You know how a song or playlist just fit’s a certain spot? You might listen to a completely different playlist when you’re walking along the water, when you’re at the gym, or at the office. Tunaspot is a location-based music discovery platform that provides a map that lets you zoom into anywhere in the world and find out what playlists people are listening to and have shared there. Yesterday they launched an app on Spotify in their native Sweden, as well as Denmark and Norway.
Tunaspot CTO Christian Nilsson tells us they’re doing a rolling launch to be sure they can scale and respond correctly, but the service can also be reached outside the launch countries by going to this link.
If their concept sounds familiar, it’s because Tunaspot’s CEO Alex Esser is renown for being the first guest on ArcticStartup’s Unfair Advantage podcast. (Loyal listeners, we’re still on extended summer holiday to focus on the Arctic15 conference, but we’ll be back soon. Email us with guest suggestions!)
Tunaspot started out as a mobile app, but feels at home on Spotify. Al it’s fun to find out what people are listening to in office buildings and parks across the world. Some will crack you up, like finding a playlist of German military marches at an office in Stockholm’s Gamla stan. But others give you a real idea of the music and feeling present in those areas. It’s honestly a lot of fun for music discovery.
Tunaspot momentarily changed directions from mobile to the Spotify platform after attending a Spotify Hackathon organized by Luger, Spotify, and EMI. Tunaspot CTO Christian Nilsson said that they knew they always wanted to be close to Spotify, but at the Hackathon he got a better idea of where Spotify was heading.
“I developed a few small and fun apps and when I came back to the team we had a emergency meeting. One day later we decided to move all resources from development of our Android and iOS platforms temporarily and give full attention to provide a superior Spotify experience. If we could nail our concept in a Spotify app mobile would be open for grab later.”
Becoming a Spotify app is a huge move for Tunaspot, but it doesn’t directly answer any questions about the ways they can bring in revenue. I Asked Esser about what revenue channels Tunaspot was considering, and he responded:
“Once everybody got a constant access to streaming music services wherever they are – a whole new market of music branding opens especially for those who provide certain playlists at certain locations. We already seen Festivals, Record labels and music venues using Spotify for promotion. I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
The company tells us they have an agressive roadmap for Q4, so perhaps we’ll see more launches in more countries and platforms in the coming month.
