Once we had a glimmer of an idea that would be the Jukeboxer game, we knew we wanted to build a music based app and started to investigate how we could do this. The market for music apps out there falls into a few categories. Radio apps like Pandora and TuneIn, Music subscription services like Rdio, Spotify and Deezer, Music creation apps like Smule and Figure and music games like Tap Tap Revenge. Looking at the universe of apps, we were looking at where a new music experience based around social sharing could live, it would need to be free to get your friends to download, it must be  welcoming to both casual and hardcore music fans, and it be ridiculously addictive and engaging.

The original concept of a social DJ was interesting if you had an engaged and committed music group, but if you didn’t have a passionate DJ in your group of friends, the experience would not be dramatically different from most of radio apps. We determined that experience would be best left for group events, public spaces and parties where you could have some say in what music you where listening to. DJ Tweetify is a project we’re still thinking about after the success we’ve seen at The Construction Site and as the social DJ for my wedding. It was clear to us at the time that we would need to pivot the idea…

Moving to a game concept seemed like the natural fit after we looked at what type of experience we wanted to deliver. Consoles have taken to music games, mostly due to the success of Guitar Hero and Rock Band and their many peripherals. Mobile games offer a much more personal approach to music as it’s you, your headphones and the device. This aligned well with what we wanted Jukeboxer to become, going into your own personal space and sharing your musical tastes with your friends and discovering new acts. The type of game we chose to use was turn-based record and share gameplay, where you could play when it was convenient for you and not be required to have your friend playing it at the same time. We developed a prototype of the game, and started playing, and realized it needed some secret sauce to tie the experience together…