I’d like to share with you the interview I conducted with Kristofer from Spotiseek, the service from maximizing Spotify that I reviewed last week. I hope you like it!

Full Name: Kristofer
Age: 25
Startup: Spotiseek
Position: Founder

THE STARTUP

Tell us a little about your startup. How was it conceived? What are its most distinctive features in your opinion?

Well, I love Spotify and their idea to make all music available to everyone. But one of the things that I felt missing, was an easy way of finding new music to listen to. There’s so much music out there, but I don’t know where to start!
So I figured I’d try to create a service for that myself, and I have to say it’s turned out better than I’d hoped…

The best thing about Spotiseek is obviously that it’s so easy to find music you’ll probably like, since it uses your artist of choice as the source for the search.

What was the original launch date?

I didn’t really have any set launch date, but have tried to improve it step by step, and focus on implementing features that people actually want to use…
I believe the site was first live in mid December, so it’s still in very young age.

What has been the response so far? In which countries has it been more successful?

The feedback I’ve received so far is way better than I had expected. My primary goal was to create a service that I would want to use myself, but I sure didn’t expect thousands of users!

What features can we expect to see implemented in future revisions? Do you agree with my take that it mostly recommends artists which are contemporary to the ones you based your search on?

There’s of course quite a few features that I would like to see implemented in Spotiseek, and some of these have been suggested by other users from the Spotiseek Feedback page.

It’s difficult to say exactly what the roadmap looks like, but the site is in need of a little redesign effort. Also, I will put even more focus on the mixtape creation, e.g. giving the users more control of the tracks and refining the search results.

And yes, you’re probably right. It’s a bit tricky to explain, but the recommendations are primarily based on finding music from artists that have pretty much the same audience as the one you searched for…

I’m always interested in hearing what the users want to see in Spotiseek, so I hope everyone shares ideas and questions!

There is a certain tendency to demonize the Internet in the music industry. I think it is all a matter of perspective – it all depends on the uses it is put to. What is your opinion? In which areas has the Internet left an unquestionably positive mark?

Wow, there’s so many to choose from… Of course, Spotify is an awesome positive effect from Internet. Using iTunes and similar services feels like an outdated way of getting new music. The music industry is finally starting to catch up with the future, even though they’ve got a long way to go. Sometimes I wonder if their calendars are still set in the 80’s…
Furthermore, I really hope services similar to Spotify will be able to turn around the stone-age, dinosaur TV and movie industries so we all can enjoy great media from home, without having to wait months for the DVD release…

What advice could you give to anybody who is launching a music-related startup in the future? What are the obvious mistakes that should be avoided?

Don’t build a space shuttle and release it to the public, when all they want is a bike. Find out what the users want and implement it – bit by bit.

Thank you very much, Kristofer.