While many phones – we’re looking at you, Apple – are getting rid of their headphone jacks, Facebook is bringing back the AUX like never before. Facebook has launched a new app called Aux, currently in beta and exclusively available in Canada. This comes as the first creation from Facebook’s New Product Experimentation team, known as NPE.
The goal of this app, as stated on its Facebook page, is to bring “the social experience back to music”. The app itself works by allowing users to add songs to the app. Once the songs are added, they are upvoted with “claps”. Users, predominantly school-aged children and teens, can join a party in the app every day at 9 p.m. Users then choose their songs by upvoting which tracks they want to hear. At the end of the night, a winner is chosen based on ‘claps’.
With the app coming out just last month, data on its success has yet to be determined. We expect that it’s only a matter of time until Facebook’s NPE team decides if they have a winner on its hands.
The concept of crowdsourcing DJs isn’t new and has come up numerous times in the past year. For example, back in July, the app PSLY allowed users to pick what the DJ would play next. The app was being tested at a local club in Toronto.
More and more apps are allowing users to pick the music they want to hear the most in social settings, and it seems that crowdsourcing tunes is coming to the forefront this year. While these apps come with convenience and power to the aux, they’ll never fully take away the experience of a good DJ.