Vertigo lets friends listen to the same music in real time

Developers have long tried (and mostly failed) to give users a social media platform that centers around music.

Apps like DubSmash and Musical.ly have risen above the rest, but a brand new app called Vertigo is looking to mix it up.

What’s interesting about Vertigo is that the app lets you share music with a plus one, your core group of friends, or to the public on a beat-for-beat level. In other words, you and your family across the country can listen to the same song at the exact same time using the app.

To avoid legal snares around public performance and distribution, Vertigo connects in to users’ Spotify Premium accounts and merely activates songs that those users already have a right to listen to.

You can see how this would be useful for long-distance relationships and flash mob practice, but founder Greg Leekley sees opportunities in daily life for young millennials and Gen Z.

“The young demographic doesn’t separate what happens in their virtual lives from what happens in the real world,” said Leekley. “And when we asked them, they were more interested in hearing songs that their friends were listening to than celebrities.”

Leekley said that Snapchat’s success comes from the same phenomenon of young users wanting to experience each other in real time.

Alongside listening to music together, Vertigo also lets users overlay their music session with text, video, and pictures, offering a more lean-forward experience for users.

For now, Vertigo has signed on Spotify Premium as a platform but hopes to get other platforms (like Apple Music) on board soon.

Vertigo has raised upwards of $10 million.

You can find the app here.

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