Music startup 8tracks just released a new app for the Xbox 360. Live Gold subscribers will be able to play 8tracks playlists for free on their consoles. In other news, the service just reached 8 million monthly active users, representing 30 million hours of music streamed per month.
As a reminder, its competitor Pandora announced during its earnings that its users now stream 4.54 billion hours of audio per quarter. It represents 1.51 billion hours per month.
Overall, 8tracks remains a very small music service compared to heavyweight Pandora. But, according to comScore, 8tracks has a younger audience. Forty-eight percent of its American users are aged 18-24. Advertisers always want to find new ways to reach this young demographic, and 8tracks could be a good platform for this purpose. SoundCloud, Bandcamp and Songza are other popular services for young people in the U.S.
The new app on the Xbox 360 will allow you to do everything that you would do in the app or on the website. You can browse human-created playlists by genre, activity and mood. You can like a mix to find it later, follow other users and more. 8tracks is also available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Windows 8 and more.
8tracks has been around for more than five years now. It has raised $1.5 million so far and has kept a small team. The key differentiating element is its human-generated playlists. Using the service is like digging through countless mixtapes. You can browse by genre and mood to find the right mixtape for you. And of course, you can create your own mixtape. Many competitors have come and gone, but 8tracks is still here and growing.