A new app from UK musician Nick Donovan, wildwildsky, is turning music discovery into an adventure by hiding unreleased songs in nature. The goal is to create ephemeral, location-based musical encounters that counter the culture of passive streaming.
- Catch and release: The app functions like a musical Pokémon GO, guiding users with a map to find tracks hidden in forests and on beaches. Once a song is played at its designated location, it vanishes from the app, making the listening experience unique and fleeting.
- Against the algorithm: The project is a direct response to the endless-playlist model of modern streaming. "I wanted people to discover music as if it were an animal in the wild, tied to a place, momentary, and fleeting,” said creator Nick Donovan, who also performs under the wildwildsky name.
- Who's on board: Funding for the not-for-profit project comes from Arts Council England and the National Lottery. The app features tracks from Donovan alongside other artists like Stornaway and Mercury nominee Sam Lee. The concept joins a niche of location-based music experiments, following similar projects from startup Landmrk and artist Novo Amor.
By tying music to a physical place and a single moment, wildwildsky is a creative experiment that challenges the streaming era's "all-you-can-eat" model and attempts to restore a sense of scarcity and wonder to music discovery. Meanwhile, major players continue to refine the mainstream discovery experience, with YouTube Music recently partnering with Bandsintown and rolling out new features to better compete with Spotify.