Duolingo, a language studying app with over 500 million customers, is engaged on a music app, TechCrunch has discovered.
The Pittsburgh-based tech firm at the moment has a small staff engaged on a music product and is hiring a studying scientist who’s an “knowledgeable in music schooling who combines each theoretical information of related studying science analysis and hands-on educating expertise,” in keeping with a job posting listed on Duolingo’s profession web page. The corporate additionally posted a job that was soliciting a contract music composition and curricular guide, however the firm is now not accepting purposes for that place.
The job itemizing means that the app will educate primary ideas in music idea utilizing fashionable songs and academics.
Duolingo has slowly grown past language studying into a number of auxiliary new initiatives which will characterize vital income streams within the years to return. For instance, The Duolingo English Check, which spun out from a hackathon undertaking in 2014, is a web-based certification examination that exams language proficiency. The corporate additionally launched Duolingo ABC through the pandemic, which is a free app targeted on English literacy for youths ages 3 to six.
In October 2022, the corporate introduced Duolingo Math in its first topic enlargement past its unique roots of language studying and literacy. The mathematics app is free and just like language studying; each require methodical pondering and the power to use features to get to solutions.
Music is a topic that sits within the pedagogical center of language, which requires nuance and context, and math, which requires concentrate on formulation to supply right solutions, or on this case, sounds.
Language, math and music in Duolingo all require customers to know the fundamentals. And that’s how Duolingo differentiates itself: It focuses on constructing blocks, as an alternative of particular mastery, as a technique to study a ability.
Plus, it doesn’t harm that there seems to be some government buy-in to the idea general: Duolingo chief enterprise officer Bob Meese is an investor in Trala, a tech firm that gives digital violin classes. It not too long ago raised $8 million in its Sequence A.
Thus far, the broader purview seems to be resonating. Duolingo greater than doubled its paid subscriber base final yr, in keeping with its final quarterly replace. Complete income additionally almost doubled at $369.5 million for 2022.
It’s unclear how Duolingo’s music app will materialize over the subsequent few months — for instance, we don’t know whether or not the app will assist individuals learn music, write music, study devices, or the entire above — or if it’s only a tiny experiment inside a corporation recognized to like a check or 10. TechCrunch reached out to the corporate for additional remark and can replace if we hear again.
