Photo and video-messaging app Snapchat has been popular with users and investors alike, attracting more than 5m daily active users and $60m in a recent funding round. Now startups are queuing up to see if they can do a ‘Snapchat for music’. Which basically means blending music with messaging. Two examples from this month are Rithm and Snapverse. Rithm is the work of a startup named MavenSay: an iPhone app that encourages users to “send your friends songs personalised with videos, photos and dancing emojis”. That’s about the sum of it, with tracks able to be saved to Spotify and Rdio for full listening. Meanwhile, Snapverse is also an iPhone app that “packages the power of music, video and pictures together in a 20-second pop (we call it a ‘snap’… In the same vein as emojiis, animated gifs, and ringtones, Snapverse is creating a new currency for communication, making it addictively easy and fun to express how you feel.” Only if you’re an American, seemingly – Snapverse is only available in the US App Store for now. Both apps are free, with no in-app purchases as yet, so they’re shooting for reach with revenues to follow. Although we wonder just how successful they’ll be at even getting reach. Bigger messaging apps like WhatsApp, Line, Kakao and Snapchat itself adding music features might be more significant.
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