Songdrop – the online record player that allows you to play, store and share music you stream online – has closed its first round of investment, securing £100,000 from SOIC Capital.
SOIC Capital is a seed and early-stage private fund with a primary focus on social platforms within the fashion and music industries.
One of the finalists in last year’s EMI Innovation Challenge and TechPitch 4.5, Songdrop allows videos and songs from all over the web and play them from anywhere.
The service is free to the user, although paid-for mobile applications are in development and in-app purchases are available.
“We’re super excited that we’ve closed our first round of investment as it enables us to really ramp up product development and get our first mobile application into the wild,” said Songdrop CEO and co-founder Brittney Bean. “We’re focused on creating a superior experience for listening to streaming music no matter the device.
“Streaming music is fragmented and often in walled gardens; there’s an insane amount of choice but it’s all scattered across different websites and services. We’re working on the interoperability and portability of streaming music, as we believe the API for music already exists: it’s the whole internet. Songdrop is a way to make sense of the chaos, a way to unify the streaming experience.”
Lukas Hirsch, partner at SOIC Capital, added: “Songdrop is an exciting startup, led by a talented team of founders, whose innovative ideas show great potential.
“We particularly like the portability of music playing, the community building potential, and the personalisation of the streaming experience that Songdrop offers.”
Songdrop is currently in discussions with a number of brands, record labels and other potential partners.
Jason Rothery, Direct to Consumer and Artist Services manager of Warner Music Group, said: "We are discovering music via so many different channels now – blogs, websites, YouTube, Twitter, Soundcloud etc and it is often hard to remember where you heard what, meaning music can sometimes be forgotten.
“Most of these channels use SoundCloud or YouTube as the delivery method and are often ahead of release so unless you’re ripping everything and clogging your hard drives how can you remember it all?”
“Songdrop’s ability to pull the discovery channel chosen players into one destination which is curated by me for me has changed the way that I keep up on all new music,” he added.
“Being able to put different tracks into personal playlists via the drop it button means that I will never forget who I’ve heard at any given time and also prompts me to keep an eye on release dates - I’ve also made purchases based on what I’ve dropped."
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