Being a music geek used to be hard work.
If you wanted to check out a new album or artist, you’d have to go to the record store and line up along a counter with a bunch of strangers with headphones on to listen. And that’s if your local store even had the record you were looking for.
Though the advent of streaming services like Spotify has made sharing music with fellow music enthusiasts easier, it’s a poor substitute for exchanging bootlegs and discussing new music on a song-by-song level.
Chicago’s
Noted was founded as Nusiki in 2014 by music fanatics Tim Welch and Ben Hewitt. The company’s goal is to to take the social features users have grown accustomed to from apps they use every day and put them inside an app that still puts the listening experience first. As you engage with the songs posted by other users, the app will learn more about your preferences and curate your streams accordingly.
“Over the last year, we’ve worked with tens of thousands of users, artists, labels and industry partners and learned that it matters who introduces you to a song,” said Hewitt in a statement. “But people don’t want to have to dig too far for new music. Complementing simplified music sharing with advanced technology is a huge step forward for personalized online music discovery.”
One particularly interesting feature of the app is the ability to access music from across different libraries, including YouTube and SoundCloud. In practical terms, this means local garage bands and the world’s biggest artists can coexist on the same shared playlists.
The app is free and available in the App Store and Google Play beginning today.
Images via Noted.
Do you have a tip for us? Shoot us an email or follow us on Twitter@BuiltInChicago.
