App Of The Week is our new weekly feature where new and updated applications are covered. These articles are not sponsored by the developers although we may link to their app.
Overview
When you think of music streaming services; Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, etc. may come into your mind. They all have: millions of songs, custom playlists, free trials, subscriptions, etc.
What if I told you that the last point isn’t true for a few music streaming services, well, you’d accept that. But with that “free music streaming service” part in your mind, you may just think of cheap quality, not enough songs, ads everywhere, and a bad user experience.
That may be true, but if there’s one app, with over 10 million users and more than 150 million songs; all without any subscription; its eSound.
It has unlimited skips, custom playlists, free unlimited offline listening and YouTube streaming are some amazing features.
Exclusive interview with eSound’s co-founders
I have been using eSound for around 6 months now, and the experience has been exemplary. A thought struck my mind—to speak with the founders. Following it, I interviewed Spicy Sparks’ co-founder and CEO Marco Fontana along with CPO Alessandro Gerelli.
Note: Fontana’s and Gerelli’s replies are italicized and the author’s comments are bolded. Spicy Sparks is eSound’s parent company.
What inspired you to create eSound?
Marco: We found that there were not good free alternatives for people to listen to music. Apart from the major apps which needed a subscription to listen to songs without any limits, all the other free music players didn’t give to the user a premium experience in terms of features and UI, so we decided to create a free music app but continue to focusing on quality, good UI, features and by following the feedback of the users to decide what steps doing next.
Alessandro: From the very beginning, we wanted to focus on creating a unique listening experience, fast and comfortable, that could be considered at the forefront of its kind. We have been inspired by the greatest music players in the world and have always done our best to add something more. Today we can guarantee our users unique features of their kind, mixed with an easy and immediate user experience, which they can only find with eSound.
Alright, they are some solid points in terms of good UI and quality, and a unique listening experience, but now since eSound is a pretty successful yet growing app, what do you think fueled it till here?
Marco: There is still lot of work to do, but we think the fact that we offer a free listening music experience has caught the interest of lot of people which were looking for free alternatives to the most commonly used apps. We noticed that users were really happy to share the app with their family and friends and this has helped us a lot in growing the app without spending huge resources on the marketing side.
True, when people love the product, they share it and that’s basically free marketing and customers for you. In this way your users are giving back to you for developing such an amazing music streaming platform. With all this, what are your plans with eSound for the future?
Marco and Alessandro: We have lot of work to do ahead with eSound. We plan to support more platforms, like Desktop, TV, Smartwatches and lots others. We want also to work on some social features like users profiles, playlist sharing and give artists the possibility to upload their on music directly inside our platform. We plan to support radios and we want also to continue optimizing the app so that everyone can access it and enjoy their favorite music. All you’ve got to do is to stay alert for all the new fronts we are about to introduce to you, from social modes to the dozens of platforms we are rolling out on, such as TVs, desktops, web, cars and smartwatches.
Those are some key features and platforms in development, and they surely will help out in eSound gaining a large user base and also will give opportunities to new artists. After all this, do you have anything else to say?
Alessandro: We try to take care of every detail in the best possible way and never take away the attention to quality. Every detail and functionality in eSound, even if it might seem secondary, hides a rather high complexity, both from a technical point of view and from a study of experience. So much so that user feedback has pushed us a lot: for several years now, we have listened to the opinions of virtually everyone. We have added the features that the individual user asked us, even if perhaps niche, up to fixing any problem that arose within a few hours. It requires obsessive effort and care but this is one of the dominant characteristics of eSound. Besides, we always wanted to distribute our service at a zero price, to make sure the music was accessible to everyone. It is clear that we need a minimum amount of advertising within the app and to present a premium version to remove it, but to keep the service active and stable with all the costs it requires. Apart from that, every feature is completely accessible for free by anyone and I am convinced that we are the only service in the world that offers these features at no cost to the user. In fact, with half of our features, our competitors typically require subscriptions from their users. Finally, always to make sure that eSound can be available to everyone, we ensure our commitment to the care of the app on devices that are a little older. It is very complex to make very advanced features work smoothly, like the ones we have, even on low-end devices, but this is another of our cornerstones.
Marco: Yes, if you are looking for a free alternative to other major music streaming services, give eSound a try, you wouldn’t regret it. If you have any suggestions on improvement of the app or have found some problems while using it feel free to contact us via our social media channels or by email and we will be very happy to help you out!
And that was the interview. Marco and Alessandro are indeed innovative and forward minded; these qualities have proved a newfangled approach to a popular industry of music streaming—this has also forged eSound.
eSound has an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 across both the App Store and the Play Store. You can download it on the following platforms as of now. Fontana and Gerelli have promised it to come to more platforms soon in the near future.
- iPhone: iOS 11 or later
- iPad: iOS 11 or later
- iPod touch: iOS 11 or later
- Android devices (phones/tablets): Android 5.0 or later
- Mac: macOS 11 Big Sur with Apple Silicon (M1 chip)
To keep the app free and to cover costs of running the app, ads are present, though they are minimal and not annoying like Spotify’s ads. Still, there is an option to remove them for a mere $1.99 a month or also on an annual basis; defers by the platform you download it on.
Download eSound on the App Store and Play Store.
