Social listening has long been a clunky experience. While most of us have resorted to using Discord music bots or Spotify group sessions, India-based developers Shashwat Singhal and Tanya Desai have built a cross-platform social music app that integrates with Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. We went hands-on with the app, and here’s how Lishash attempts social listening with a community-centric approach.
Setting Up Your Lishash Profile and Getting Started
When you sign up for an account on Lishash, you get your own profile. You can specify your top tracks, artists, and genres in your Lishash profile. By default, the app populates your top artists based on your linked Spotify/ Apple Music accounts. However, tapping the pencil icon gives you the option to customize your preference and include/ remove artists.
Social Listening Through Community Sessions
On the home page, you will see the active community sessions and in-app friend sessions. Tapping the session opens a menu where you can view the song that’s currently playing and the genres included in the session. If that piques your interest, you can choose to join the session.
Joining the session gives you access to the music and chat interface. If you are in a community session, the options to control music playback and queue songs are limited to hosts and co-hosts. You can chat about the song in the chatbox with a left swipe.
Towards the end of the home page, you will see a list of upcoming sessions. You have the option to turn on reminders to get notified when the session goes live.
Listen to Music Together with Friends
While you’re playing a song on Lishash, you can invite your friends to the session. Do note that your friend will need the app to tune in to the listening party, and you should add them to the in-app friend list. Sending a session invite is as simple as pressing the “Invite” button next to the song’s name and picking your friend’s profile from the list. They can then join in and y’all can listen to music together and chat in the chatbox.
Share Songs and Chat With Friends
If you just discovered a new song, you can easily share it with your friend within the app. The Share button in the player interface lets you do that. Furthermore, it even shows if your friend has already listened to that track. You also get the option to add a personalized note while sharing the song, making the recommendation even more personal.
What I like about song sharing through the app is the fact that shared songs are organized in a separate section. Opening the song listing shows a chatbox where you can specifically chat about the song in question. So yeah, you can see that Lishash has worked a ton on the community aspect of the platform, baking chat and sharing options wherever necessary.
Music Discovery Through Private Sessions
Before you dismiss it as a sophisticated Discord group listening feature with added steps, let me introduce you to my favorite feature of the app — filters. With filters, you can narrow down exactly what kind of music you want to listen to, a feature that’s missing on the best music streaming services out there. You can tap on the floating action button to access the filters section.
In the filters tab, you can adjust the valence, loudness, speechiness (instrumental – speech-heavy), popularity, deepness, and release date. After setting the desired filters, you have the option to save them as a “vibe” to revisit later.
Lishash App: Business Model
Lishash app currently has an in-app currency the company calls “Licos”. Here, Licos is the reputation token that you earn for participating and engaging in the app. For instance, you get 5 Licos when someone likes a track you queued in a community session. Licos also gives you special perks within the app. On the other hand, the developers will soon introduce monetary tokens to purchase a subscription to the app.
“You’ll never be able to buy reputation with money, it can only be earned via community contribution. The goal of reputation tokens is to build a healthy community and decentralize Lishash governance by giving the most active people an automated way to become mods. Monetary tokens can be used to buy subscription, and become a stakeholder in Lishash’s future profits,” Lishash co-founder Shashwat Singhal told Beebom.
Looking ahead, the company aims to launch a web app, host community-focused meetups in several cities across India, and take Lishash to the blockchain. That would essentially make Lishash a Web3 community business, where community members can contribute via code, marketing, or utilize other relevant skills for earning monetary tokens in return.
Lishash App: Quick Impressions
Having used Lishash app over the past couple of weeks, I have found the app to be intuitive and convenient to discover new music. Thanks to a mix of community sessions and filters, I’ve discovered around 100 new songs so far. Other than a few occasional bugs and crashes, the app works as intended for the most part.
Downloading the app redirects you to a form where you’re asked about your music discovery preferences and a few other basic details. You will receive an invite link to the app soon after submitting the form. If you are interested, you can check out Lishash on Play Store and App Store.
Download Lishash (Android | iOS)
