A new app called Rewind wants to make it easier for music fans to discover the top songs of the past decades. Hoping to meet consumer demand for nostalgic music experiences, Rewind allows users to “travel” through the charts from 1960 to 2010 to learn how older songs influenced today’s hits.
The app was built by developer Ziad Al Halabi, whose day job is developing mobile apps at music streaming service TIDAL. The developer says he enjoys working on music apps, having previously launched an audio player for musicians. Backtrackit, which delivered about 2 million installations.
With Rewind, which originally started as a weekend project, the goal is to provide a portal to explore the older tunes that once ruled the top charts.
“[What] would it be if you opened your favorite music app in 1991? Or 1965?” the app description asks. “What are the greatest hits of the time? Who are the top artists or the emerging new ones?”
Image Credits: Rewind
For older music fans, those questions may be easier to answer. But Gen Z brings with it a new group of users who discover music through apps like TikTok, where a song’s release date doesn’t necessarily matter. TikTok has already proven successful in introducing younger people to popular songs from previous generations, such as Kate Bush’s “Run up that hill“or Fleetwood Macs”To dream” — both of which went viral on the video app and broke onto the charts years after their original run. And they are not alone.
This interest in older music ties in with other Gen Z “nostalgia” trends like theirs flip phone embrace, Y2K mode, wired headphones, disposable cameras, Music from the 90s (in fact, a preference that spans generations), and of course vinyl.
“I’ve always been interested in how music has changed over time,” says Ziad. “Rewind is a capsule of all music, artists and major events in one place. The app offers a new way to discover new early music based on historical eras with a touch of nostalgia,” he continues. “It’s exciting to see momentum with thousands of listeners, Rewind is perfect for tastemakers and fans who want to discover new music from the good old days,” added Ziad.
Image Credits: Rewind
However, the app isn’t just a way to browse the charts of recent years. It takes it a step further and even includes some modern twists.
For starters, users can discover the music of a particular year through top albums and top music videos, in addition to growing the top Billboard charts. It also delves into relevant trends from a particular time period. For example, if you scroll through the year 1991, you’ll find a selection of “grunge-defining records,” such as Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten, among others. Other sections present songs that received a lot of radio airplay that year, hotly anticipated releases, and newly formed bands that emerged that year, and so on.
In addition, Rewind contains a ‘news’ section with important events and moments from the year in question. It also contains advertisements that give it a retro feel. For example, in 1965, listeners will see ads for the first distortion guitar pedal, while users browsing through the 1980s will see ads for new synth instruments that helped shape 1980s sounds.
For a bit of fun, the app used ChatGPT to write short reviews for music albums in its “Weekly Discovery” feature and used the AI technology to compile mixtapes for several years by asking ChatGPT questions like “can you find a mixtape of the 90s for me?” best guitar riffs?”
Another feature provides a way to browse a TikTok-style music feed that is accompanied each year. Here you can listen to fragments of songs from that period in a vertical feed. This particular feature could be better developed to include like or comment buttons, but for now you can play or pause the track or open the track directly in TIDAL.
Image Credits: Rewind
Given Ziad’s job, it’s not surprising that Rewind integrates more deeply with TIDAL, allowing subscribers to fully stream their tracks. Explains the developer, this is because his work at TIDAL allowed him easy access to the API and the TIDAL catalog. But if Rewind catches on, it’s eager to add support for other music apps. But even without a TIDAL subscription, users can stream the 30-second previews and browse the app’s TikTok-esque feed.
“The feedback I get from users is that even though they don’t have a TIDAL subscription, it’s still a fun experience to browse through the different years, discover albums on a weekly basis, and scroll through the TikTok style feed,” says Ziad .
The app, which launched last month, was downloaded a few thousand times during its debut weekend and is slowly growing. It is available as a free download on both Android and iOS and is not currently generating any revenue.
