Spotify Playlist App Soundrop Spreads Its Wings With An SDK: Now Anyone Can Have A DJ App

Soundrop, the popular Spotify app that lets users create “rooms” to share streamed-music playlists with others, is turning up the volume on its service. Today, the company is announcing a new SDK so that others can create their own Soundrop-Spotify powered music apps. The service is kicking off with a bang: David Guetta, the French DJ, now has his own Soundrop-powered app, PlayGuetta, on Spotify.

Inge Sandvik, co-founder and CEO of Soundrop, tells me that it’s one step in a larger strategy for Soundrop to be provided a platform of its own as a social music service, bringing third parties on to its platform to share and distribute music playlists. That will also include working on other platforms independently of Spotify as well as services to create video playlists as well.

The news comesĀ as Spotify itself looks to improve discovery and interactivity on its platform. It is gearing up for a launch of a web-browser-based version, and TechCrunch understands that in December it will announce the addition of “influencer” playlists on the service, which can be followed a la Twitter.

The SDK being announced today includes APIs and a JavaScript library to incorporate features like track voting, playlist management and real-time chat, as well as access to tracks that are trending within the app.

The company’s platform is built on Erlang, Sandvik says, which helps it to scale. The platform migration to an Erlang-based system was first revealed in October, when Soundrop updated its mobile and web apps with more interactivity. At the time, it announced 340 million tracks played through its services.

David Guetta is probably one of the most obvious use cases for Soundrop’s SDK — PlayGuetta was developed by his label, EMI, and you can see how it and other music publishers, and artists themselves, can use the platform to create their own, standalone apps. But ultimately, this could be used by brands looking to create “music experiences” as part of their marketing campaigns, or by any business that wants to extend the way that they interact with their customers — the app equivalent, perhaps, of how a carrier, for example, sponsors a music venue.

Oslo-based Sondrop has to date raised $3 million from Northzone, which is also one of Spotify’s lead backers.

You can access David Guetta’s app here. Otherwise, a search on Spotify’s app store for “PlayGuetta” will also work.