The web has been buzzing with a recurring idea: use YouTube's massive music library via its official API and build a parallel service that mirrors Spotify's best qualities, starting with access to free music. The latest project to try this is Humm, a Spanish development born from Telefónica's Wayra accelerator, offering both a solid web version and an Android-compatible app.
Both YouTube and Spotify have plenty of room for improvement, we're convinced. On YouTube's side, the main criticism focuses on its overall interface, while Spotify could arguably drop its desktop client and work purely as a web service. That's where interesting alternative projects come in, aiming to bridge YouTube's millions of music videos with Spotify's format. Recently, we talked about Wefre, but I mentioned at the end of that article that the service might be shut down, and that's exactly what happened. Now it's Humm's turn.
How Humm works
Humm is a Spanish project led by its CEO-founder Andrés Sánchez, and one of its key people comes from Wayra, the startup accelerator founded by Telefónica. Humm reaches its full potential when you create an account to store personalization details (alternatively, you can use a Facebook or Twitter account), but that step isn't strictly necessary. Just search for an artist or album (I'd recommend the latter for more accurate results), and it automatically builds a playlist on the left side of the screen with all available tracks. The video for each song plays just above, and if the content is wrong, Humm lets you report it (the service is in beta).
A shadow of doubt
I admit Humm works very well in its web version, and its Android-compatible app received good reviews despite being an early release. However, my fear is the same one I felt with Wefre. Humm presents itself as an "ad-free" service, something we can appreciate immediately during video playback, but that clashes with the terms of use imposed by the official YouTube API. I just hope there's no problem and that Humm can succeed where other services failed.
