This is the first part of the interview I had the pleasure of conducting with William Rodríguez, CEO/Designer of Tweet My Song, a service I reviewed here.  Part 2 of the interview (“Music & You”) is here.

Full Name: William Rodríguez
Age: 25
Startup: Tweet My Song
Position:  CEO/DESIGNER

PART I

THE STARTUP

Tell us a little about your startup. How was it conceived?

I was thinking of new ideas like I usually do on a daily basis. I had decided I needed something that can market itself. Twitter is the most viral thing on the internet right now so I decided to look at applications. I then evaluated niches I was interested in. I decided in making something for music. I then checked out twitpic.com and twitvid.com and looked to see if there was something similar in music and could not find anything. That’s when I knew I had to create something for the musicians out there to easily market their music to the millions of Twitter users.

What are its most distinctive features in your opinion?

Most distinctive feature is the easy and quick ability to upload your music to be tweeted to your followers and Tweetmysong.com’s followers.

What was the original launch date?

October 15, 2009

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

The response has been massive, to this date we have 50,000 unique visitors to the site and averaging about 3000 uniques a day. Our biggest following right now is currently in the USA

What features can we expect to see implemented in future revisions?

We plan on allowing artist to sell their singles like on itunes but directly through tweetmysong.com and also the ability to raise money for their music needs.

What is your take on Twitter on the whole? Where do you think it is headed? Do you think that people will talk about it in the future and place it in the same league as developments like e-mail?

I believe Twitter will continue to grow because Google is very interested in its search capabilities that run in real time. I believe there is still more that needs to be developed before we can league it up with email.

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?

Well now that piracy is so huge, the ability to sell your track and to raise money via the internet has helped the music industry after all the piracy. Also sites like Twitter and Myspace show musicians have much of a following they have and can have better analytics to begin tours and such things

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?

Make sure to be aware of all your competition, and make the site easy to use. It’s all about user functionality. Do not put in features that are not valuable to the users just to have more on your website. Design is important to keep it nice and clean easy to navigate.

Continue to Part 2.