By Kira Grunenberg

The waves keep rolling for Ireland-based Soundwave, the real-time, global syncing, music discovery app. The last major boost for Soundwave was just released in September, embracing the power of iOS7. It gave the app a significant functional and visual overhaul, greatly exciting its worldwide user base.

Less than three months later, the company’s next move to improve now involves the integration of music videos from YouTube. One of Soundwave’s biggest draws is its “hands free” strategy. After signing up, users need to do nothing more than play music in order to appear active within the Soundwave community. A non user might on the outside might see the concept as less engaging, but it’s actually just less invasive: people can use the app at will, instead of being forced, in order to build their library and app presence.

Song Page - YouTube

In order to optimize this method of engagement, Soundwave is constantly working to ensure that as many music players and streaming services as possible are capable of being detected, and their song plays captured. The more players that are included, the more natural a user’s music activity will be, as users won’t be inclined to shift sporadically between apps. The new addition of YouTube is a huge advancement for Soundwave because it opens the doors for an entire listener demographic, which would otherwise may be underserved or limited, based on users’ “underage” statuses. Soundwave Founder and CEO, Brendan O’Driscoll, explains:

“Younger demographics…use YouTube like a streaming service. A lot of these guys aren’t old enough to have extensive mp3 collections stored on their hard drives and they don’t have credit cards to purchase streaming subscriptions – so YouTube becomes the one stop shop for music consumption.”

Sync Players

One recurring issue with YouTube integration is whether an app can discern between quality media and the mass of impertinent videos of cats. Since Soundwave is only after music, filtering is a priority, and the app pulls it off with painless fluidity. Utilizing the capabilities of YouTube’s own tagging and content sorting system and in-house filtering, Soundwave HQ is able to bring the music in and keep the memes out.

This update is certain to bring a boom to the overall number of plays and pin drops on the Soundwave globe, especially from the tween and young teen demographic. Its inclusion may lead to an increase in YouTube-exclusive releases, or, releases from independent artists not working through outlets like Spotify, Rdio or Deezer, already synced with Soundwave. With a longstanding success and more than six billion hours of video played each month in 61 countries, YouTube will only bolster Soundwave’s growing global momentum.

Whether you want to get right to updating, or are only hearing of Soundwave for the first time, you can download the new version from the iTunes App Store or Google Play Store now.

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

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