A new app called Rewind aims to make it easier for music fans to discover the best songs of decades. Hoping to satisfy consumer demand for nostalgic musical experiences, Rewind allows users to “travel back in time” through the music charts from 1960 to 2010 to learn how older songs influenced hits of today.
The app is developed by the developer Ziad Al Halabi, whose main work is the development of a mobile app in the music streaming service TIDAL. The developer says he enjoys working on music apps, having previously launched an audio player for musicians, Backtrackit, which has garnered around 2 million installs.
With Rewind, which originally started as a weekend project, the goal is to provide a portal to explore the older tunes that once dominated the charts.
“[What] Would it be like opening your favorite music app in 1991? Or 1965?” asks for the description of the app. “What were the biggest successes of that time? Who are the best artists or new emerging ones?”
Photo credit: Rewind
For older music fans, these questions may be easier to answer. But Gen Z is bringing a new breed of users who explore music through apps like TikTok, where the release date of a song is not necessarily important. TikTok has already proven successful in introducing young people to popular titles from past generations, such as “Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush or “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac – both of which went viral on the video app and entered the top years later – Charts on their original run. And they are not alone.
This interest in older music aligns with other Gen Z “nostalgia” trends, such as the shift to flip phones, Y2K fashion, wired headphones, disposable cameras, 90s music (a preference that in a fact that spans generations), and of course, vinyl.
“I’ve always been interested in how music has changed over time,” said Ziad. “Rewind is a capsule of music, artists and major events all in one place. The app offers a new way to discover new early music, based on historical eras with a bit of nostalgia,” he continues. “It’s exciting to see the momentum with thousands of listeners. Rewind is perfect for tastemakers and fans looking to discover new music from the good old days,” added Ziad.
Photo credit: Rewind
However, the app isn’t just a way to browse past years’ maps. It goes a step further and even includes some modern twists.
For starters, users can browse the music of a specific year from the best albums and the best music videos, in addition to expanding the top Billboard charts. It also looks at relevant trends from a specific time period. For example, if you search for 1991, you’ll find a selection of “grunge-defining records” such as Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten, among others. Other sections present tracks that got a lot of radio airplay this year, highly anticipated releases and newly formed bands that formed this year, etc.
In addition, Rewind offers a “News” section that contains important events and moments from the year in question. It also includes ads that give it a retro feel. For example, in 1965 listeners will see ads for the first distortion guitar pedal, while users browsing the 1980s may see ads for new synth instruments that shaped the sound of the 80s.
For fun, the app used ChatGPT to write short reviews of music albums in its Weekly Discovery feature and used AI technology to compile mixtapes for different years by asking ChatGPT questions like “Can you give me a Make 90s mixtape? best guitar riffs?”
Another feature is the ability to scroll through a TikTok-style music feed that accompanies each year. Here you can listen to song clips from the period in a vertical feed. This particular feature could be better engineered to include “Like” or “Comment” buttons, but for now you can play or pause the track, or open the song directly in TIDAL.
Photo credit: Rewind
Given Ziad’s work, it’s not surprising that Rewind integrates more deeply with TIDAL, allowing subscribers to stream tracks in full. This is because, the developer explains, working at TIDAL gave him easy access to the API and the TIDAL catalog. But if Rewind catches on, it would love to add support for other music apps. But even without a TIDAL subscription, users can stream the 30-second preview and scroll through the app’s TikTok-like feed.
“The feedback we’re getting from users is that despite the lack of a TIDAL subscription, it’s still a fun experience to browse through the different years, discover albums every week and scroll in the style of the TikTok feed”, says Ziad .
Launched last month, the app saw a few thousand downloads in its debut weekend and is slowly growing. It is available as a free download for both Android and iOS and is currently generating no revenue.
Source: techcrunch.com
