Motivation Matters

I was reading Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, and something really caught my eye. Something that is exactly what I think and the reason why we did SoundShare.

Just as a background so it’s easier to understand Steve’s quote.

It was 2006 and Microsoft released the Zune, their iPod killer. The iPod was already 3 three years in the market with a brilliant success, being by far, the most sold portable device. The iTunes Store was already 7 months old, and had sold 1 million songs only in its first week. The revolution we all know today, was already happening at full power back there, and Microsoft released their player which looked like the iPod, though a bit clunkier. After two years it had achieved a market share of less than 5%.

“The older I get, the more I see how much motivations matter. The Zune was crappy because the people at Microsoft don’t really love music or art the way we do. We won because we personally love music. We made the iPod for ourselves, and when you’re doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you’re not going to cheese out. If you don’t love something, you’re not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much.” Steve Jobs.

I’m not posting this, because I want to say that the iPod is better than the Zune, or Apple is better than Microsoft, although we’ve seen all the numbers. I’m posting this, because of the honesty there is in this quote. It’s so true, to everyone and to us at SoundShare.

We need to have this at our core, do everything with passion, doing with excellence and seeking perfection. Go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much as you can, and make products that your users will fall in love with. Don’t do something because others are doing it, hear your inner voice, and do what you love.

1.3

So, we just released a new update on the AppStore. 1.3. It comes with a lot of cool features, specially to Facebook users and Twitter users running iOS 4.

The first nice feature is Find Facebook Friends. What this is, is an option that lets you see all your Facebook friends using SoundShare. This was a really requested feature and it is really cool. It simplify a lot the process of finding new friends.

The second feature, is a really awesome one. We wanted to add the ability to comment when posting a song o Facebook. On iOS 5, Apple added Twitter integration. It has a beautiful UI, with a compose view that appears when tweeting. But, not only beautiful, it’s really handy, giving also the option of adding a message with the song. So, we decided to make the Facebook post just like Apple did with Twitter on iOS 5. We’ve created what we call, Social Networks Compose View. It’s just like Apple’s implementation, but also works with Facebook. And to the user, it’s a pretty straightforward UI, since they are already used to it. But the coolest thing about creating our own compose view, is that we can make it iOS 4 compatible. So this means that users on iOS 4, can now tweet and post on Facebook just like users on iOS 5. Below there are screenshots showing this in action.

There is also some bug fixes, new animations and UI enhancements. We hope you all enjoy, and if you don’t have SoundShare yet, go ahead and get it for free on the AppStore.

                 

Welcome to SoundShare

We’re really excited to start our blog. We should have done this a while ago. I hope we can write some really exciting stuff to all you guys.

Since this is our first post, I will start telling how we came up with SoundShare and why we did it.

We are crazy about music, well, everybody is. And music is one of the best thing in life, because it has the power to change everything. It inspires us, brings joy, excitement and can even turn a bad moment in a good one. It touches our soul and reminds us those we love. But the best thing about it, is that music is made to be shared, and nothing like sharing a song with a special someone.

Also, Social Networks changed the way we interact with our friends and family. How we share our photos, places we’ve been, thoughts, actions, well, how we share our whole life. But music isn’t in that list. There is Pandora, Last.fm and a few others, but none of them are specifically focused on the music sharing experience. They were created to listen to music and not share them. But what about Ping? Well, it’s Ping. According to BusinessInsider, Ping was one of the biggest failures of 2010. But, to us, Apple did one thing right with Ping. What it should be about. A place to share music. Simple as that.

We needed a great place to discover new songs, see what our friends are listening, have the option to listen to what they listen as well as buy those new songs we find.

So we decided to make that, and this is the first step along the way.

Here are some of the problems users were having with social music experience that we tried to solve:

1. “No easy way to share a song”: we are always listening to music, but every time we want to share something, we need to go to a specific place on a specific app, tap a button and then, chose where to share it. We designed SoundShare to fix this, you don’t have to care about sharing every song you listen, it automatically does that for you in a super easy, elegant and transparent way. We also added a built-in player so you don’t have to worry about using other apps.

2. “I don’t want to annoy my friends”: most of us listens to a lot of songs every day. Now imagine if we share every song we listen on Facebook and/or Twitter, our friends would be pissed. We created our own Social Network so we wouldn’t annoy anyone. It’s a place where you can share as many songs as you want without worrying about annoying your friends. If you still want to share some of the songs you listen on Facebook and/or Twitter you’re just one tap away.

3. “More private network”: music is something really personal. So, having a network with over two hundred friends is not the best idea. We need a more private experience. Sometimes we just want to share our songs with a couple of friends, those that we share a similar taste. SoundShare gives a better experience when discovering new songs, since we will only see what our closest friends are listening.

4. “Smart feed”: smart feed is not a feed that selects what you may like to see. Smart feed is a feed that can interact with other services. With SoundShare, we made sure to build the most awesome features on your feed. You can listen to your friends songs, purchase them through iTunes and even watch a Youtube clip. It’s really awesome.

SoundShare is really focused on the user, with a gorgeous UI and a super easy user experience, it’s definitely the best place to discover new songs, share what you love and make new friends. We’re looking forward to seeing what you guys listen. Feel free to get in touch with us at contact@soundshareapp.com.

If you don’t have the app yet, get it Free here.