7 Startups de Música Que Foram Apresentadas no "Canadian Music Week"

Meet The Seven Music Startups That Were Featured At Canadian Music Week

Note tracks CEO Kam Lal, winner of Canadian Music Week’s Startup Launch Pad (image courtesy of Canadian Music Week/Grant Martin).

Mugatunes

Nobody is better known for finding the next big thing in music before the masses than young people, so why not really tap into those tastemakers and see what they can discover? Mugatunes seeks to find those college students that have the best taste and a knack for what’s going to be huge and put them in one place online. It is sort of like an online radio station, but created by over 200 kids all around the world.

Interestingly, Mugatunes doesn’t accept just anybody when it comes to its curators. The company has a fairly well thought-out application process where students need to really explain why they are perfect for this site, and even then they may not get picked. As if they hadn’t already gone through enough applying for things…

Audiokite Research

Music is usually a guessing game, even at its most scientific. Just when a group of producers and songwriters feel like they have it all figured out, one track that was supposed to be huge flops, while another tune that nobody expected to do anything becomes the biggest hit of the year. There is just no telling what the people will love, but that doesn’t mean educated guesses can’t be made or that there’s nothing left to learn.

Audiokite wants to figure out the appeal of a song or a video before it goes to market, and the company’s real goal seems to be to help every musician become not only better, but more commercially viable. Artists can upload their songs to the platform and select pre-designed surveys, which everyday music listeners will be paid to respond to. Those potential fans will be honest about what they liked or didn’t like about the track, which the original composer can take to heart and consider before creating another possible hit.

SongCat

This Irish startup aims to make producing high-quality music much more affordable and convenient for musicians at all points in their careers, though the deals likely appeal to those just starting out most of all. Instead of having to know people in an area or traipsing from studio to studio, SongCat has everything the modern musician could need, but it’s all remote. From backup vocalists to session musicians and even all manner of mixing and mastering services, everything necessary to create a finished piece of art is available on the site, and for fairly reasonable prices. The company even offers consultations if somebody doesn’t know what to do next with their work-in-progress.

Mission Control Management

One of the most difficult choices a professional musician needs to make is that of who will manage their careers, and some end up deciding that they will go it on their own and manage their lives and jobs. That’s a risk, but sometimes it can work out for the best. For those who have opted to be in control of themselves, Mission Control Management wants to help. The company is an online consulting and coaching service that aims to help those going down this road to understand what they are truly getting themselves into, and to help them be as successful as possible in doing so.

Notetracks

Being referred to as the “Google Docs for musicians” certainly had my interest peaked from the get-go. Notetracks is one of several new companies in the music startup space that aims to help people collaborate on music no matter where they are based. Music is better when people work together, but until recently, there wasn’t a great way for anybody to collaborate long-distance, which is a great problem to fix. Artists of all types can write and record pieces of music, and then make notes on the recordings so that their partners can see. It sounds fairly simple, but of course the people behind Notetracks created a well-designed product that was worthy of its win.

Aybo

The messaging space has become very exciting in the past few years, and it has also gotten much more musical. There have been plenty of new apps that allow people to insert music into their various forms of messaging, and Aybo is looking to be a standout player in the field. The app is an iOs plugin that lets users send just a snippet of a song or movie quote within their messenger. It’s sort of like a meme or an emoji, but only with audio.

Trebba

Perhaps the vaguest of the bunch, Trebba comes off as a streaming service of sorts, though it is aimed at a specific demographic. Instead of going for mass adoption like Spotify, the company is attempting to appeal to younger generations (tweens and the like), promising them a free music experience that still benefits the artists they already love and the ones they’ll discover on the platform. Marketers can get in on the fun, learning what the kids like and using that data to sell them on things elsewhere, though the company isn’t sharing much more on its site just yet.