Listn is a music app owned by MFive Labs that expands the social possibilities of music listening by connecting people, and their music collections, across platforms and services. The company received $500-thousand in seed funding this week, giving it a foothold for future growth.
The presumption is that many people use more than one music service, or have more than one collection source — for example an iTunes collector might also have a YouTube account and be registered at Spotify. Listn solves the “walled garden” problem by providing an encompassing space in which to share content from multiple sources, and develop a social network that likewise crosses boundaries.
Currently, Listn has connection agreements with YouTube, Spotify, Rdio, and SoundCloud. An Apple-only app presently, Listn also soaks up information about your iPod or iPhone collection purchased from iTunes, adding those tracks to YouTube favorites, and your music associated with membership in the other services.
Listn provides a twofold benefit. First, the user doesn’t have to hop from one app to another — one’s entire macro-collection is presented in a single location. Second, the realm of social sharing and following is greatly expanded. In Listn you meet new people and are exposed to more facets of a person’s music life.
That second point has yet to be fully proved out, in our opinion. Listn provides an interesting way to meet new people, but does not transfer social relationships from connected music service, as it does with music. So, while you can listen to your Spotify tracks in Listn, you cannot listen to your Spotify friends’ playlists unless those friends pile into the Listn app. A socially active subscriber to Spotify, for example, would probably fall back to Spotify where his or her friends are.
Listn’s core mission is reminiscent of the Instant Message startups which pulled that form of communication out of the early web services (CompuServe, Genie, Prodigy, AOL), and unleashed it to the open web in the mid-1990s. That transition can be difficult, when users are reluctant to jump off their islands into the ocean. But the idea behind Listn is solid. People who use multiple music services are forced to engage with separate social schemes. The social aspect of online listening would be more useful and enjoyable if it were more open.