A Startup Bringing the Fun Back to Music, Away from AI Dominance

At a time when most startups are busy developing tools that automatically generate songs using artificial intelligence in the style of any artist the user chooses, a company has emerged with a peculiar name that sounds more like an indie band than a tech firm: A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya. This company pursues a vision that runs counter to the prevailing trend, focusing instead on giving users small, enjoyable tools to play with sounds and melodies themselves, rather than settling for the press of a button that produces a ready-made song.

Early Funding and Notable Expertise

The company successfully raised $5.5 million in early seed funding, with participation from a number of prominent investment funds, in addition to individual investments from influential figures in the digital music industry. Among the most notable additions as an advisor to the company is Dawn Ostroff, the former President of Content and Advertising at Spotify.

Behind the project stands its founder, Mahoun Zonoozi, who previously served as Head of Innovation at Spotify and had earlier founded a company specializing in clipping and remixing video segments, which was later acquired by another company. After leaving Spotify in 2024, he decided to return to building his own venture out of a firm conviction.

Behind the Idea

Zonoozi believes that music streaming services solved the problem of access to music, but people's interaction with it remained confined to listening and consuming only. He observed that younger generations have grown accustomed to engaging with culture through games, filters, and creative tools, and saw an opportunity to enable them to do the same with music.

The company follows an innovative approach in releasing its products, offering them as small experiences akin to "singles" that together form a complete album. What these apps and websites have in common is interaction with various elements of making music or modifying sounds.

Diverse Musical Experiences

The company has introduced a series of playful tools that redefine the user's relationship with sound, including:

• Speed Surfer: A Chrome extension that lets you change the speed of audio playing in the browser window and apply filters to it.
• Usersound: A website that enables you to create a "sonic" username in which each letter represents a distinct musical note.
• Stacks: A player that lets you create a musical mix by turning clips on or off within a three-by-three grid.
• Drops: An experience based on placing blocks in specific patterns to guide falling balls, which produce musical notes upon collision.
• Sampler: A website that turns YouTube clips into tools for sampling music according to the rhythms of different parts of songs.

The Most Ambitious App: "bop"

The "bop" app for iOS is considered the company's flagship product, allowing users to place instruments and effects within a grid to create a varied mix from a base song, with the ability to adjust the tempo and add real-time effects. Once the mix is complete, it can be easily exported to TikTok and Instagram. The company is currently working on a multiplayer version that allows songs to be remixed collaboratively.

A Clear Stance on Artificial Intelligence

Zonoozi affirms that the company made a deliberate decision not to inject artificial intelligence into every part of its apps, while remaining open to using it in building products and strengthening infrastructure. He believes that the future of music does not lie merely in generating songs automatically; rather, the abundance of generated content will increase the value of human taste, personal perspective, and active participation.

He added, explaining his philosophy: "The more AI makes this content abundant, the more important human sensibility and participation become, and we are keen to ensure that this sensibility does not become something rare."

This year, the company plans to launch a new product described as a "musical sandbox" that lets users manipulate the various elements of making music, including the ability to invent their own instruments—a step that deepens its vision built on participation and creativity rather than passive consumption.

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