Music is a universal language that has the power to connect people from all over the world together. One student understands this power and decided to do something about it.
Abraham Joseph is the CEO and founder of Boombox, a new app that will help users match their music taste with their friends and discover new songs.
“It’s as if your Spotify Wrapped had a group chat,” Joseph said. “So it’s a social platform where your playlist can help you meet friends, and you could share and discover songs directly onto your feed page.”
Joseph graduated from FGCU with his bachelor’s degree in psychology and is currently pursuing his master’s. When he first came to FGCU, he wasn’t able to make friends easily.
“[Coming] from Tampa, Florida, leaving my friends and my family behind, you either talk to people or you stay by yourself for the rest of these two years. That’s not gonna make college enjoyable. So, talking to people definitely, really, did help out,” he said.
Joseph was interested in business so he joined the CEO club which led him to meet friends and network a lot with other important people that would be crucial to his app development process.
Boombox has taken seven to eight months of constant dedication to develop. It kickstarted when Joseph entered and won $10,000 at a pitch competition last year called TechXpedition in Babcock Ranch hosted by the capital venture firm MoAloo Ventures. He wouldn’t have heard about this competition if it wasn’t for the CEO club.
“It was God’s will,” Joseph said. “Priya from MoAloo Ventures was coming in and talking about the pitch competition, and I kid you not, I felt like it was destiny, like she was just looking me in my eyes the entire time she was talking.”
Priya Ahluwalia is the co-founder of MoAloo Ventures. She and her husband, Mohit Pohani, started the company eight years ago. It wasn’t only Joseph that felt like it was destiny at that moment. Ahluwalia knew he would be a top contender from the moment she saw him as well.
“I saw something in him,” Ahluwalia said. “He will do something great.”
Joseph meets with his team every day and Ahluwalia meets with him twice a week to check on his progress.
“We have worked with so many different entrepreneurs in the last eight years, but no one actually has been like Abraham. He is so committed,” Ahluwalia said. “I think sometimes people invest in the concept or the entrepreneur. I think for us it was the entrepreneur, the founder of Boombox, that is Abraham.”
FGCU is the biggest sponsor of TechXpedition. This upcoming fall semester, Ahluwalia plans to hold it in FGCU’s Lucas Hall to gather more FGCU entrepreneurship students. Anyone can enter as long as they have an idea. Competitors range from 7-74 years old.
Music has always been crucial to Joseph’s identity. From the moments when it was hard for him to make friends, music connected him to the people that mattered most.
“I realized that music shouldn’t be just a solo event. It should be something that’s always shared with others,” Joseph said. “A new way to find friends is through your music, something that you already trust, that represents who you are.”
“People of all ethnicities all across the world cried when Michael Jackson died. People all across the world said ‘a minor’ during the Super Bowl,” Joseph said. “It was a unified hatred towards Drake.”
Ahluwalia believes the app will be useful for many other college students because this is a relatable concept that many go through.
“When you’re shy, you don’t know who to talk to and meet, if you want to have the same music interest and be in the same area, it’s a great way to connect, and meet and be friends,” she said.
The main concept and function of the app is to pair users’ top playlists with others around them who enjoy similar music and therefore are the most compatible to them. It can also introduce users to new types of music to get interested in by following friends and having access to their playlists.
To do this, users can connect their Apple Music or Spotify accounts to Boombox to make playlist access easier. When these music platforms are connected, they can listen to their music directly from Boombox as well
“There’s an emotion that someone can relate to, that someone else can also relate to, and then they can come together and build that community, or build that connection that turns into a community as they attract more like them,” Joseph said.
Spotify Blend is an existing feature in the Spotify app that allows friends to blend their music tastes into one playlist. With an original idea like Boombox, it can be easy to worry about potential competition like this and some that may arise in the future. Joseph believes Spotify creates an echo chamber by providing the listener with songs they have already listened to so he is not worried about competitors.
“I’m not really trying to think too much about competitors, because at that point, we’re just trying to do what other people are doing,” Joseph said. “If we’re so focused on our competition, we’re thinking more like mercenaries rather than missionaries.”
Joseph is excited and grateful to release the app he has worked so hard on to the public.
“It’s like the sun was inside your stomach and everywhere you go and you breathe, it’s just clear air, and there’s a whole bunch of puppies,” Joseph said. “It’s just an overwhelming sense of joy because you have the opportunity to provide for so many people”
Boombox is planned to launch early March, ideally before spring break. It’s free and can be found on the App Store then. For Android users, it is planned to launch on the Google Play Store in April. He aims to target the college student demographic, specifically FGCU, and build from there. For now, stay up to date on what’s next for Boombox on Instagram @thelostboomboxtapes.
“Tech is the new form of art, and art mimics life, and life mimics art,” Joseph said. “Music is really the soundtrack to our lives, and connecting through music is connecting through that similar soundtrack that you have the same beat of the drum that you guys both walk to.”
