App dubbed 'Facebook with radio' connects users through music

New startup wahwah.fm was founded in Berlin in 2010 by Phillip Eibach. One of many young companies based in Germany's capital, wahwah.fm now employs a staff of nine. Industry insiders are heralding it as the next logical step in combining social media with music.

The concept, which aims to turn each individual user into their own radio station, has impressed juries at a host of online awards. The computing section of German daily Bild Zeitung listed it as one of the ten most successful young internet companies in Germany.

So far, only the demo version is available to sample at the company's website with a launch date announced for early 2012.

Ari Stein, the company's Head of Communication, joined us in the Soundscape 100 studio in Berlin to explain more.

Deutsche Welle: wahwah.fm uses location-based technology and elements of online streaming, neither of which is new, so how does your service differ?

Ari Stein: The app does something quite unique. Each person becomes a unique broadcastable radio station, and they can connect with each other all around the world. What we're building is a unique social network. Some people call us "Foursquare with music," others call us "Facebook with radio." Essentially what we do is: you pick your music, you press play and you broadcast. The music goes "on air," as it were, from your own phone and anyone else in the world with the same app can see and hear what you're doing.

Because of the location-based technology, if I were logged in to the app in a new city, presumably as I move through the city, the playlist is going to change?

Exactly. I like to call it a musical compass. You take the phone with you when you get off the plane or the train or whatever, and you can find new people to communicate with. More importantly, you can find new people to discover new music with. You can explore new worlds. What's been a problem in the industry so far are all these algorithms telling people what to like. We're trying to bring it back to the human level. So essentially you're not just picking the song you want to listen to but also the person playing it.

But is this kind of technology going to work everywhere? I'm just trying to imagine going on vacation to the Seychelles or the Easter Islands. Is it going to work in remote places like that?

Wherever there is internet, you can use wahwah. It does of course depend how many people are using the app at the time you are there. So if for example the wahwah.fm pick up is not so great in Nigeria compared to New York, then obviously your experience is going to be a bit different.

Now it might be safe to assume that most countries have the internet, but it's certainly far from true to say that everyone has an i-Phone. What can people do if they don't have this particular kind of cell phone?

Well, wahwah.fm is predominantly for the i-Phone but we are working on a version which will run with the Android platform, which most smartphones use.

But what if you don’t have either kind of phone? I'm just trying to imagine this musical compass and how impractical it would be to have to walk around a city carrying your laptop, for example.

Put simply, this is an app for a mobile, and it was created for people on the run. We wanted to create an app for people who want music right now and wanted to connect with people in that live moment. With a laptop or a desktop computer, that changes that dynamic. That said, we are looking into making a desktop interface for people to show a previous list of tracks played but in connection with the app.

Music online has always been a particularly hot topic for GEMA, the German performing rights collection agency. For example, scores of music videos by major artists are blocked on YouTube in Germany in a debate which is still raging regarding the per-view fee. In the case of wahwah.fm, turning users into radio stations, particularly if they are sharing illegally downloaded material, seems to be just the sort of thing GEMA would be keen to stop. Have they been involved?

Yeah it's a tough issue, and the debate has been going on for many years. But we are worlds away from the GEMA/YouTube dispute as we are set up differently. In our case we promote wahwah.fm as non-interactive radio - meaning that unlike YouTube, it's not an on-demand service. From the listeners' perspective it's just like listening to any other radio station, and that's the key factor that helped us reach an agreement with GEMA. 

What have you learned about Berlin’s musical landscape since you’ve been using wahwah.fm?

Well one thing I think most people know is that Berlin is such a dynamic and diverse city. If you take the app out on the street when you’re travelling through the boroughs, you definitely do see different sounds emanating from different neighborhoods. If you happen to be around Kottbusser Tor in Kreuzberg on a Saturday night which is quite a rough and ready, punky sort of area, then you'll definitely find more up-front, party music. If you are in a more northern district like Prenzlauer Berg, then the trend is more towards softer, down-tempo music. But it's almost impossible to generalize. Actually, one of the things wahwah.fm might be able to do in future is dispel some of these myths that certain kinds of music are specific to certain areas.

Presumably another thing that's just going to add to that Berlin confusion even more are the tourists, because if they're in town and logged in, their preferences are also going to feature in the mix.

Exactly. Another thing wewant to develop - and this is particularly interesting for tourists visiting a city perhaps for the first time - are club playlists. We already started a pilot scheme with a very popular techno club here called Watergate. The party is streamed on their channel. Whether or not that's the party for you, you can access the stream and listen to the music.

How do you think this location-based technology is going to impact the music industry in future?

That's a big question and one that the industry is trying to solve together. We're at the beginning, but we're sure that this is going to revolutionize the listening experience. OK, you already have services like Last.fm and Spotify. They're great, but a lot of them are on-demand and not so interactive. But this new technology is a real interactive experience. We want to explore that and give people more of a say in what they'd like to hear. There are huge opportunities in the future for location-based marketing and for interacting with the public.

Just to make this absolutely clear, the version we have been using here is the test version, so when is wahwah.fm actually going to go live for users?

I don't want to commit to a fixed date because then I'll sound like a politician, so I'm going to say early 2012.

That's now isn't it?

Well let's say late January, early February at the latest.

And finally, is there any special criteria you need to meet to set up a wahwah.fm account?

Anyone can set up a channel. It doesn't matter if you're an individual or record label or a department store or a club or whatever. Just imagine: anyone around the world can become their own Deutsche Welle Radio!

You can hear more from Ari Stein plus music from the Berlin playlist of wahwah.fm on this week's edition of Soundscape 100. Just click on the link below!

Text: Gavin Blackburn
Editor: Rick Fulker