Radar Music Videos wins the Music 4.5 pitch competition

By Charlotta Hedman

Seven clever music-tech start-ups took to the stage at the end of the Music 4.5 conference to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges and to the audience.  The favourite pitch was the last of the day, by Caroline Bottomley, a start-up novice with a background in media production. According to the judging panel her company Radar Music Videos seemed to fill a void in the industry and could help artists struggling to afford making music videos.

First up was Voisse, a service similar to Audioboo, except that the users can choose when and how to publish their recordings. The app is used to record anything from lectures to interviews to people singing to their friends. Founder Alan Back hadn’t planned on pitching at a music conference, but after realising that a lot of artists (or wannabe artists) were using his service he is now interested to hear if the music industry could find any use for the product.

After that Claudio Poli of Italian start-up Audiobox.fm took to the stage. Audiobox.fm is a kind of Dropbox for music, users can upload songs to the cloud and then stream them from wherever they want. There will also be an option of downloading the songs back to a mobile phone in order to use the service offline. According to Poli the company has grown quickly and they’re expecting to have 10 000 registered users soon. The company charges $9.99 for their most expensive package (which gives you 151 GB of storage) and in August this year the service generated $661.05 in revenue (would be interesting to see more companies being this open with their figures). The feedback from the panel and the audience mainly revolved around licensing issues, can the service prove that people aren’t going to upload pirated material, if they can’t, they might get into trouble.

The third company was “artist friendly ticketing platform” Gigswiz, a company that has sprung from the quite active Finnish music-tech start-up scene. Co-founder Kai Lemmetty explained that Gigswiz is trying to bring the artists on board when it comes to ticket promotion and sales by paying artists a third of the booking fee as a reward for helping them sell more tickets. The platform will also automatically promote the gig through the artists social media platforms. Gigswiz has launched in Finland, but is now looking to establish themselves in the UK and internationally. For those interested in knowing more about other ambitious Finnish start-ups, check out the Finnish Music Startups Rocking The World event on November 22.

After that the second Italian start-up of the day took to the stage. Confident CEO Massimo Ciociola MusiXMatch explained that they are the only licensed provider of lyrics out there. The company distributes an API that anyone can use. The revenue will come from ads and songwriters can also publish their lyrics through the site. The company has already licensed 4,5 million lyrics, which is quite a feat. Most other lyrics sites are illegal and will according to Ciociola eventually be taken down.

The third to last start-up of the day was brainy Oopus founded by entrepreneur Martin Cahill and Phd student Andrew Ko. They’ve built their service around Ko’s research, which involves building an algorithm for play-lists tailored after people’s mood. According to Cahill the company is in its early days, but has already attracted an active community eager to share their experience of music in different places around the world. He describes the company as a “social project that learns from our listening habits and selects the best music for your moment in time”. Some of the judges questioned the need for a service that would select music for you and Leon Alexander of Hope Music Group argued that he always knows what kind of music he wants to listen to. The rest of the audience didn’t seem so sure, that’s why we listen to the radio after all.

One of the more challenging start-ups of the day was PureTone Internet, founded by young entrepreneur and student James Kelly. He wants to create an Internet service provider that allows legal downloading through deals with content and copyright owners. Some of the judges and the audience seemed a bit confused by how this would actually be possible, but chair Jeremy Silver stepped in and said that PureTone could work with the right technical support and if it did it could be the service provider of the future.

Last, but not least, was the pitch winner, Radar Music Videos. Founder Caroline Bottomley wanted to create a service that helps smaller labels and independent artists find film-makers who are willing to create music videos for a reasonable price. The platform also helps distribute the videos to everyone from MTV to Youtube. Directors and film-makers can also pitch ideas to artists. To join the community there is a small subscription fee and Caroline hopes to grow the community. She is also looking for strategic partnerships and US based business.

The panel of judges consisted of Rick Riccobono, of NewMediaLaw, Leon Alexander of Hope Music Group, Hugh Stanley Clark of Gigaboxx, Milo Yiannopoulos, The Telegraph and Wall Street Journal Europe, Alasdair George, Edge Group and Edge Performance VCT Investment Committee and Grant Murgatroyd of Corporate Financier Magazine.