Meet Listen

A new app called Listen has joined MacPaw. It’s a free music player for iOS that you control with gestures… You know, like: swipe up, swipe down, swipe on, swipe off (Mr. Miyagi would be proud). The controls are so simple that you don’t even need to look at the app to use it, making it amazing for when you’re on your way to work, exercising, or just plain on the go. You can create your own playlist in-app quickly and easily, and it makes all your wildest dreams come true.* Anyway, you can read more about it On the App Store.

*Not really.

So, how did Listen come about?

Two of our brilliant colleagues, Dima Novikov and Denis Stas, started Listen as a side project (ladies, you can check them out here).

They wanted to create the ultimate music player for the car. They felt that problem with normal music players is that you have to divert your attention from the road, making it incredibly difficult to drive safely while controlling your music.

Dima and Denis wanted an app that:

  • they could use without looking,
  • was responsive,
  • was easy to navigate,
  • didn’t need precision,
  • and looked incredibly sexy in a speedo.

It’s been turning heads — It’s about to turn some more.

Listen was released on September 25th, 2012, and since then, it’s garnered some serious attention. It has over 375,000 downloads and won Best Design at the 2013 TNW Ukraine Startup Awards. All this from the first version of the app, not to mention the fact that the guys sparingly worked on during the weekends.

Listen showed promise. So much promise that MacPaw worked out a deal to acquire the project and put some serious firepower into its development. (We canned Dima and Denis and stole their content… Just kidding! But seriously, thanks guys.)

It’s aliiiive!

So here we are! After development, testing, and refinement, we have version 2 of Listen ready for download, free! We’d use the phrase, “Bigger and better than ever,” but honestly, smaller and minimalist is where it’s at? Right?

Plus, how can an app be bigger?

That doesn’t even make sense.