Tag Archives: Interview

James Fontana (SongVote) – Interview (Part 1)

Posted on by

James Fontana from SongVote was kind enough to sit through the MusicKO interview in full. Thanks a bunch, James! You will find the first part of the interview below, and the second is here.

James Fontana (SongVote)

James Fontana (Co-founder of SongVote)

Full Name: James Fontana
Age: 33
Startup: SongVote
Position:  Co-Founder

PART I

THE STARTUP

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

A few years back I put a pool in my back yard.  Every weekend people would come over and swim and there would be 5-7 iPods around the docking station.  No matter what, the music always became an issues.  Someone was always taking out someone else’s iPod and putting their own in.  For me I saw an opportunity for a solution that involved musical democracy.  I wanted to create a way that we could all come together based on our similarity and diversity of musical taste.

In my opinion the most distinctive feature is the ability to create one playlist based on the opinions of a group.

What was the original launch date?

Feb. 2010

What are the main uses people are putting SongVote to? In which countries has it been more successful?

We are noticing people having fun on SongVote by expressing their musical opinion in different public contest.  We also saw someone create a playlist that was moving from Dallas to Boston and was going to be in the car for three days.  They had a playlist built on song that reminded friends of the good time they spent together.  This person was able to listen to a playlist built by close friends during their long drive. Continue reading →

Sander Huiberts & Richard van Tol (Earwurm) – Interview (Part 2)

Posted on by

This is the final part of the interview I conducted with Sander Huiberts & Richard van Tol from Earwurm. The first one can be found right here. Share and enjoy!

PART II

MUSIC & YOU


When did you become interested in music? What was the first album or single you ever purchased?

Ever since we remember. Richard: the first record I bought was Thriller by Michael Jackson. Before that I was very actively trading cassette tapes with my friends. Sander: No idea?!

Are you in a band yourself, or have you been in a band in the past? Is there a clip on YouTube or elsewhere we could watch?

We have both been in several bands for the past 15 years. Richard: no footage on YouTube though. Sander: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy1waOPgYWM (playing electric upright bass) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4mKde5OIU8 (playing double bass). Continue reading →

Sander Huiberts & Richard van Tol (Earwurm) – Interview (Part 1)

Posted on by

The founders of Earwurm (a very original music startup that I reviewed last week) were kind enough to answer my questions. Read on for the full background on their startup, and their own insight and perceptions regarding the music industry. Thanks a lot, guys!
And if you enjoy this interview (you will!), don’t forget to read the second part, “Music & You”.

Earwurm

Full Name: Sander Huiberts & Richard van Tol
Age: 30 & 33
Startup: Earwurm.com – Stick A Song In Someone’s Mind
Position: Founders

PART I

THE STARTUP

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

Earwurm.com is a website that revolves around sharing earworms, those sticky tunes we all have in our mind from time to time. Simply search our database featuring hundreds of earworms to find a tune and then share it with others via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. If the song is not in our datebase you can easily add it to the site in less than 60 seconds.

The idea behind Earwurm.com is that almost everyone knows the phenomenon of having a song stuck in your head. Quite often earworms are triggered by simply hearing a tiny piece of a tune on the radio or someone humming it. Our background is in Music & Technology and, amongst other things, we teach Game Audio Design at the Utrecht School of the Arts, Faculty of Art, Media & Technology in The Netherlands. One of our lectures features a short sample of the song “Hello” by Lionel Ritchie (http://earwurm.com/music/1) which always leaves our students humming the song for the rest of the day. We wanted to do something creative and fun with that phenomenon and thus the idea of sharing ‘earwurms’, short fragments of songs that trigger earworms, was born.

What was the original launch date?

Earwurm.com was launched on the 20th of april, 2010.

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

The response is actually far bigger than we expected, especially given that we are not promoting the website and that it has only been online for two weeks. Hundreds of new earwurms have already been added to the database and about 83000 earwurms have been shared through email, Facebook and Twitter.
Many people like the concept for different reasons. There are those passionate about puttings songs in their friends’ minds, while there are others who simple enjoy browsing all earwurms and keep adding new annoying sticky songs to database. Continue reading →

Alexander Parij (SingAndStudy) – Interview (Part 2)

Posted on by

Here you have the final part of my interview with Alexander Parij from SingAndStudy. You can read the first part here, of course.

