A band name that raised $5.5m

A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya is a startup, not an indie band. It closed a $5.5m pre-seed from Mantis VC, SV Angel, Boxgroup, Gold House and others.

Spotify's ex-innovation lead

Founder Máuhan M Zonoozy ran innovation at Spotify until 2024. Before that he built Bubbl, a video clipping and remixing startup acquired by Cricket Media.

Streaming solved access, not play

Zonoozy's read: streaming made every song available, but left listening as pure consumption. Nothing invites you to touch the music itself.

Kids already remix culture

Younger audiences grow up playing with culture through games, filters and creation tools. Music is the one medium that never handed them the controls.

“everyone's growing up playing with culture through games, through filters, through creation tools”

Apps shipped like singles

Each experiment is a single on an album. Speed Surfer is a Chrome extension that warps the speed and filter of any sound in your browser tab.

Usernames, grids and marbles

Usersound turns each letter of a username into a note. Stacks is a 3x3 stem grid. Drops bounces falling marbles off plaques to make notes. Sampler slices YouTube videos into a sampler.

bop is the real bet

The iOS app lets you drop instruments and effects on a grid to remix a base song, adjust tempo, then export straight to TikTok or Instagram. A multiplayer version is in the works.

No prompt box, on purpose

AI helps build the products and the infrastructure, but it does not generate the songs. As generated music floods in, participation and taste get rarer and more valuable.

“if AI starts to make that content more abundant, it actually makes taste and human perspective and interaction and participation even more important”