Samsung's Harman Launches Drops, a TikTok-Style App for Sharing Music

Harman, the Samsung subsidiary best known for audio hardware, launched a music discovery app called Drops on Monday that serves users 10-to-30-second snippets of songs in an endless vertical-scrolling feed. The app is live on iOS and Android in the U.S., though access is currently invite-only, with American users able to join a waitlist.

Instead of videos, Drops gives listeners short clips of tracks, paired with lyrics, album artwork, artist photos, and captions. The pitch is simple: hand people just enough of a song — a sharp lyric, a catchy hook, a beat — to make them want the rest.

What problem is Drops trying to solve?

The company positions the app as a return to how music discovery worked before recommendation algorithms took over. People used to hear about new songs from friends, music blogs, and online communities. Drops wants to rebuild that social loop inside a familiar swipe-driven interface.

"You send a friend a song and say, 'You have to hear this.' Then you end up texting, 'Skip to 1:47, that's the best part.' The part that hits usually isn't the first few seconds, and there wasn't a good way to share just that moment," Clare Hunter, general manager of Drops, said in an interview.

Hunter said the idea began taking shape after Harman acquired Roon, a music management software company, in 2023.

"I used to spend hours making mixtapes for my friends, picking the songs, the order, and decorating the cover. Drops is the version of that I always wanted," Hunter added.

How does the app work?

Navigation is straightforward. The app offers tabs including "For You," "New," "Showcase," and "Following," plus relevant and trending hashtags.

Social features include:

• Liking, commenting, reposting, and sharing tracks
• Saving songs to collections called Droplists
• Sending songs directly to other users
• Following profiles and exchanging direct messages

To hear a full track, Drops integrates with major streaming services: Apple Music, Qobuz, and TIDAL. Users can jump straight into the complete version of a song through whichever platform they've connected.

How does Drops treat artists and rights holders?

Two policy choices stand out. First, Harman says Drops does not use generative AI for audio or visuals. Songs appear exactly as originally released, with official album artwork and licensed artist photography — a deliberate stance at a moment when AI-generated music is getting harder to avoid.

Second, Drops pays rights holders and reports plays back to its partners. Those partners include Universal Music Group, Beggars Group, Empire, Symphonic Distribution, and UnitedMasters.

Crucially, plays on Drops count toward streams on those partner services. The company frames the app as a discovery layer on top of existing subscriptions, not a replacement for them — users still need Apple Music, Qobuz, or TIDAL for full playback.

Why is Samsung's Harman betting on social music discovery?

For Harman, which built its business on speakers and headphones under brands like JBL and AKM-parented audio lines, Drops extends a software and services push that began with the 2023 Roon acquisition. The app gives the company a consumer-facing touchpoint that feeds listeners toward paid streaming partners rather than competing with them.

The model also sidesteps the licensing fights that have tripped up short-form music apps before: with Universal Music Group and the indie distributors already signed as partners, and revenue flowing back on every play, Drops starts on a cooperative footing with the industry.

The constraints are real, though. Invite-only access, a U.S.-only launch, and reliance on third-party subscriptions limit the addressable audience on day one. Whether the mixtape nostalgia Hunter describes can translate into sustained engagement against TikTok's own music discovery machine will depend on how quickly Drops opens the doors and whether its social sharing loop actually changes how people send songs to each other.