Aidan Sliney, Craig Watson and Brendan O'Driscoll, co-founders of Soundwave
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and actor Stephen Fry are both talking about one Irish start-up at the minute. It’s Soundwave, the new music discovery app that has just exited beta mode. Today, Soundwave is aiming to take pole posiiton on the Irish App Store charts and is currently surfing the No 2 spot. Soundwave co-founder Brendan O’Driscoll spoke to Carmel Doyle about how the start-up has built up a relationship with the iconic Wozniak in recent times and how he thinks that Soundwave could be the Google Analytics for music.
With Soundwave having recently moved offices to the area of Dublin City known by the thriving tech scene here as ‘Silicon Docks’ because of the cluster of tech giants stationed in the area, including Google and Facebook, O’Driscoll was buzzing with excitement today. That’s because the start-up he has co-founded with Craig Watson and Aidan Sliney has just come out of beta mode.
So what is Soundwave? It’s an iPhone and Android app that O’Driscoll describes as being able to capture what type of music your friends are listening to in real-time.
“You can then stream it on platforms such as Sound Cloud,” he explains. As the name Soundwave itself projects, it’s about surfing the crest of the music your pals are tuning into via the net.
He says the team weren’t even aware of the Soundwave music festival when they chose the name for the company – but it is all fitting in now.
We first came across O’Driscoll at the Dublin Beta start-up networking event last May when the team were presenting as part of their stint on the NDRC’s LaunchPad programme. Indeed it was a Dublin Beta event that brought the co-founders together.
Despite the start-up being only in its very nascent stages at that time, O’Driscoll was very clear-cut about the direction he wanted to steer Soundwave in. And this vision has remained the same since. While we often hear of digital start-ups pivoting a couple of times before they pin down their market offering the Soundwave team were very definite about where they wanted to head right from the outset.
It helps that they each bring their own skill sets to the start-up: O’Driscoll operates on the business development side of things; Sliney manages the tech side of Soundwave and implements products ideas; and Watson works on the operational and financial aspects of the start-up.
Today on the App Store in Ireland
So, what’s all this buzz about the App Store today? If you tune in to the App Store for Ireland now you will see that Soundwave is currently the Editor’s choice. And, at the time of writing, Soundwave was No 2 in the App Store charts.
“The goal is to reach the No 1 spot on the App Store in Ireland by the end of today,” said O’Driscoll.
And just how did the link up with Wozniak came about? While O’Driscoll had already built up an online relationship with Wozniak, the Apple co-founder was in Derry, Northern Ireland, for the European Business Network Congress recently so they got to meet face to face. The opportunity to meet the creative and technical force Wozniak was the icing on the cake.
According to O’Driscoll, Wozniak has been extremely supportive of Soundwave’s ambition and is giving the team lots of encouragement.
Perhaps we will reporting next week on how Soundwave made it to the top of the App charts. Well it is the 21 June, the longest day of the year, so there’s some hope yet that Soundwave will fulfill its ambition … Watch this space!
