Cymbal
p/cymbal
The music community
Nick Abouzeid
Cymbal Universal Player — Share songs so everyone can listen in their own way
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The Cymbal Universal Player is a single, embeddable player for music. It combines all the players from all the other streaming services in it, so you never have to share a song people can't listen to.

Replies
Charlie Kaplan
Thanks so much for hunting us, @nickabouzeid! We built the Universal Player because streaming is now the #1 way Americans listen to music, but the biggest streaming provider, Spotify, has a minority share of all subscribers. This means that, on average, most people you'll send a song to can't listen to it in full because they subscribe to another service. Sharing music with friends, as a result, is very unreliable. The Universal Player is built on Cymbal’s matching algorithm, which has been live in our app for close to a year. If you haven’t used the app yet, Cymbal is the music social network for Android and iOS devices. In the past, we’ve been called “Instagram for music”: Share your favorite song from Spotify, SoundCloud, or Apple Music, and follow anyone who matters to you to discover songs the world is falling in love with. We had a problem, though: If you share a song from Apple Music, and I’m a Spotify subscriber, I wouldn’t be able to listen to it, even though I already paid for it with my own subscription. We thought that was very silly, as if I couldn’t text you because you were on AT&T and I was on Verizon. Would you even text people if that were true? We fixed this problem in the app by making sure everyone listens to every song on the streaming provider they pay for. Then we realized that same problem is everywhere on the internet, too. Hence, the Universal Player. Other folks have worked on this problem in the past, but we think now that streaming is ascendant in music, this has become an eminently imperative tool. Social music can’t exist without it, and our goal is to use it to ultimately power all the listening on the internet. Give it a spin! You can search any song or album on our homepage, cymbal.fm, and share it straight to your friends. To make things even easier, we built an iMessage app that sends our Universal Song links, and today are announcing a brand-new Chrome Extension that automatically transforms any song from our three major streaming services playable, anywhere on the internet, so you never have to encounter a song you can’t listen to. Get that here - https://chrome.google.com/websto... I’ve written more about this over at Medium, I’d love it if you gave it a read. https://medium.com/@ciwk/the-uni... I’d also like to take a moment to thank Cymbal’s amazing team, @ascrookes, @gabejacobs, @smilespurcell, as well as our friend and former Head of Product @nadomars, who designed the player. We received amazing help from our advisors @ronrofe, @badboyboyce, and @tjmahony on our path here. We can’t wait for what’s to come. Here’s to the listenable internet!
Adam DePasqua
This is pretty. 👏
Creatrix Tiara
Will this fill the hole in my heart that once held This Is My Jam? :D
Charlie Kaplan
@creatrixtiara The app definitely will! Grab it over at http://get.cymbal.fm! I hope you enjoy :)
Nick Abouzeid
Cross-platform music sharing. No longer will I have to fight with my girlfriend about whether Spotify or Apple Music is better 😈
Sergiu Cazac
Any plans of adding Tidal support? This app could really solve a big problem for, as a lot of blogs post songs with iframes from youtube/spotify/soundcloud etc. and I didn't event think this could have a solution. Good job.
Charlie Kaplan
@sergiu_cazac We'd absolutely love to. TIDAL doesn't currently have a streaming API for us to build on, but as soon as we can get some sort of access we'll get them on as soon as possible. We've reached out for access in the past, hopefully they'll grant it soon!
Sergiu Cazac
@ciwk Thanks you very much. Even that they don't have an API, somehow there is an add-on for kodi (xbmc) for Tidal, so there's probably a way.
Charlie Kaplan
@sergiu_cazac Thanks for the tip! We'll look into that now. Hopefully we can get it in...
Johny Pereira
Great job @ciwk and all the others!
Alex Jae Mitchell
Nice implementation! A bit of unsolicited feedback, the decision to only include Spotify, Apple Music, and Soundcloud feels very limited compared to similar products by Linkfire and Smarturl. Also, is the library limited to just songs that have been shared on Cymbal? How are you handling licensing?
Charlie Kaplan
@mitchellshow Feedback is much appreciated! An important difference between the Universal Player and that class of smart link services is that each player is algorithmically created, without the need for manually sourcing links. The player contains the embeds from each of the services we're integrated with, with the objective of always showing you the player from the service you use, rather than a list of all the possible streaming options you could have. Our focus is on learning where listeners are listening and making the internet feel tailor-made for their subscription. We're aiming for more services next, but we'll only integrate with services if we believe we can continue to provide this same seamless matching of the right listener to the right song on the right platform. What streaming integration would you most like to see added? Regarding licensing: Because our player contains embeds from other streaming services, we leave licensing to the streaming providers themselves.
Filip Mares
bop.fm all over again. http://bop.fm/
Charlie Kaplan
@filipmares proud to carry the torch!