Soundwave Doubles Down with Desktop Music Capture Update

By Kira Grunenberg

You might wonder why a widely successful mobile-only app would expand to the stationary side of the technologic border. That’s what Soundwave has done with their most recent update, now available in the iTunes App and Google Play stores. However, the tagline for the update, “Soundwave moves to capture desktop music,” is assuredly exciting because of what it means for the reach of the app’s ever-growing community.

The global music tracker and more recently, buzzing social platform (thanks to their last update bringing in comments and hashtags), decided to develop and release this evolution as a means of directly responding to ground level input from users worldwide, as well as inferences drawn from user analytics and behavior. It is worth noting that while Soundwave continues to grow, their discernment of that growth has never involved letting go of contact and cohesion with their user base, despite its widely cast net and server-stretching volume. While capturing plays from outside mobile devices is not completely new to Soundwave (YouTube integration bestowed Soundwave’s app with the ability to track plays), maximizing inclusion of desktop plays to better match the adopted music players linkable through mobile gives Soundwave a bigger, more natural picture of what, where, and when their users are listening to songs.  Now there will be even fewer “steps” necessary to ensure song plays accumulate in your Soundwave activity feed.

Although expansion from mobile to desktop might seem strange, Soundwave’s team is trying to assemble a full and organic impression of one’s listening habits/preferences, and have found that many people still turn to their desktops often. University students are a global, perpetual, and active portion of the music-curating population who stand to provide Soundwave with much of its behavioral data, and Soundwave’s Chrome extension provides them a less awkward way to frequent the app. After all, would a student immersed in their studies reach for their phone to play music, or just pull up Spotify/SoundCloud/YouTube/Songza/etc. in their browser?

In addition to desktop inclusion, a fresh round of standalone players are now part of Soundwave’s world as well. The mobile side now takes plays from Pandora and SoundCloud, while the desktop-oriented full list now includes Spotify, Rdio, Pandora, 8tracks, Google Play Music, Gaana, VK, Songza, MySpace, Deezer, and Grooveshark. The only, very minor downside is that this upgrade will take just a bit more work on top of tapping the update button on the mobile app. Just follow these directions and accruing and sharing plays with people all over the world will be much easier!

1. Enter the settings menu in the Soundwave app and select “Connect music players”

2. Retrieve and record your unique seven digit pin from the app on your Android or iOS device

3. Click on the link on the Soundwave website to begin installation

4. Insert your unique seven digit pin and the install will start

5. Installation finished!

Soundwave is based in Dublin, Ireland and is backed by venture capitalist, Mark Cuban, as well as Apple Founder, Steve Wozniak. You can keep up with future developments and extra community chatter by following them on Twitter @Soundwave.

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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