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David Plans wants your heart to make music.
That’s not a maudlin poetic statement; in fact, it’s quite literal. Plans is one of the founders of BioBeats, a startup that’s developed a series of apps that generate electronic music based on your heartbeat.
“BioBeats was founded off the back of a decade-old friendship and business relationship with [co-founder] Davide Morelli...We were both intensely interested in biofeedback and the role it could play in making people aware of their health,” Plans said.
Biofeedback, or the development of physiological awareness using devices that monitor the body, is what led the company to experiment with “adaptive media,” which it defines as “technologies that respond to physiologic data and learn from how you interact with them.”
This concept would first manifest with Pulse, a prototype app that produces music by detecting the blood flow of a user’s finger (the finger is placed over the phone camera). The app determines the user’s heart rate based on that rhythm, generating a beat in sync with the user’s physiological tempo.
Developing and testing Pulse led Plans and his co-founders to build private apps to undergo clinical trials through international healthcare organizations, such as UK-based BUPA (BioBeats is a multinational company, with offices in LA, London, and Pisa). Plans said the apps were designed to monitor stress levels and emotions over time, and that they took biometric readings to alert users of stress-related health risks.
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Now, combining the experience from Pulse and the privately developed apps, BioBeats is developing Get On Up, which Plans called BioBeats’s “first fully-fledged commercial application.” The app detects bodily movement through the accelerometer on your smartphone, playing music during times of movement and stopping at points of stagnation, which Plans hopes will encourage people to stay active.
“When you stop to cross the street, the music stops right along with you...and when you start moving again, the music picks back up and you carry on. It’s to the point where our beta testers don’t want to stop moving, even when they’re on public transport, so they can keep listening to their favorite songs,” Plans said.
The idea seems to have momentum, at least in Hollywood: Will Smith and talent manager Scooter Braun contributed a $650,000 seed round, and Deepak Chopra has signed on as an advisor, according to Forbes.
According to Plans, BioBeats is completing its Series A round, with “immediate plans...to finish up our latest clinical app trial and launch Get On Up.”
Whether “adaptive media” catches on – and, like home security and digital personal assistants, mobile music truly turns “smart” – remains to be seen, but Plans is hopeful. “If we can motivate people to improve their health in a way that is fun, and entertaining, but lasting, we’ll be happy.”
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