College students and music go together like M&Ms and…Well, more M&Ms. Maybe peanut butter.
Anyway, the point is, college students listen to a lot of music. How they get that music varies.
Most of the time, unfortunately, that involves a search for the lesser of many evils. You could use online streaming sites like Pandora or Spotify, but if you don’t have unlimited data, both options can significantly up your phone bill. Then there are paid choices such as iTunes. There you can buy from a wide selection of music, which then becomes part of your own personal library, playable offline. Again, though, the problem of money comes up.
Some try to avoid the money problem entirely by illegally downloading music. Downsides here include the fact that the artists whose music you download this way are cheated out of payment for their hard work, while your phone and other technical equipment are subject to dangerous viruses that could set you back and cost you plenty to fix — back to money again.
While nothing is perfect, particularly in the music world, there are better alternatives. Don’t believe me? Give Trebel Music a try.
The app, created by CEO of M&M Media (see what I did there?) Gary Mekikian and his two daughters, Juliette and Grace Mekikian, aims to fill in the gaps between college students and legal music, while also providing social features.
“My sister and I convinced our dad to start this company with us because we noticed that a lot of people in our generation who depended on listening to music couldn’t pay for it,” Grace explained. “So the targeted audience in this app is people that can’t pay for music.” When you’re on a college budget, music-buying does tend to rank low on the list of priorities.
The Chronicle’s own Caroline Moreton covered the app when it was in beta mode. According to CEO Gary, “Since then we’ve had almost 700,000 people that have installed the app.”
The basic function of the app is to allow users to download music without paying money. To cover the cost, users are required to view ads while songs download, which takes time anyway. After you’ve downloaded a certain amount of music, though, you are awarded coins you can then put toward ad-free downloads in the future.
A few additional features have been applied to the app since that initial article as well. This is part of an ongoing goal for the app. “We’re constantly adding new features and functions,” Gary said.
The newest feature is a commenting and collaboration tool. Users could already connect to people near them, either by location or by school such as the University of Utah, but with this feature they can also talk to one another about the music choices they’ve made and why they’ve made them.
In many ways, then, Trebel functions similarly to YouTube. As Trebel Music Chief of Product Corey Jones said, “We’re just doing it in a way to use the music offline.” This way, he emphasized, it’s still fair to the artists whose music you’re downloading.
Trebel Music is available for both iPhone and Android devices. Download access available here: https://trebel.io.
Update: following a recent update on the app, Android users must delete the app from their phones before re-downloading the new version. To ensure you don’t lose your music in that process, follow these steps: