San Francisco-based startup Airbuds has emerged as a compelling music social network, capturing the attention of Gen Z and younger users by enabling effortless sharing of streaming activity. Unlike the social features attempted by giants like Apple and Spotify, Airbuds focuses on seamless integration through mobile widgets, fostering genuine connections and self-expression. On Wednesday, the company announced a $5 million funding round from early-stage venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, co-founded by Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian, bringing its total funding to $10 million.
Airbuds, developed by co-founders Gilles Poupardin and Gawen Arab, addresses a gap in the music streaming landscape where major platforms have struggled to build engaging social experiences. Apple Music’s past efforts, including the short-lived Ping network in the early 2010s and the artist-fan Connect feature, both failed to gain traction. Spotify has experimented with TikTok-style feeds, comments, polls, Q&As, collaborative playlists, and messaging, yet it hasn’t fully cracked the code for a true social network. Building such consumer-facing social tools remains challenging and unpredictable, but Airbuds has iterated effectively to fill this void.
Poupardin’s entrepreneurial journey in music tech dates back to his college years. He created a Pinterest-inspired music bookmarking tool, a voice-controlled smart speaker launched just before Amazon’s Echo, and the social audio app Cappuccino, which allowed friends to collaborate on mini-podcasts. Arab contributed to the smart speaker project and later worked at Zenly, the social mapping app acquired by Snap for $350 million in 2017. After selling Cappuccino and its intellectual property to meditation studio Sociaaal, the duo pivoted to a widget-centric application, evolving it into Airbuds.
The app’s core innovation is its mobile widget for iOS and Android, which automatically shares users’ real-time streaming activity with friends. As Poupardin explained in an interview with TechCrunch, “Because I built all of these music products in the past, I knew that when you ask the users to create a playlist or to do something, it’s a lot of effort.” The widget leverages the popularity of iOS widgets among teens, requiring minimal user input. Users simply connect their preferred streaming service, and Airbuds handles the rest, sharing songs as they play without additional steps.
Airbuds currently supports a wide array of streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud, Musi, Deezer, Amazon Music, and Audiomack. This broad compatibility has driven impressive growth metrics. The app has surpassed 15 million downloads, boasts 5 million monthly active users, and sees 1.5 million daily launches. According to app intelligence firm Appfigures, Airbuds maintains a 96% positive ratings sentiment across more than 9,400 reviews in the last 30 days, underscoring its appeal to its primary demographic of U.S. high school and college students, with growing adoption in the U.K., Australia, Brazil, and Mexico.
Beyond basic sharing, Airbuds has layered on robust social features to enhance user engagement. Friends can react to streamed songs using emojis, stickers, or AI-generated selfies with backgrounds removed. The feed allows users to play short clips of friends’ tracks and initiate chats via a built-in messenger. For privacy, a “ghost mode” lets users listen without broadcasting their activity, which can be toggled on and off. Additional tools include matching users with similar music tastes, a personalized Weekly Recap summarizing listening habits—similar to Spotify Wrapped but on a weekly basis—and an experimental school-based leaderboard highlighting top artists among schoolmates.
Customization is a cornerstone of the experience, with users able to personalize their profile, or “Space,” by adding favorite artists, songs, albums, lyrics, photos, and text. Alternatively, the app can auto-generate designs based on listening data. Poupardin emphasizes that this self-expression element is central to the app’s success, noting that around 30% of users interact with features beyond merely viewing friends’ streams. “The streamers gave us access to 100 million songs, but nobody really cracked the identity piece, the self-expression piece…and this is exactly how they use it,” he said, referring to the app’s young user base.
To encourage network effects, Airbuds employs feature-gating, requiring users to invite friends to unlock certain functionalities, such as viewing more than the top three artists in their recap. Poupardin clarifies that this isn’t solely for growth hacking; the app’s value truly emerges within a circle of connected friends, making social invitations essential for a fulfilling experience.
The latest $5 million infusion from Seven Seven Six adds to previous investments from prominent backers like Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), SV Angel, Dream Machine, Nikita Bier, Antoine Martin, Uncommon, and Night Capital. This capital will fuel ambitious expansions. Airbuds plans to integrate more streaming services, develop direct artist-to-fan connections to bridge creators and listeners, and introduce features targeting older demographics beyond its current Gen Z core. The team is also piloting a subscription model to explore monetization, potentially offering premium perks like advanced customization or ad-free experiences.
Airbuds’ rise highlights a broader trend in social media, where niche platforms centered on specific interests—like music—can thrive by solving pain points overlooked by incumbents. While Apple and Spotify command vast libraries and user bases, their social integrations often feel bolted-on rather than native. Airbuds, by contrast, starts with social sharing at its heart, using widgets to make music a conversational centerpiece. This approach has resonated, evidenced by its high engagement and positive reviews.
As the app evolves, it could redefine how music discovery and social interaction intertwine. With artist connections on the horizon, Airbuds might empower fans to engage directly with musicians, perhaps through exclusive content or live reactions. Attracting older users could broaden its appeal, tapping into nostalgia-driven listening habits. The subscription test will be a key indicator of sustainability, especially in a market dominated by free tiers from Spotify and Apple.
Available on both iOS and Android, Airbuds exemplifies how focused innovation can disrupt established categories. Its funding milestone not only validates its traction but positions it to scale globally, potentially influencing how future music apps balance streaming with social dynamics. For now, it stands as the music social network that tech giants wish they had built first.
