Airbuds

Photo Credit: Wesley Tingey

Is it time to take social music streaming to the next level? Airbuds believes so, and the “go-to social music widget” has scored $5 million in funding to pursue the goal.

Word of this multimillion-dollar raise came to light in a TechCrunch piece, though Airbuds has apparently been making waves for a while now. Founded in 2022 and headquartered in San Francisco, the service says it has north of five million MAUs and is currently ranked 14th in the App Store’s music category.

According to the appropriate website, mobile-focused Airbuds “seamlessly integrates” listening activity on a homescreen hub. From there, listeners – some features are blocked until one invites others to the widget – can view their friends’ music consumption in real time, react to tracks, and view weekly stats, per the startup.

“With real-time listening activity, song reactions, artist rankings and weekly recaps,” Airbuds’ LinkedIn page sums up, “we make music social and give gen z and gen alpha a refreshing space to be authentic and stay true to who they are.”

At present, the app reportedly registers streams logged on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, SoundCloud, Musi, and Audiomack.

Returning to the actual funding, then, Airbuds is now said to have raised a cumulative $10 million from backers including but not limited to a16z, SV Angel, Alexia Bonatsos’ Dream Machine, X head of product Nikita Bier, and Kevin Carter’s Night Capital. And the initially mentioned $5 million came from Seven Seven Six.

As for what’s on the horizon, Airbuds is considering adding different listening options, zeroing in on the much-discussed artist-fan relationship, and exploring a subscription tier, per TechCrunch.

It’ll certainly be worth tracking those possible expansions and the wider social listening arena moving forward.

Elsewhere in this arena, OpenWav is making a splash and features a clear-cut social element, while 7digital-partnered Hangout is building out its group-listening offering. And at least one carefully conceived social music platform was apparently a bit ahead of its time, to name a few examples.

However, especially in light of Spotify’s full-fledged comments sections and newly added direct messaging support, it seems safe to say that social streaming pushes are here to stay.

A closing note on this front: Airbuds’ co-founders Gawen Arab and Gilles Poupardin aren’t new to the social audio realm. Among other things, the two also co-founded Cappuccino, “an app that lets you record and share audio stories with friends.” Ultimately, they sold the older business to a company called Sociaaal.