Soundwave team has been beavering for the past three months to revamp their music-discovery app for iOS 7 from their Dublim, Ireland base
It seems that both Apple and its iOS user base can’t get enough of the Irish-born music-discovery platform Soundwave. Not only does Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak love Soundwave, but US entrepreneur and philanthropist Mark Cuban has given the Dublin-based start-up his backing, and even actor Stephen Fry endorses its Android and iOS app. Last night, Soundwave got another boost: Apple gave the app a worldwide App Store feature ‘again’ for its transition to iOS 7.
First off, this is what Soundwave is all about: it’s an iPhone and Android app that can capture, in real-time, what type of music your friends are listening to, and where.
The global Apple App Store – last night
Speaking to Siliconrepublic.com this morning, Brendan O’Driscoll said the team at the digital start-up, which is now based in the ‘Silicon Docks’ area of Dublin City [Soundwave is just around the corner from the some 2,000 Googlers employed at Google’s EMEA HQ, and in earshot of Facebook and LinkedIn’s international HQs] is “really excited” about being listed yet again on the worldwide App Store.
And it would appear that they are deserving of the recognition. That’s because O’Driscoll and the 10-strong team in Dublin have spent the past three months totally rebuilding their iOS app to prepare for the release of iOS 7 from Apple, which happened last night.
And they did app overhaul along with maintaining both their current Android app versions and iOS app versions.
O’Driscoll had some insights on the new iOS 7 app, from the perspective of the development community, and also from the perspective of the ultimate destination – the user community.
Getting to grips with iOS 7
Soundwave transits to iOS 7
He says that when Apple released to the developer community around the globe the tools to build apps for iOS 7 back during the Summer, the Soundwave theme noticed the highly visual theme to the latest iOS iteration.
“It’s a lot more colourful, with simplicity. It’s nice and clear,” he said.
According to Soundwave iOS 7 has a “refreshed” look.
Perhaps this ties in with the way Apple appears to be exploring new revenue models – especially with the announcement last week of the cheaper, colorful Apple iPhone models.
As for the challenges for developers in transiting their apps to IOS 7, O’Driscoll likens it to learning a new dialect of a small language in the XCode ecosystem.
“You are re-imaging your own theme within each screen,” he said. “We had to rebuild our codebase from scratch. It’s very tedious!”
The challenges for developers, explained O’Driscoll, are that they need to back-up their existing app features and also back up their photos.
Finally, what type of music is getting the most hits on Soundwave?
O’Driscoll says that the start-up can do daily analytics of what is popular amongst the app’s user base
Kodaline is hot, as is Phoenix, and Arctic Monkeys, amongst Soundwave users
Well Irish band Kodaline is one that is always aceing it on Soundwave. And this week, with the launch of the Arctic Monkeys’ latest album, this is also proving to be a bit.
But some sorry news for Bieber fans – it would seem that the Bieber community around the globe are not popular with users of Soundwave. Justin
Strangely enough, or maybe not, Bieber seems to get a lot of dislikes on the app.
Check this out for yourself here …
