Kyle
By now most of us have had the great experience that is turntable.fm. Hanging out with friends in a virtual space, and going around the room and controlling the music. You get to be the dj and so do your friends. You get to control the music in the virtual room.
Now imagine if this concept was done in real life. For instance, you and your buddies go to the local sports bar and hang out. Now it’s 2012 so instead of a juke box, imagine if you could control the music in the bar or restaurant using your phone. Sure you can control the tv’s with an IR blaster and you may even be able to hack a stereo system, but imagine if it was encouraged. Imagine if you could BeDJ in real life.
That’s the technology behind Austin based startup BeDJ. It’s so hard for restaurants and bars to control the music in their establishments. They can never appease all of their clientele all the time. That’s why in the 60’s -80’s jukebox bars were hot because the people could put another dime in the jukebox and hear what they want.
BeDJ is offering a system/app for venues that allow their overhead music to be controlled by customers with a controller app. It’s a fermium service where venues will be able to get the music controller app for free, however they can upgrade to offer a more robust user experience and also deliver location based ads to their customers.
Imagine the benefit to a restaurant or bar that says, “select your next song and get half off your next round” well we’re definitely in on that deal even if we’re four or five rounds in. The social, customer, and reward element of BeDJ make it a great model for the establishment.
We got to talk in depth with co-founder Simeon Duong to hear all about this exciting startup. Check out the interview after the break
Briefly tell us, what is beDJ?
beDJ is a consumer connection platform that is using music as an “icebreaker”. We allow customers to democratically choose the music played at public venues by simply voting on the available music with their smartphone. We also start a location-specific social interaction between customers and venue-management, which gives an opportunity for venues to better understand their user-base and for customers to personalize their experience in the venue.
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
We’re five computer engineering students from the University of Texas at Austin. We all happened to meet at the same time, and realized that we all share two loves- music and code. To kick things off, we were selected to participate in 1 Semester Startup- a university-run student startup incubator. It’s led by startup maven Joshua Baer (OtherInbox, CapitalFactory), and Bob Metcalfe (Founder of 3Com, inventor of Ethernet).
Where are you located/based?
We’re based in Austin, TX – at University of Texas at Austin
How did you come up with the idea for beDJ?
We were trying to finish an assignment at a local coffeeshop, but were distracted by the terrible music that the barista was playing (80’s heavy metal on a Thursday night). When we complained about it, the barista simply laughed at us and kept playing the same music. We decided to fight back with the only weapon we knew how to use- code.
What problem does beDJ solve?
beDJ solves problems for customers and venues.
For customers- it solves the problem of bad music, and empowers them to personalize their music experience, wherever they go.
For venues- it connects them to their customers to get better feedback on their service. It also gives them a connection into their smartphone.
What is your secret sauce?
We’re working on creating connections in a natural and unobtrusive way. Music is always present in our day-to-day lives, and its very natural to want to influence it. Our secret sauce is that we go beyond the “jukebox” mentality. Controlling music is just the first step, the conversations and connections that music can create is what we think is the most interesting piece.
So we don’t exactly understand the premise, how is this like turntable.fm but in real life? What is the user actually controlling?
We’re similar to turntable.fm because we make music social. Wherever you go, the music is controlled by you and your friends and you can use music to connect to each other in real-life. Instead of listening on your laptop with headphones on, you can now enjoy socially-driven music in your daily routines – coffee-shops, nightclubs, restaurants, etc.
Are you bootstrapping it?
We are fully bootstrapped at the moment, it doesn’t quite make sense to raise funding. We’ll be looking for a seed round when we can make the best use of the capital.
What is your monetization strategy?
We have a two-way monetization strategy. The first is a “freemium” model where venues can use the basic music-selection service for free, but have to pay a small monthly fee to take advantage of our powerful connection and advertising services.
The second strategy is to monetize the music-selection and location data from the users to create projections on trending music preferences. This data could be especially valuable to record-labels and music providers like Muzak.
What is one lesson you’ve learned launching beDJ?
We learned that venue owners are often technophobes. We struggled to get their adoption, and learned that the best approach is to use a “back-door” connection to get their attention. In our case, we’re using DJs to adopt the platform and then advocate for its use in the nightclubs where they perform.
What’s next for beDJ?
We’re expanding in our local Austin market this summer and looking to further prove our model in larger cities during the fall. Afterwards, we’ll look to expand our platform to a white-label customer-engagement solution for major retail brands
Linkage:
Check out BeDJ at their website here
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