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p/switchboardTurns your phone into a hands free intercom
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Jim Rand

Switchboard Music - Listen to music together, and talk!

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Switchboard Music lets you listen to music together. Drop in through the intercom or keep voice/video chats open indefinitely for totally spontaneous conversation. The music volume adjusts automatically when someone speaks. You can listen to your own music or synchronize with your friends.

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Jim Rand
Maker
Hey all, really happy to be sharing Switchboard Music. We use it every day to keep our team connected, but it can be used in so many ways: With your remote team Hanging out with friends Running, cycling, gym etc. Wherever you listen to music At the moment you will only get the full music experience with Spotify Premium, but more functionality for Spotify free users coming soon. We are also working on bringing in some radio stations for non-Spotify users. If you don't have Spotify, you can use the communications features and there is limited functionality with music, but it won't be as smooth, so get in touch and let us know what you'd like to see improved. Pros: Music features work great for Spotify Premium users. Communications features work for everyone. Cons: Music features are limited for non-Spotify users.
Abhinav Chhikara
@jimsrand Awesome, can't wait to try it out! We built a similar app a year or two back called Lisn and had some great sessions there
Michael Reynolds
Maker
@jimsrand @abnux Hi Abhinav - We'll be especially interested to hear your feedback, then! Would love to hear about your experience either by emailing us at feedback at synervoz dot com, or by leaving me a voice message in the app itself.
Abhinav Chhikara
@jimsrand @michael_reynolds Sure, definitely! Will drop you an email once I have the chance to check it out This was our product btw: https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Ryan Hoover
This is a very different take on Switchboard's initial team communication focus, @jimsrand. Curious to hear more about what you've learned. Will play around with the app.
Jim Rand
Maker
@rrhoover Hey Ryan, while it definitely opens the door to more consumer-focused use cases, my take is that it really augments the team communication use case. When you're listening along with someone it tends to lead to more conversation. For example, an emoji or a comment about the song you're playing might lead to a totally different conversation, whether personal or professional in nature. Furthermore, your music status is also a great overall indicator of your current state/availability for chat through the intercom (i.e. additional confidence that you're actually there and that you either have headphones on or you're in a private area). Music has always been a huge part of the overall Switchboard vision. Pieces of it were already working when you heard from us last, but it was very half baked and as you may recall, our UI was confusing enough already! Some of that is now improved and additional UI simplification features are also in progress. It's also important to keep in mind that while the behavior makes sense for certain use cases on mobile, the opportunity really opens up when you consider emerging voice interfaces like smart speakers, wireless earbuds, and things like that. Using voice commands, buttons, sensors, gestures, etc. to control things like who you're talking to, your availability, and to share your status (including music) opens up a lot of opportunity for this style of communication -- and many of the use cases involve music and/or other media. So keep an eye out, there's lots more to come. And please keep the feedback rolling, would love to hear your thoughts after you play with it.
Jim Rand
Maker
@rrhoover Also... one of the things we realized was that not having a single player mode was a big problem for stickiness -- especially while inviting friends is constrained by not having Android (we are internally testing an Android version now). A single player mode is now in the works, and leans on these music + voice features. Stay tuned for that, and if you have any single player feature ideas in the meantime, feel free to share!