With the success of SnapChat, Line and others, many have been wondering who will own the next big messaging service. Now, we're not saying it's necessarily the next big thing, but it is interesting to us that PingTune (formerly named Tuneit) has appeared with a service which slices off a fascinating niche of the messaging space with an app for music fans that want to send slices of music to each other in an easy and simple way. The startup, based in London's ‘Tech City' in the East, has also just raised £1m ($1.6m) worth of investment to do it. The seed investment comes from Rupert Hambro (former Chairman of Hambros Bank, currently Chairman of JO Hambro) and Dominic Perks (serial entrepreneur and active investor).
PingTune is an iPhone app which lets users search for music from sources like YouTube and SoundCloud, then simply message friends with that track. You can also choose a specific section of the tune or video to send, which, if you think about it, works quite well when you want to tell a friend something which just the chorus in a song is talking about. Clearly the flirting possibilities are endless.
CEO Henry Firth says “We saw that people were sharing music on social networks, but it can be clunky. Copying links between windows is hard work on a mobile phone. We wanted to make that process easier… so we built PingTune.” PingTune's 12-strong teams consists of staff formally with Yahoo, Spotify, Skype and Sony.
He says the business model will eventually be selling mp3s and other music-related purchases.
Note Spotify's partnership with Tango and Sony's campaign with Kik, speaks to this trend for music and messaging getting together. Messaging could well be the next wave we'll see in this space.
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