Nearly two years ago, MavenSay pivoted focus away from its main personal recommendations app to something a bit more musical in the form of Rithm.

Rithm is a standalone app that lets users send each other music-based messages, with clips from searchable songs, pics, text, and even animated dancing emojis.

Today, Rithm is getting an update that transforms it into a lightweight music streaming service as well as a music messenger, adding the ability to listen to full songs for the first time. The company has spent the past few months striking deals with major record labels such as Sony, Universal and Warner so that users could graduate from sending each other 30-second music clips to sending full songs.

With that ability comes the option to save sent and received songs to a playlist for more organized listening.

The free tier of the service will remain in place, letting users send the same music clips to their friends. But for those who want to upgrade (for the price of $3.99/month), the service will let users listen to all the songs within their full chat history, as well as a playlist of up to 40 extra songs that can be added without sending or receiving them in a chat.

The idea here is two-fold. On the one hand, Rithm taps into one of the most powerful sharing mechanisms in the music industry, which is word of mouth. On the other hand, Rithm can undercut services like Spotify by offering a more lightweight alternative.

The new Rithm will also include new animated emojis that are representative of various artists, which are available to buy as opposed to the more generic, free emojis.

You can check out the new Rithm now in the App Store. [Tech Crunch]