It’s hard to believe it was just over a year ago that we were in the office until seven in the morning, trying to get in all of our last-minute bug fixes to officially submit Band of the Day to the App Store. We were delirious from lack of sleep and too much caffeine (seriously, watching stupid cat videos on YouTube became the funniest thing ever), yet utterly excited to finally show off our baby to the world. We’re a small team of dreamers, and to be honest, we didn’t know what to expect once Band of the Day hit the App Store. Would people pay for it (Band of the Day, now free, originally started as a subscription service at $0.99/month)? And if so, what if they didn’t like the music we featured? How were we going to find bands for every single day of the week, month, year, and beyond?

Over the past year, we’ve learned a lot from our users:

1. No, people didn’t want to pay for it. Well, some people did (thanks!) but not enough to warrant continuing on as a paid service. Like it or not, we’re in an era where paying for music/music services isn’t acceptable to the majority of consumers. In the end, we felt like the right decision was to open up Band of the Day to everyone, which resulted in our user base growing exponentially (in just over a year, we’ve grown to 3 million+ worldwide users).

2. There is an extraordinary amount of value in making it easier for people to discover new music. With Band of the Day, we strive to feature unique bands from all over the world, across every genre you can think of. We know not every band will resonate with every single user every single day. But overwhelmingly, we’ve had users around the world, young and old, get in touch telling us that they’ve fallen in love with a new band that they just wouldn’t have come across if it wasn’t for our app. Our featured bands have even written in to us, telling us how they’ve gathered new fans around the world that would’ve otherwise never heard of them.

Band of the Day: The Update

Today, our latest iteration of Band of the Day went live in the App Store.

For some of our users, who’ve been longtime fans of the app, this might seem like a dramatic change, especially in terms of UI. For instance, you might have noticed that our menu navigation is now a robot icon. Why the robot? What does that have to do with new music? Well, we just wanted to be prepared for the inevitable robots-as-our-overlords scenario…or, y’know, because we just thought it would be a fun and quirky new way to navigate throughout the app! We actually toyed around with the idea of a robot character called Tuno, and having him (or her?) become the official mascot for Band of the Day (Band of the Day is quite a mouthful to say, so we nicknamed it “tuno” at our HQ). What do you think? Yay or nay?

We’ve also added the music player into the calendar view section, to make it easier to enjoy new music right when the app launches, as well as a brand-new mix tape section that plays a continuous stream of the top-rated songs in the app. Just pick a song, sit back, and enjoy the uninterrupted stream of music! Though we’ve removed the bonus songs feature, we now have way more (nearly 60!) songs in the mix tape than before.

We’ve also implemented a similar bands feature. Now, once all of the featured songs finish playing for any band in the app, the music player will automatically start playing a similar band from the app. Mmm…delicious, nearly-endless streams of free music! The update might seem a bit drastic, but we’re doing our best to try and make the app easier to use in the long run, to add new features, and to help you discover even more new music! So what do you think of the new update? You can share your thoughts with us here, or at [email protected]