If you were to start your own business today, would you choose to enter the music business? Probably not. That’s why Soundsgood is among the most interesting startup in recent years: it takes courage to start an enterprise in a market that’s generally known to be unpredictable and hostile to change. The team behind this innovative playlist-sharing service is young and motivated and it matches a refreshing and original perspective on the music business and a solid and well-thought-through entrepreneurial touch. In this interview, CMO Louis Viallet shared his views on streaming platforms, startups, accelerators and the music business renaissance.
Talk us through the evolution of Soundsgood: where does the concept for it come from and how did you set about translating the original idea into a viable project?
We started Soundsgood a year ago to provide the absolute best playlist curation service for tastemakers, professionals and music lovers. You can create playlist across all music platforms. Share a single universal player on your website and social networks. And join the world’s first community of music curators.
Playlists are taking the central stage in today’s music discovery. As a DJ, my partner Josquin Farge always had requests for clubbing or roadtrip playlists. And everyday thousands of DJs, artists, festivals, venues, music blogs, but also medias, tastemakers, fashion bloggers, youtubers and music lovers create playlists for their audiences. But as a listener you would need to subscribe to several streaming platforms to enjoy the playlists of your favourite influencers. That’s why we’ve worked hard over the last year to develop Soundsgood as an elegant and powerful playlist-publishing platform to make playlists universal. It was important for us also, to get the full support of the music industry key players – the streaming platforms and the music Majors – with whom we nurture solid business relationships.
Did you take part in a bootcamp or worked with an accelerator? What is your opinion on these tools? Do you believe they are effective in turning startups into fully formed enterprises?
Start-ups are quite trendy these days! A lot of accelerators and start-up programs emerge here and there and you have to select the right one for your project.
We spent our first months developing our technology in StartUp42 tech accelerator, and then worked on our community at NUMA Start-up Accelerator. I guess success always comes from your team, but accelerators definitely help embracing the lean mindset to survive and evolve rather than refining your product till perfection. More important, it’s a network that comes very handy even months and years after your acceleration.
What’s your background? How did you come to be a startupper?
My Soundsgood partners Josquin Farge (CEO), David Billamboz (CTO) and I (CMO) are huge fans of music with a real sense for business. The three of us studied in Lyon, France where Josquin and I graduated in Business and Management. David was a freelance developer. After a few years of complementary professional journeys in the music industry, marketing and IT we all quitted our jobs to craft Soundsgood together.
The music market in general and streaming services in particular are more or less regularly declare do be dead, dying or at the very least bound to collapse any minute now. What motivated your decision to tackle such a complex, saturated and often struggling market?
The music industry is back on the track of growth especially thanks to the Premium streaming which is becoming mass-market. I guess that the services who collapse are a symptom of this market structuration. That’s why we are building Soundsgood side by side with the music Majors, the record labels and the streaming platforms, contributing to the market growth by enabling all the streaming platforms to get the best playlists curated by the best influencers.
How do you translate the free, passion-based sharing of music into a sustainable economic model?
We have created Soundsgood to unleash the power of music influencers and the service is free for them.
That’s how we aim to unite the world’s first community of music influencers, asset that we leverage in B2B because they are the ones who impact what people are listening to and where they listen to it (Youtube, Spotify, Amazon Prime, etc.). We enable music Majors and labels to promote their artists to the curators and provide content and data to improve the streaming platforms experience.
Where are you at now, with Soundsgood? What’s on the agenda for the coming year?
We are now 100% focused on making Soundsgood even better for the curators and uniting the world’s first community of curators.
So far, a growing community of 3000+ curators use Soundsgood everyday to publish playlists to their 200,000 monthly listeners. It draws from all kind of people who shape the contemporary culture like Radio Nova in France, the Belgium Dour festival, or the artist Broken Back.
We call for all the playlist curators worldwide to join the community!
Let’s travel forth in time: what would you like Soundsgood to look like five years from now?
Ok, let’s fast forward in the future… [travelling in time]
We have played our part in the growth of the streaming industry even in countries where piracy was still dominant. Soundsgood has become the the standard playlist curation service for all the curators worldwide who promote new artists and old treasures to their audiences. This has given us the ability to draw a live map of the curators’ influence in any music genre at a micro-local level. And this goes beyond playlists. This community of tastemakers, professionals and music lovers are not only curating playlists but writing tons of great stories, producing videos, hosting events. We developed great new services for all of them.
Let’s conclude with your personal playlist: what sound would you choose to sum up your experience at Soundsgood?
I would definitely chose this “Working Bee” playlist.
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