There’s some cool things you can only do on Android, and today music moment sharing app SoundTracking starts takes advantage of them. You can watch YouTube music videos of shared songs without leaving SoundTracking, or identify songs Shazam-style and share them straight from a locked homescreen widget in SoundTracking 2.0 for Android. There’s also a new Trending section to help you discover what’s hot.
While iOS is pretty and easy to use, Android is much more flexible for developers. SoundTracking co-founder Steve Jang tells me “Android is trying to different things with the way you use apps together with the device.” SoundTracking applies these features so when you hear a song or see a band live, you can quickly share a photo or video and the song with friends.
For example, SoundTracking employed the new lock screen widget feature of Android that lets you access parts of an app without unlocking the device first. SoundTracking’s widget lets you search for songs, identify them by an audio sample picked up by your microphone, or share a music moment. It’s super helpful for when you hear a song in a store or on the radio and need to quickly start IDing it before it’s over.
Google is also a bit more attentive to developers. SoundTracking worked closely with the YouTube team so instead of making you jump out of SoundTracking and into the YouTube app to watch a video, it plays inside of SoundTracking. Jang explains “When our users share music moments, many of the songs have cool music videos that add to the meaning or enjoyment of that track. This really became obvious when we saw many users sharing Psy’s “Gangnam Style” song with still images of themselves dancing or of Psy. The real awesomeness of that song is the music video, not just the audio.”
Since you’re not always at a concert and the radio kinda sucks these days, SoundTracking 2.0 for Android also delivers a new discovery experience. Trending tabs let you see what people are sharing near you or worldwide. SoundTracking also smoothed out its design, adding Path-style fly out buttons for sharing. And now you can tag friends in moments you share so they get a notification, which is great for birthdays.
Jang believes developers need to hone their apps to the operating system they’re on, “There’s advantages and disadvantages to each platform. Android has special features, and iOS has great distribution and lots of users with credit cards on file.” Cloning your app across platforms doesn’t cut it anymore.
You can download SoundTracking 2.0 for Android at the Google Play store.
And since it’s the end of the year, SoundTracking released some charts of the most shared songs of 2012. So if you don’t know these by now, you may be hard of hearing.