Here’s an app that could help you out with your Memorial Day festivities this weekend!
Picture the scene (or watch this 1:30 long video - http://bit.ly/TGqb05 ): you're at a party, in the car or at the office and you want to play your new favorite song for everyone. But alas, someone else’s phone is plugged in.
Problem solved. POW WOW is a mobile app powered by Spotify that allows entire groups of friends to build playlists in the moment. The app lets you seamlessly add songs from your own device onto one organized playlist. Now you can tailor a playlist in real time based on who you’re with and where you are.
I’d love to hear what you guys think!
This reminds me of Turntable.fm (RIP), not only because of the social DJ aspect but also the art style. I dig it.
@greghousset - if I'm not mistaken, everyone has to have Spotify premium to play, right? Are you planning to use other services like Rdio, Soundcloud, etc.?
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Hunter
@rrhoover Thanks! I’m happy you like it.
The idea of real-time collaborative experience is definitely something that Turntable.fm made famous but they focused on public themed rooms, where you’d be adding songs with hundreds of strangers. POW WOW takes a much more intimate approach of focusing on private groups of friends because songs your friends add mean so much more to you. They could be adding it because it reminds them of a past shared experience with you, because they think you’ll like it, social currency ect. This is not meant to be a virtual experience like turntable, where you have an avatar and talk with the group via chat. We want POW WOW to be a compliment to the actual physical experience of chilling with your friends and allow everyone to have a voice in the music, which is such in important part of so many life moments.
And yes, one person in the group needs a premium spotify account to stream the Pow Wow and then anyone else can join and add the songs they want to hear. We see a huge amount of value in adding SoundCloud as the next step because of the community and content it brings to the table, but for now, we’re trying to validate the concept with Spotify.
Ahh that's too bad it only works for Spotify Premium users. I was thinking it was playing from your collective music libraries.
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Hunter
@staringispolite well only the host needs a premium account to play the pow wow and then anyone can join and start adding songs (don't need a spotify account to add songs). Since the music is being played on one device at the party, uploading users' local files would get us into some licensing issues. So we either had the option to have everyone choose from the hosts local library or to use a service like spotify to allow users to add anything they wanted. We went with the latter since it was important to us to let people add "that song" that they really wanted to hear. I hope you'll still give it a try!
@ErikTberg I'm not too familiar with plug.dj but from what I can tell it's very similar to turntable in that it focuses on public themed rooms, except they seem to use YouTube and soundcloud so they're able to avoid the licensing costs that really hurt turntable.fm. They also don't have any mobile app. Like I said before, POW WOW is really made and optimized for private moments with friends and the mobile experience reflects that. I hope that helps clear up the difference.
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