Meet the new Beatrobo, music discovery made easier

Japan’s music discovery and sharing service, Beatrobo, launches new look and features.

Echelon alumnus Beatrobo recently launched a new look for their music sharing and discovery service. The team had previously launched the Beatplug to allow the sharing of music content through a physical device.

Other than the overall redesign, new features includes Playground and Hangout. Beatrobo’s founder and CEO, Hiroshi Asaeda, shared with e27 on the latest improvements to the service and what triggered it.

Notice that you now draw content from YouTube and Soundcloud. Is Soundcloud new to this or has it been available in the earlier version?

We used to only have YouTube, and we added Soundcloud from this update. So as you found out, it’s new!

Why did you decide to offer more robot designs?

We noticed each people had different personas in music interests. Sometimes you listen to Hiphop, but sometimes you listen to Classical, even if you’re the same person. So we decided to offer the multiple robot feature, so people can meet robots in multiple interests.

Do share more about Playground and Hangout. It looks like it helps music discovery better, was it built based on user feedback?

So from the feedbacks, we decided to add the Playground, which is like a my room feature where it only plays your robots, and the Hangout feature to listen to other robots around you. The alpha version was always a mixup of your robot and your friends, making it difficult to just listen to what you want. But at the same time, there is the serendipity moment where you find a good song that’s selected by your friends. So for the people who want to concentrate and listen to their own songs, we provided each user’s room. And when you feel like finding new music, or you get interested in somebody else’s playlist, you leave your room and visit using Hangout. We’re planning to add genre streets in the near future, so users with the same interests could find each other.

How is Beatrobo looking to monetize the service, especially with these new features?

Beatrobo will be adding celebrity rooms and streets, where you can find celebrity robots and virtual items. We’re also planning to add the premium membership feature where you’ll be able to own more robots, add more songs to your robots, and have exclusive robot designs and colours only for premium members.