Inside New App Airbuds’ ‘Fundamentally Human’ Approach to Social Streaming

For nearly 25 years, tech startups have tried to crack the code on a simple idea: Building a social network based on music. The timing wasn’t right for Napster, Imeem, MySpace Music, Lala, Apple’s Ping or Facebook’s Spotify integration, among others. “It’s like a math problem that goes unsolved for hundreds of years and one day a mathematician comes along and solves it,” says Matt Graves, a Marin County, Calif., communications consultant who was once an exec for music-streaming pioneer Rhapsody. “I’d like to think that brilliant young Turk exists.”

Gilles Poupardin, a San Francisco entrepreneur, believes he is that Turk (although he is French) — and believes that Airbuds, his app with 5 million monthly users and $10 million in venture capital, is that service. Airbuds allows friends to vi