Tinder co-founder’s ‘Next’ iPhone App has you Swiping to Discover New Indie Musicians

Music discovery is a problem, particularly with independent artists that don’t have the funds to invest in a major marketing campaign like artists on major labels often have at their disposal.

Finding an artist to connect with is similar to starting a relationship in many ways, and two Tinder veterans (co-founder Christopher Gulczynski and former VP of design Sarah Mick) applied that same discovery dynamic  to connect musicians with their fans via an iPhone app called Next.

What’s cool about this app is musicians use Next to record videos of their music (between 10 seconds and 3 minutes), then users login and watch 30 second excerpts of songs.  Artists need to make sure they make a good first impression because they won’t have much time to get the attention of their listeners.  If people like what they hear they swipe right to like the song, and if they don’t like what they hear they swipe left to dismiss it.

Next is in the position to help with music discovery and send listeners to other services, like Spotify and SoundCloud.  It also has a video focus and may be a more likely competitor to YouTube.  Like anything new though, it may be challenging to get artists to switch over to this service when they are used to promoting their music utilizing resources that reach a very large audience (like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter).

Hopefully, they can succeed in reaching a large audience and become a valuable resource for musicians and fans in the future.