chrome app store

In addition to Mark Cuban, Soundwave’s backers include ACT Venture Capital, Enterprise Ireland, Matthew Le Merle, and Trevor Bowen, one of the people behind U2′s management company Principle Management. Funding totals $1.5 million.

The company has described the move as one for greater security, a protection against developers using loopholes to install malware-laden add-ons without user knowledge. The new policy has been turned on for the Windows beta version of Chrome, evidently surprising some of the millions who use the experimental version of Google’s browser.

For users like me, that rendered Soundwave a little mute since the majority of my music listening takes place on a laptop streamed to my home-office stereo. Today, however, the Dublin-based startup is going someway to fix this. It’s enabled desktop tracking in the form of a Chrome browser extension so that a plethora of desktop web-based music services can send listening data to the Soundwave app.

To find Chrome apps for the desktop, browse the “For your Desktop” section of the Chrome Web Store. You can reach the store by clicking on the Apps icon on the top left of the browser.

Since its launch in late June last year, Soundwave, the Mark Cuban-backed music discovery app that tracks the listening habits of you, your friends and other users you follow, had at least one gaping omission. It was mobile-only — iOS and Android — meaning that there was no way for the service to track music you consumed on a desktop computer.

The moves were described by Google as additional ways for developers to monetize their work building apps and add-ons for Chrome (the browser) and Chrome OS, the lightweight operating system that powers cheap Chromebook notebooks.