The 2010s were a wildly experimental decade for digital music. Before streaming settled into today’s familiar routine of giant catalogs, algorithmic playlists, and yearly listening recaps, dozens of apps tried to make music more social, more visual, more curated, or just more fun. Some disappeared because of licensing problems, some were acquired, and some simply lost the attention war. Here are ten music apps from the 2010s you probably forgot existed, even if they once lived on your home screen.

1. Rdio

Before streaming became dominated by a few massive platforms, Rdio was one of the most stylish and beloved music apps of the early 2010s. Launched by Skype co-founder Janus Friis and his team, Rdio offered a clean interface, social following features, and a surprisingly elegant way to browse albums, artists, and playlists.

What made Rdio memorable was its sense of taste. The app felt less cluttered than many competitors, and it treated albums like objects worth exploring rather than disposable content. You could follow friends, see what they were listening to, and build a music identity inside the app. In many ways, Rdio predicted the social streaming features that later became common elsewhere.

Unfortunately, great design was not enough. Rdio filed for bankruptcy in 2015, and parts of the company were acquired by Pandora. For fans, its disappearance still feels like the loss of a beautifully designed alternative universe.

2. Songza

Songza was the app that asked, “What are you doing right now?” and then served you a playlist for it. Instead of making users search by artist or album, Songza organized music around moods, activities, times of day, and oddly specific situations. Working out, cooking dinner, studying late, recovering from a breakup—Songza had a playlist ready.

Its most famous feature was the Music Concierge, which suggested playlists based on context. On a weekday morning, it might offer “Music for Waking Up Happy.” On a Friday night, it might suggest dance tracks or party music. This approach now feels normal, but at the time it was refreshingly human.

Google acquired Songza in 2014, and its ideas eventually influenced Google Play Music and YouTube Music. The name faded, but the concept of activity-based playlisting became a permanent part of streaming culture.

3. Turntable.fm

If you used the internet heavily around 2011, you may remember Turntable.fm as one of the strangest and most delightful music experiments of the decade. It was part chat room, part virtual club, and part collaborative radio station. Users entered themed rooms as little avatars and took turns playing songs for everyone else.

The magic was in the crowd reaction. Listeners could vote a song “awesome” or “lame,” and the room’s mood changed in real time. Good DJs earned points and status, while bad choices could get skipped. It turned music discovery into a shared, playful performance.

Turntable.fm burned brightly but struggled with licensing complications and declining buzz. The original service shut down in 2013, though the idea has been revived in different forms. Its influence can still be felt in listening parties, livestream DJ sets, and group music experiences.

4. Grooveshark

Grooveshark was controversial, chaotic, and incredibly popular. At its peak, it let users stream an enormous amount of music for free, much of it uploaded by users. For many people, especially students and early smartphone users, Grooveshark felt like an endless jukebox at a time when legal streaming options were still developing.

The problem was that Grooveshark’s business model collided directly with the music industry. Record labels accused it of widespread copyright infringement, and lawsuits followed for years. Eventually, Grooveshark shut down in 2015 as part of a legal settlement.

Despite its messy legacy, Grooveshark is important because it showed how badly listeners wanted instant, searchable, on-demand music. The demand was real, even if the licensing framework was not.

5. Beats Music

Before Apple Music launched, there was Beats Music. Introduced in 2014, it was built around curated recommendations, bold visuals, and a feature called The Sentence, which let users create music prompts by filling in blanks like “I’m at the beach and feel like partying with friends to pop.”

Beats Music leaned heavily on human curation rather than pure algorithms. It wanted to feel like a cool friend, DJ, or record store employee guiding you toward the right song. Its branding was slick, colorful, and closely tied to the Beats headphones empire.

Apple acquired Beats in 2014, and Beats Music was folded into Apple Music in 2015. Although the app itself was short-lived, its DNA remains visible in Apple Music’s editorial playlists and emphasis on tastemaker culture.