PART II

MUSIC & YOU

Q:When did you become interested in music? What was the first album or single you ever purchased?

A: I did not have a lot of pocket money to buy CDs, so I mainly listened to the radio.
The first album I purchased was the soundtrack of Spawn when I was teenager.

Q:Are you in a band yourself, or have you been in a band in the past? Is there a clip on YouTube or elsewhere we could watch?

A:Not really.

Q:Musical likes and dislikes? Favorite artists?

A: My music tastes change a lot. I think it progressed from heavy metal to psy-trance and then to something more mellow. Right now I listen a lot to Eduard Artemyev (one of the founders of Soviet electronic music), Pink Floyd and Jimmy Hendrix. Continue reading →

Ryan Fyfe (Eyeball.fm) – Interview (Part 2)

Posted on by

This is the second (and final) part of the interview with Ryan Fyfe from Eyeball.fm. If you haven’t done so already, read Part 1 by clicking on this link.

PART II

MUSIC & YOU

When did you become interested in music? What was the first album or single you ever purchased?

Music has been in my family since as long as I can remember. My dad has one of the biggest collections of music that I know of. Most of it is digitized now, and all of it’s on Eyeball.fm 😉

If I can remember well enough the first music CD I ever had was one of the very early Dance Mix compilations.

Are you in a band yourself, or have you been in a band in the past? Is there a clip on YouTube or elsewhere we could watch?

Unfortunately not, would be hilarious if there was!

Musical likes and dislikes? Favorite artists?

I can do you one better – http://www.eyeball.fm/ryan/library/ Continue reading →

Ryan Fyfe (Eyeball.fm) – Interview (Part 1)

Posted on by

Ryan Fyfe from Eyeball.fm (reviewed here) was kind (and patient!) enough to sit through the MusicKO interview in full. Thanks, Ryan! This is the first part of the interview, the second section (“Music & You”) is here.

Ryan Fyfe

Ryan Fyfe

Full Name: Ryan Fyfe
Age: 24
Startup: Eyeball.fm
Position: CEO

PART I

THE STARTUP

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

The idea for Eyeball.fm came to me when I was working on my personal homepage. I wanted a way to quickly share the music I was listening; both in real-time, as well as show people what was in my library. As I researched more and more and started tying this into my homepage – I realized the wealth of music information/content that is readily available; At that point I scratched my personal project, and drew up a plan of an all-inclusive model that would wrap this information together in a way that hadn’t been done before. Eyeball.fm was born.

What was the original launch date?

November 2009

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

I’ve received an overwhelming response from people who have uploaded their iTunes, for example into the site. These people are addicted to browsing through their old favorites and re-discovering their music along with the videos and all the other content.

The majority of our users come from North America, although there is also a big spread around the world in places like Europe and Latin America. Eyeball.fm isn’t bound by any of the regional copyright restrictions that affect most of our competitors; which is a big advantage for attracting international users who are shut-out of other services like Pandora,etc.

Tell me a little about the tagline, “Music you can watch”. How does it apply to your startup? Because (as much as I liked it) I failed to see a direct connection when reviewing it.

Eyeball.fm is for people that want to truly discover & re-discover music, as it’s build on the principle that ‘music is more than music’. It’s more than what we listen to, which is where the name and tagline come into play. All music on Eyeball.fm is in a video which is where the tagline comes from, but it’s also about images, bio’s, lyrics and more! Continue reading →

Kyle Jenkins (Songr) – Interview

Posted on by

Kyle Jenkins from Songr (the social service for the discovery of music that I just reviewed) was kind enough to sit through my interview the same day my original post was published. Thanks a lot, Kyle! You will find his answers below.

Songr
Full Name: Kyle Jenkins
Age: N/A
Startup: Songr
Position: Owner

THE STARTUP

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

Oddly enough, the best ideas come when you least expect it. I was simply singing to myself in the shower (yes..yes..) when I realized I had sung the same song over and over for the past week! This led me to my hunt for better songs, which, to my dismay, brought me no results.

After hours of Googling, the only good source seemed to be YouTube, which, as we all know, isn’t dedicated to music. This got me thinking. I mean, I couldn’t be the only one with repetitive shower songs right?

