Music is an amazing medium for bringing people together. For me, listening to and sharing music is something I do on a daily basis, connecting me with people and cultures unlike anything else. The aspect of sharing music online is typically accomplished with links and screenshots, and only recently have streaming platforms like Spotify introduced collaborative playlists. The collaborative playlist is an amazing feature to experience music with others, but still lacks the feelings derived from pumping music in the car with friends or gathering for your favorites artists’ new album release. AuxVerse was developed to tap into that feeling, letting people gather in a 3D environment to collaboratively listen to their favorite songs together.
AuxVerse is built on top of an open-source Spotify app that enables collaborative listening. This gives AuxVerse users the ability to log in with Spotify and select what songs to be played next. Once a queue of songs is lined up, the order of the queue is decided by the people, as songs with more votes will climb higher up the list. Everyone on the platform can see who is adding to the queue and has equal say in the voting process. Users can switch where the music is playing across their own devices as well, for example if you prefer it on your phone, TV, or computer.
One constant is that true regardless of who is online is that everyone is listening to the same song simultaneously. There is no option to diverge from this and it creates a space that emulates what you experience in the real world. However, since this space is composed of hundreds of lines of code with plenty of environmental possibilities, why not make it a beautiful sunset on a surreal planet? I aimed to keep the 3D world simple but stimulating, keeping the focus on the music and engaging with other users. As you can see below, people spawn as a box with their video streaming on the front face. You and whomever can link up in this world and witness each other jamming to the tunes and roam around as you please. Whether a pre-game for a remote party, catching up over some classic albums, or just to simply pass time and enjoy music.
This current version is still in beta and on track to be launched to the public in the near future. Some additional features are scheduled to be implemented, such as improved WebRTC, simple building structures, and further user interaction. Updates will be available @StannoStudio on IG & Twitter.