6. Twitter Music

Twitter Music, often stylized as #Music, was one of the decade’s more curious failures. Launched in 2013, it tried to turn Twitter’s real-time social graph into a music discovery engine. The idea was simple: see which songs and artists were trending, being shared, or followed by people in your network.

On paper, it made sense. Twitter was where fans followed musicians, argued about albums, and reacted instantly to new releases. But as a standalone app, Twitter Music never quite justified its existence. It relied on other services for full playback, and its charts could feel more like celebrity noise than meaningful recommendations.

The app shut down in 2014, only about a year after launch. Still, it anticipated the now-obvious connection between social media virality and music discovery.

7. 8tracks

8tracks was built around an old-fashioned idea with a digital twist: the mixtape. Users created playlists of at least eight tracks, often with handmade cover art, poetic titles, and highly specific moods. It was especially popular among students, bloggers, fandom communities, and anyone who liked music discovery with personality.

Unlike algorithm-driven platforms, 8tracks felt intimate. A playlist might be called “songs for rainy windows” or “studying in a haunted library,” and that emotional specificity was the point. It was less about perfect recommendation science and more about human taste.

Licensing rules eventually made the service harder to operate, especially in the United States. 8tracks shut down at the end of 2019, though it later returned in a limited way. Its peak remains a reminder of how personal playlists used to feel before streaming became more standardized.

8. SoundTracking

SoundTracking was once described as Instagram for music. Launched in 2011, it let users share what they were listening to, attach photos, add locations, tag friends, and post the result to social networks. Instead of sharing a full playlist, you shared a moment: this song, this place, this feeling.

The app captured an important early-2010s habit. People were discovering that phones could document everyday life, and music was part of that documentation. SoundTracking made songs feel like emotional captions for real-world experiences.

However, it lived in a crowded space. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and streaming apps all absorbed pieces of its function. SoundTracking eventually shut down, but its spirit survives every time someone posts a song screenshot to a story.

9. Samsung Milk Music

Milk Music was Samsung’s attempt to create a music service for Galaxy users. Launched in 2014, it offered free streaming radio powered by Slacker and featured a large circular dial interface for browsing genres and stations. The design was unusual, tactile, and very much tied to Samsung’s hardware ecosystem.

The name was memorable, though not always for the right reasons. “Milk Music” sounded more like a dairy subscription than a streaming service, but the app itself was polished and easy to use. It represented a period when device makers still believed exclusive content services could help sell phones.

Samsung shut Milk Music down in 2016. The app is now mostly forgotten, but it captures a moment when nearly every major tech company wanted its own music platform.

10. This Is My Jam

This Is My Jam was wonderfully simple: choose one song you loved right now and share it as your “jam” for the week. That limitation made it special. Instead of overwhelming followers with endless playlists, users had to make one meaningful pick.

The app and website attracted music obsessives, bloggers, artists, and people who enjoyed thoughtful discovery. Profiles became tiny time capsules of taste, showing what someone couldn’t stop playing during a specific week in their life.

This Is My Jam stopped accepting new posts in 2015 and became an archive. Its quiet ending felt appropriate for a service built around musical moments that were intense, personal, and temporary.

Why These Apps Still Matter

Many of these apps disappeared, but their ideas did not. Songza helped normalize mood-based playlists. Rdio proved that streaming apps could be beautiful and social. Turntable.fm showed the appeal of listening together online. 8tracks and This Is My Jam reminded us that music discovery feels richer when people add context, emotion, and personality.

The 2010s were a bridge between the download era and the streaming era. During that transition, nobody knew exactly what digital music should feel like. Should it be a library, a radio station, a game, a social network, or a diary? These forgotten apps tried every answer.

Today’s music apps are more powerful, stable, and comprehensive, but they can also feel predictable. Looking back at these lost services reveals a more experimental internet, where an app could be weird, imperfect, and beloved for a brief moment. If you ever made a mixtape on 8tracks, DJed in a Turntable.fm room, or trusted Songza to soundtrack your afternoon, you were part of a fascinating chapter in music history.