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Cymbal — Music discovery powered by friends
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I've been using Cymbal for the past few months and it is the real deal. It got on my homescreen in a few hours of playing around.
@malcolmcasey It's a good question. They were very interested in a similar idea, but might have been too early to the mobile-meets-streaming-meets-amazing-APIs party. But definitely onto the right thing. Sending a friend a song is written into all of our DNA. Cymbal’s main proposition is that listening to music is so much better when you can do it with friends. The other side of that coin is discovery, which is a super big thing for us. Our app lets you see the songs your friends, favorite artists and blogs are posting at any given time, which makes finding new music, as well as seeing what’s really hot, easy.
hey @stevecaldwell! There are a lot of other apps out there thinking about the best way to find new music that you’ll actually like, but I think the thing that makes Cymbal so singular is we’re really focusing on community and experience. We want to make sure this is the place you come to not only see what your friends are listening to, but to follow the people in the music community who are truly driving opinion. And above all, we want to make sure that using the app is beautiful and immersive and doesn’t distract from the works of art themselves, which is what it’s all about in the end, right?
I've never been hooked on an app as quickly as I have with Cymbal. I'm listening to new music every day and the community is amazing. Yesterday the artist behind my cymbal commented on my post!
@jaytongsays Just who we've been wanting to talk to, actually! We were trying to find an in at Bop :) My email is mario@cymbal.fm, would really love to talk
@ajt put it simply " Spotify being the database of music and Cymbal being the place you are social with your music" perfect explanation. I've had the app about a week and love the experience.
While there are many who have tried to be "Instagram for music", the Cymbal team has an attention to detail, UX, and design that's been unprecedented. You can tell this app was made by friends who truly wanted to create a better place to share music among exactly that, friends. I'm most excited to see how it evolves beyond just following friends, though, and more towards following those with similar music preferences, just like following Instagram accounts with photos you love (not just your friends').
Thanks for hunting us @hnshah !
Cymbal is like Instagram, but you post songs from Soundcloud and Spotify instead of photos. Follow friends, artists, and tastemakers to populate your feed with the songs that represent listeners' lives. Click play and the whole thing works as a sort of living playlist, curated by the ears you trust. The app has been our little secret for a little over seven months now.
When we started out, we were three college seniors who wanted to know what our friends were listening to — what song was making them tick. Now there are four of us, and we want to ask the world the same question. Throughout our short lifespan we’ve been hard at work not just molding Cymbal into the app we want it to be, but making it the place you can go to find the music that’s shaping people’s lives on a daily basis.
This has started with an unbelievable community of listeners, artists, and organizations, from The Needle Drop to Tiny Mix Tapes to No Sleep to Electric Zoo to now you – yeah, you – who have seen just how great this can be, and want to be a part of getting there.
Cymbal is becoming the music app we’ve always dreamt of, one song at a time. Want to know more? Here’s our full story: https://medium.com/@gabejacobs/o....
Been using it for a little bit now and a big music/tech space nerd since the late 90s. Few apps stick and Cymbal is one of them. It feels like it owes This Is My Jam a note of gratitude and has taken what that great team made and brought it to it's next logical evolution. Looking forward to an integration of Mixcloud and possibly YouTube so that audiophiles can dig even deeper into the music ether and select tracks that are less available on Spotify and Soundcloud. But really loving it.
@stevemarchese Hey Steve! Thank you for the kind words. We feel the same way. This Is My Jam definitely shares a lot of our ideas, most importantly that a single song can represent someone's identity in the same way that a profile picture can. However we felt that TIMJ was not doing a good enough job in terms of creating the social connections that music can form. That's one of the reasons we built Cymbal. We love the idea that through self-expression, you can find others that fit with your personality. Furthermore, we really appreciate mobile. There is something beautiful about trying to fit a full social network on a small iPhone screen. It makes you realize what is important and forces you to make every page beautiful. But anyways, you seem to really understand what we are going for, so thank you!
@stevemarchese Agreed. Well said about TIMJ.
Sadly, as far as I know, Mixcloud doesn't make it possible for third parties to stream its great content.
@antoinem @stevemarchese Right right. They have an API, but we might not be able to integrate it into our current functionality. It seems like an awesome service though. Kind of like a combination 8tracks and songza perhaps?
This app is super addictive and a great way to find new music. I'm absolutely certain this will be huge.
Love working with this team. Think we've gone far too long without a dedicated mobile community to finding & sharing music content with friends... a place to have conversations and discover the artists & tracks that define our tastes, our memories, and our everyday enjoyment. The internet is about connectivity & enabling emotions, and Cymbal is a chance to be a piece of this web devoted to music.
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