a recommendation from another user. There is also a bucket section where users can go just to see what others have left them, much like the “@” reply feature on Twitter. Humdingers represent something akin to super-favorites, as they have their own filter and can be singled out for easy access and replay, as well as being songs users can select to represent their “song of the moment” that will sit alongside their user name on their profile. Ratings are Soundwave’s version of the Like and Dislike a la Pandora, but, a large or small number of either has no bearing on a user’s ability to play their music –even if everyone were to give it a dislike. The purpose of the feature for the moment, is to help gage and determine the most liked and disliked tracks. 

Seeing as Soundwave is still in beta, there’s room for devlopers compassion, as the app is going to be changing even more profusely in the coming weeks and months, to be sure. Still, this is where questions start arising. The ratings system, for example, with the “most liked” and “most disliked…” what are the grouping parameters for compiling those lists? Are they lists made up of songs from people I follow? My immediate geographical location? State? Global Soundwave users? The fact that Soundwave is intended to highlight groups to show what’s trending and popularly played in the real world… well, I would want to know which “sound circle” of people made the Top 20 what it is.

Furthermore, is there a way to delete songs from a user’s feed? Suppose one’s iPhone or Android is left playing music on the table while one’s hands are full doing something else. Unexpectedly, the music shuffle feature cues up a horribly embarrassing guilty pleasure song from 10 years ago and it syncs with Soundwave before the song can be changed. The ease with which Soundwave’s very fluidly disclosing nature could unleash “TMI” upon anyone who one might know also using Soundwave, is not the most fun thing to think about.

If alerting people to your exact location is not something you want, Soundwave might not be your socialization form of choice. (The pins themselves are anonymous but if you sign up via Facebook, any location info you have filled in there will be automatically listed in your Soundwave user information). Though spreading around favorite songs probably is not a cause for alarm.

Soundwave being at the stage it is right now, the social grouping-focused app seems to be in very sharp form. There are going through some expected growing pains of the beta world –crashing, slight lagging and such– but the system in place offers to report any or all bugs a user experiences with the app. The company plans on remaining in private beta into the near future, in order to address these minor issues and to improve the total user experience through observation and feedback, which can be provided directly from the feedback menu in the app. 

The current incarnation of the private beta is full but you can sign up to be in line for the next “wave” by visiting this page.

There’s also a special bonus if you are really anxious to try the app out ASAP: The Soundwave team has uploaded a mini game onto their site and after you have landed on the waiting list, if you play the game and make it to level 12, you jump the line to the front of the digital queue. Make it four more levels up to 16 and Soundwave names you a permanent VIP!

Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1