Rewind’s new app lets you ‘time travel’ through music from decades past

A brand new app referred to as Rewind desires to make it simpler for music followers to discover the highest songs of a long time previous. Hoping to cater to shopper demand for nostalgic music experiences, Rewind permits customers to “time journey” by way of the music charts from 1960 by way of 2010 to study how older songs have influenced immediately’s hits.

The app was constructed by developer Ziad Al Halabi, whose day job entails cell app growth at music streaming service TIDAL. The developer says he enjoys engaged on music apps, having earlier launched an audio participant for musicians, Backtrackit, which gained some 2 million installs.

With Rewind, which initially started as a weekend challenge, the objective is to supply a portal to discover the older tunes that when dominated the highest charts.

“[What] would it not be like should you opened your favourite music app in 1991? Or 1965?” the app’s description asks. “What are the largest hits on the time? Who’re the highest artists or the rising new ones?”

Picture Credit: Rewind

For older music followers, these questions could also be simpler to reply. However Gen Z brings a brand new group of customers who’re exploring music by way of apps like TikTok, the place a tune’s launch date doesn’t essentially matter. Already, TikTok has proved profitable in introducing youthful folks to common tracks from previous generations, like Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” or Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” — each of which went viral on the video app, breaking into the highest charts years after their unique run. And they are not alone.

This curiosity in older music dovetails with different Gen Z “nostalgia” traits, like their embrace of flip phones, Y2K fashion, wired headphones, disposable cameras, 90s music (a desire spanning generations, in actual fact), and naturally, vinyl.

“I’ve all the time been interested by how music has modified over time,” stated Ziad. “Rewind is a capsule of all of the music, artists and main occasions in a single place. The app gives a brand new approach of discovering new previous music which is predicated on historic eras with somewhat trace of nostalgia,” he continues. “It’s thrilling to see momentum with 1000’s of listeners, Rewind is ideal for tastemakers and followers seeking to uncover new music from the great previous days,” Ziad added.

Picture Credit: Rewind

The app isn’t only a strategy to browse the charts from years previous, nevertheless. It takes issues a step additional and even contains some trendy twists.

For starters, customers can discover the music from a given 12 months by high albums and high music movies, along with rising the highest Billboard charts. It additionally delves into related traits from a given time interval. For example, looking the 12 months 1991 gives a collection of “grunge-defining information,” like Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and Pearl Jam’s “Ten,” amongst others. Different sections current tracks that noticed main radio airtime that 12 months, extremely anticipated releases and newly fashioned bands that emerged that 12 months, and so forth.

As well as, Rewind encompasses a “information” part that features main occasions and moments from the 12 months in query. It additionally contains advertisements that give it a retro really feel. For instance, in 1965, listeners will see advertisements for the primary distortion guitar pedal whereas customers looking the Eighties may see advertisements for brand new synth devices that helped form 80s sounds.

For a little bit of enjoyable, the app leveraged ChatGPT to jot down brief critiques for music albums in its “Weekly Discovery” function and used the AI know-how to place collectively mixtapes for various years by asking ChatGPT questions like “are you able to make me a mixtape of 90’s greatest guitar riffs?”

One other function gives a strategy to scroll by way of a TikTok-style music feed that accompanies annually. Right here, you’ll be able to hearken to tune clips from the time interval in a vertical feed. This explicit function might be higher developed to incorporate “like” or “remark” buttons, however for now you’ll be able to play or pause the monitor or open the tune immediately in TIDAL.

Picture Credit: Rewind

Not surprisingly, given Ziad’s job, Rewind integrates extra deeply with TIDAL, permitting subscribers to stream tracks in full, explains the developer. It is because his work at TIDAL allowed him to simply entry the API and the TIDAL catalog. But when Rewind catches on, he want to add assist for different music apps. Nonetheless, even and not using a TIDAL subscription, customers can stream the 30-second previews and scroll by way of the app’s TikTok-like feed.

“The suggestions I’m getting from customers is that regardless of not having a TIDAL subscription, it’s nonetheless a enjoyable expertise to browse the totally different years, get weekly discovery of albums [and] scroll by way of the TikTok-style feed,” Ziad tells us.

Launched final month, the app gained a couple of thousand downloads on its debut weekend and is slowly rising. It’s obtainable as a free obtain on each Android and iOS and doesn’t presently generate income.