Nashville's Music Startup Celebra 3 Anos E Continua Se Movimentando

Nashville's Music Startup Accelerator Celebrates Wrapping Its Third Year And Looks Forward

First of all thanks to Hugh McIntyre for this article.

Nashville-based Project Music, a startup accelerator that focuses solely on music tech, just graduated its third class of brand new companies last week at the 2017 Music Biz conference in music city, and for its third year in business, things were slightly different this time around.

Project Music was created by the Entrepreneur Center, an organization that describes itself as “the front door for entrepreneurs aspiring to create companies in Nashville.” The goal was to foster entrepreneurial talent with not just resources ($40,000 in initial funding, for example), but by connecting upstart founders and owners with those at the top of the music industry. Nashville is perfect for a program like Project Music, as all three of the major labels have bases there, most figures in the business pass through fairly often (if they're not actually based there) and every type of company that makes up the music industry, including publishing, licensing, management, booking and anything else imaginable can be found just down the road.

For its third iteration, the team behind Project Music decided to scale things down, opting to work with just four companies, while in the past, the number has been either seven or eight. The switch was made not out of financial need, but rather because by choosing fewer startups, the resources available to Project Music could be put to much better use.

“It’s given the startups’ advisors more time with the companies on a day to day basis,” explained Heather McBee, who runs operations for Project Music. “In the past, we had those advisors doing double duty, as they were attached to a core team and advising the other seven.”

By spending more time with their chosen startups, the advisors were able to form deeper, more meaningful connections with the fledgling companies, taking them to more meetings, introducing them to important people in the Nashville scene and giving them the advice that has now prepared all four startups to leave the program and venture out on their own.

Four companies—Scripturally Sound (a subscription tool that helps pastors choose music to include in their sermons), Eevet (an A.I. product that assists in venues booking the right artist to assure they sell the greatest number of tickets possible), Eyebuy (a machine learning behind-the-scenes player that allows those watching any media to immediately purchase products inside the show or video) and Hi Karl  (an A.I. chatbot that helps people find concerts just a few hours or a few days away)—left the Project Music accelerator program last week, but they aren't going far. It appears that all four plan to either stay in Nashville, or at least operate part of their business in the area.

McBee also pointed out that this year, the companies that graduated are almost all already in business, and most, if not all of them already have a customer base that is steadily growing.

Now that three years of classes have come and gone, the Entrepreneur Center is already looking at what might be different next time around, and there will be a fourth go at establishing the next big music startup. The Country Music Association has already signed on to sponsor the program yet again, and McBee and her team are excited to get to work and shake things up again, potentially even changing what an accelerator looks like. 

“We’ve got this program that is three years in and that has been a success, but now we’re looking at whether or not the accelerator model is the right thing to be able to support as many entrepreneurs as we can that are in this space.”

Project Music still has plenty of time before the selection process begins for the fourth year, but with the number of applications rising annually and the music startup community growing, there is no reason to believe the next venture won’t be even more promising than this latest group appears to be.