Since I had some free time, I started on the design and, after 5 tries, finally got one that seemed decent. Working from that, I utilized my limited PHP skills and coded the site.

Eventually, I hit a wall when I was coding the rating system. I received help from a good friend on this part – which he coded our perfectly.

After 3 days of work, I finally got the site together. Over the next couple of days I started implementing features slowly, but efficiently. We are now working on a community system which allows for user registration and interaction.

I mean, the whole point of Songr is that it’s community powered, right?

What was the original launch date?

It was originally planned to be in late April, but additional allotted time allowed us (well, me) to complete it sooner.

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

It’s been pretty successful actually. We’ve received around 300 unique visitors daily since launch, but it doesn’t seem as if the majority of them are voting. Hopefully, the planned community features will encourage this. Continue reading →

Adam Cameron (iMusicTweet) – Interview (Part 2)

Posted on by

This is the second and final part of the interview I conducted with Adam Cameron. Don’t forget to check out part 1 right here.

PART II

MUSIC & YOU

When did you become interested in music? What was the first album or single you ever purchased?

Having 2 older brothers, I began listening to music at 4-5 years old in the late 90’s. I was interested in Hip Hop but in 2000 I began expanding and listening to every Genre and then I had a new found understanding and definition of music. My first music purchase was a 50 Cent album, maybe his 1st release on Interscope.

Are you in a band yourself, or have you been in a band in the past? Is there a file on YouTube or elsewhere we could watch?

No. I did own a DJ team about a year ago which crumbled and everyone chose different paths in life or continued on their own. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be, this is my path and I will continue to run, not walk, until I am a success.

Musical likes and dislikes? Favorite artists?

I listen to lyrics, I don’t just listen to a song to dance with the vibe. I try to break down and understand the lyrics and some are positive and some are very negative. My favorite artists currently are J. Cole, B.o.B, Jay Z, Kanye West, Kid Cudi. I also listen to all genres, I look for the new up and coming songs/artists of any genre. I am really listening to up-and-coming hip hop artist, G. Cam lately. I just love music.

If you had to name the song that moves you the most, what would it be? Can you pinpoint the reason why?

I Made It. It’s a song about where he came from (the bottom) all they way to where he is at now (top of the world). It inspires me, I currently live in Harlem and It makes me want to work to make it to where he is at or even better. I am the only one from everyone I grew up with who is doing what Im doing. I can relate to every word in his song.   Continue reading →

Adam Cameron (iMusicTweet) – Interview (Part 1)

Posted on by

I have had the pleasure of interviewing Adam Cameron from iMusicTweet, the service for sharing music socially that I recently reviewed.
This is the first part of the interview, the second section is accessible here. Enjoy!

iMusicTweet

Full Name: Adam Cameron

Age: 17

Startup: iMusicTweet

Position: CEO

PART I

THE STARTUP

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

In late 2008, I thought how great it would be if we could share music on twitter. Facebook streaming came about because a lot of artists and my regular Facebook friends were praying to find a way to stream music on Facebook. Being a graphic designer, I sat down for a month or so drafting up everything. I created every page, hardly sleeping, constant headaches. Then I connected with my programmer and we produced iMusicTweet.com, the final product.

What was the original launch date?

The original launch date was early 2009 but I thought it could be better, so I went back to the drawing boards, took advice, incorporated my own ideas and re-launched in 2010.

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

Ever since we re-launched in 2010 the responses have been great. Many websites offered to review us, a few major artists in the U.S have used it and continue to use it. I attempted to submit it to Chris Pirillo and he responded with “Ah…”. I didn’t know if I should take it as negative or positive but I will keep that email forever. It’s being most successful in the U.S as of now, since we are based here but I have seen iMusicTweet be reviewed by websites in a few more countries.

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

I am a person that loves to think far beyond the “norm” or beyond “realistic” ideas. So, with that said, anything could happen. I would love to connect with Universal Music Group, thats a dream of mine. Connect with China because they have the largest internet market. I would like to offer artists a way to sell their music as well as streaming and thats all for now, I have a lot of thoughts, too many to list.  Continue reading →

Kristofer (Spotiseek) – Interview

Posted on by

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!

logo_white

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! Continue reading →