Earlier this year, music-creation startup Artiphon spun off a new product called Minibeats, using Snapchat’s augmented-reality lenses to interact with music.
Now it has launched a standalone app so that people can use it outside Snapchat, although it’s still powered by the latter’s Camera Kit tech.
Essentially it’s an app that lets people play music by moving their hands and fingers in front of their smartphone’s camera, ‘drawing with sound’ in the air. But this is built for social media, of course, so the app makes it easy to record, save and share videos of their creative process.
Artiphon has also been talking about the success of its artist-focused Minibeats lenses on Snapchat, noting that two – for LP Giobbi and San Holo – received more than 10m plays in their first two weeks of availability. For now, the standalone Minibeats app is iOS-only.