Nick Donovan, the indie folk singer-songwriter otherwise known as wildwildsky, has released a music discovery app that does something I’ve never seen before. It allows musicians and artists to record songs and place them inside the app in specific locations for music listeners to discover. The idea is that the songs will be placed in nature and only available to be heard in those specific locations. It promotes ephemeral experiences and merging music with the outdoors. You can’t take the song with you when you leave. You can only experience it in that spot. Maybe you’ll want to return there to re-experience it again or have it as part of a regular hike, for example. I’ve never heard of music and geocaching being intertwined before, and I thought it was a fascinating idea! I’d discovered the app as two artists I enjoy, Sam Lee and Anna B Savage, have contributed songs to the app. Currently, it is only available in the UK.
The tagline is “it’s Pokémon Go for music”. This isn’t strictly true, as you can’t collect the songs, but I get the sentiment. When you download the app, you are presented with a list of musicians and songs. Each artist has a bio about why the track and location made sense to them. You then give the app location permissions for it to ensure you are inside the listening range of the track, and the song will play. If you aren’t within reach, nothing will happen and you’ll get a “no songs in range” message.
The app is in very early development, which means I’ve found a few bugs with screens closing and songs not downloading fully. The main feedback I’d give is that there is no way for a user to search by location to know what songs are planted where. For the app to scale, I feel like that would be an incredibly useful feature.
wildwildsky is available for Android and iOS. For more information, visit the wildwildsky app website.
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