So, what’s going on with Musicboard?
Musicboard, an app for music discovery and recommendations, has been struggling, according to its users. Over the past several months, users said the app experienced outages, the website went offline, and the Android app disappeared from the Play Store.
This has concerned its devoted, if small, user base. (The app has been downloaded around 462,000 times to date, according to market intelligence provider Appfigures.) On Reddit, users have been recommending alternatives and offering each other support as they wait for any update.
While it’s not surprising for an app to shut down, when there’s still an active user base, apps typically provide some sort of communication from their operators. But Musicboard users say they haven’t heard anything, leaving them to reach out to the press for help getting in touch with someone, if only to let them export their data.
Some users organized an unofficial “Help Save Musicboard” initiative to bring more attention to the matter. The group is led by the Musicboard user known as Lavarini and run by volunteers.
TechCrunch contacted Musicboard to help these users get some answers and was provided a short statement. However, the statement didn’t explain the longer-term issues and dismissed the outages as “temporary downtime.”
The statement, shared from the Musicboard team email address and signed simply as “Musicboard,” said the following:
App is not shut down. The servers had temporary downtime, which has now been quickly fixed. And we’re working together with the Google Play team to get the app back up there. The app wouldn’t shut down without a respectful timeline for the users and official communication. App is staying live.
Follow-up questions went unanswered.
The founders of Musicboard, Johannes Vermandois and Erik Heimer, have been involved with other projects. Their AI app, Frank AI, was set to be acquired by a company called Freedom Holdings, Inc., but the potential acquirer terminated its letter of intent in September 2024. Dreamsands, Inc., the company that publishes Frank AI on the App Store, also operates another app, Helm, an AI therapist.
Over email, Lavarini says the users’ efforts to help save the app will continue.
The Help Save Musicboard initiative “aims to support awareness and discussion around the long-term sustainability of the indie app Musicboard and its community,” Lavarini wrote.
