Richard: What is Social.FM?

Srivats: Social.FM is a user-contributed music discovery service which operates a lot like a conventional radio broadcaster. When we first started the company the idea was to create something in the music discovery space that allowed users to participate, but is completely legal.

Richard: How have you made it legal?

Srivats: Before we developed anything we looked into the legal requirements for safeguarding performers' rights. As a result we set the company up as a webcaster operating under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). So, from the day we launched, we have been paying royalties to ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers), BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) and SESAC (Society of European Songwriters, Artists, and Composers) as well as SoundExchange. We have a similar arrangement in Canada and are negotiating with other rights authorities to extend our coverage.

Richard: Does this limit use to the US and Canada?

Srivats: No. The software has all the requirements of copyright law and the licensing authorities built in, it is also able to determine which country a listener is in. If a user is in a territory for which we don't yet have specific licensing agreements, that user's listening is tagged to our US broadcast and we pay royalties in the US. The reciprocal arrangements between the various rights collectives then ensure that the artists are remunerated. So wherever our users are listening, we strive to pay the royalties.

Richard: How do individual users contribute to Social.FM?

Srivats: When a user joins Social.FM they download a client for their PC. Using this client their music collection is streamed over the Internet and broadcast to other Social.FM users. Users can simply let their collection stream at random or specifically program up to five channels of music. So we now have a million DJs actively contributing and programming content, making us one of the largest music CDNs.

Richard: What made you decide to take the service mobile?

Srivats: Very soon after we launched the Web version we realized that there could be a demand for Social.FM on mobile devices. So at the start of this year we released a very basic alpha application for Windows Mobile. It had a very simple UI and users could only listen to other users content, but the response was very positive so we decided to take the mobile version further.

Richard: What did you consider when determining the features of the mobile version?

Srivats: We first looked at what someone might want to listen to while mobile. Clearly they would want to listen to their own music. They might also want to listen to the music of their friends and families, and they would probably want to listen to their favorite artists or styles of music to discover new music.

To provide users with music discovery we created around a thousand preprogrammed genre stations. So, if a user is a Jethro Tull or Al Stewart fan they can find a genre station of British folk rock. Alternatively, if they want to listen to a particular artist, they can search for an artist name and Social.FM will line up a radio station of that artist's music, along with music from related artists.

Social.FM provides around a thousand preprogram genre channels.

Then, if the user has the desktop software running on their PC, they can browse and listen to their music, and listen to the music from up to five friends and family members.

Richard: What guided the design of the UI?

Srivats: I've looked at many music players and music applications over the years, but I always find myself coming back to the iPod because it is brilliant in its simplicity. So we modeled the interface to Social.FM so it looked and behaved as much like an iPod as possible. As a result we have very simple screens and all the features are navigated through the phone's 'nav' buttons. My design criteria were that I should be able to select and play any music using just my thumb, and I believe we have achieved this level of simplicity and usability.

Richard: In going mobile was the amount of data required to stream high quality music an issue? If so, have you been able to address this issue?

Srivats: It certainly is an issue. While many mobile operators offer unlimited data plans they don't really want their customers to make use of them all the time; most networks would not be able to cope with that level of traffic. So we needed to make our service as operator friendly as possible.

We use the Ogg Vorbis player in the desktop and mobile clients. Then we use a concept called "super encoding". This means we can deliver what is effectively a 192kbps listening experience with just a 56kbps stream. So an hour of music will download using about 24Mb. This compression also means we are able to operate quite happily on an EDGE network.

We have found that our typical mobile user listens for around 56 minutes a day.

Over time we see the cost of wireless data coming down. In addition, there will be more ways in which users can connect wirelessly. Already, where a user has a WiFi capable device, they can use WiFi when in a hotspot. In fact, I generally use Social.FM over WiFi on my Nokia N80 when in the office.

Also, for a user's own music collection, the next version of the mobile software will synchronize a user's library with their device. So, as they listen to their own music it is stored on their phone's memory card and played from there when they listen to the track again.

Richard: What was the motivation behind bringing Social.FM Mobile to Symbian OS?

Srivats: Essentially we wanted to get the application into the hands of as many mobile users as possible. When we looked at the devices that could deliver the experience we wanted, those using the Symbian OS clearly offered the technical capabilities we needed. In addition, they have a massive ecosystem of users. So we have built clients for S60 and UIQ, while also updating our Windows Smartphone and Pocket PC versions.

Richard: How did you go about developing the Symbian version?

Srivats: We took a hybrid approach. The software for encoding and decoding music, compression and streaming is our own code and common to all the platforms, The S60 and UIQ implementations, including the UI, were built by a game development firm based in Finland. These are brilliant guys and the UI they have built on top of our framework is elegantly simple and has a small code footprint ideal for mobile.

Richard: Do you see any advantages to Symbian OS beyond the large user base?

Srivats: We found that Symbian Ltd. was very supportive both from a technical and business perspective. They helped a lot, building the awareness of Social.FM within the Symbian ecosystem. We got good support from Nokia too, and it is distributing the application to its 60,000 employees.

We also see Symbian OS as very rich platform which provides features that are not available elsewhere. We also found it easier to build our sophisticated UI on Symbian OS much easier than with other platforms. Overall, Symbian OS shows real maturity, which is quite understandable with it running on over 145 million handsets.

Richard: How has Social.FM Mobile been accepted by Symbian users?

Srivats: We have certainly had a flood of traffic since we made the announcement, and so far the uptake looks good. In fact it was so good that we had some performance issues in the first few days after the launch caused by the demand. We have resolved them now, but we learnt some valuable lessons in the process.

Social.FM Mobile for S60 3rd Edition and UIQ 3 devices can be downloaded from www.social.fm/mobile. Until 30 November 2007, Social.FM is offered as a free preview for Symbian smartphone users. After the free preview period, Social.FM will be available at an introductory price of USD 19.95 for a one-year subscription.