Helsinki Startup: Playmysong The Social, Mobile & Physical Jukebox

Playmysong, Helsinki startup,startup,startups,startup interviewLast May we brought you the story about Austin startup BeDj that brings turntable.fm into real life. When bars and restaurants use the platform you can control the audio in the establishment with your smartphone, in essence bringing being the dj from turntable.fm into a brick and mortar establishment.

We love innovative startups that bridge clicks and mortar. A Helskink startup is doing something similar. The startup, called Playmysong. Playmysong is the mobile, social jukebox. Basically in restaurants equipped with a Playmysong enabled jukebox, give up control of the jukebox from the traditional person with quarters to fill it up all night, to those with smartphones.

Playmysong has two main functionality partners in Spotify and Winamp. A user can create their own social jukebox for their own party, powered by Spotify. The in venue mechanism is powered by Winamp.

We got a chance to talk with the team behind Playmysong. Check out the interview below.

What is Playmysong?

Playmysong has reinvented the jukebox for the smartphone era. It’s a free app and web service that allows users to both play songs from social jukeboxes in parties and venues and to host their own social jukebox experiences in their own parties and venues.

In layman’s terms, how does it work?

Playmysong turns your smartphone into a remote control for music in Playmysong powered parties, events, bars and coffee shops. You simply launch our app, see all active jukeboxes nearby, choose the one you are listening to and start playing the songs you’d like to hear from the jukebox’s song catalogue. With the very same app you can also launch your own social jukebox in your own party or venue. It only takes a few seconds. You can also launch your social jukebox with a computer in your house-party with our Spotify app and in you venue with our Winamp app.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Rami Korhonen, 14 years of experience from mobile tech startups Small Planet and Iwa Labs. Skills include executive management, fund-raising, product concept development and business development. Rami also sings in the punk rock band Fumble http://www.fumblerock.com.

Timo Kari, 8 years of experience from mobile tech companies and startups Aspiro Mobile Entertainment and Loistava Interactive. Skills include software development, project management and business development. While not developing kick-ass mobile apps, Timo plays guitar in the indie-rock-pop band 70vierailijaa: http://www.70vierailijaa.com.

Where are you based?

Our HQ is in Helsinki, but we also have presence in New York and San Francisco.

What’s the startup scene/culture like where you’re based?

The startup culture in Helsinki has developed enormously in the last years around Aalto University’s Startup Sauna movement. It’s great to see so many young people choosing to build their own companies instead of going to work in big companies. There is also a nice community spirit of entrepreneurs helping each other out. And needless to say, the San Francisco and New York startup scenes are of course thriving as usual.

How did you come up with the idea for Playmysong?

8 years ago Timo was out with friends in a student party. A song Timo didn’t like came on and everyone but him went dancing to it. He thought that “I have a much better song playing in my head than the one currently being played here. Why can’t I play the better song right here right now with my phone?”. Timo did some SMS and WAP prototypes over the years on his spare time. Then co-founders Timo and Rami met in 2010 and saw that there is an even bigger opportunity around the original mobile jukebox concept: Playmysong could actually build a new kind of location based music social networking service around the original concept. The wheels were set in motion.

How did you come up with the name?

Timo invented the name when he started to build prototypes after the idea first came into his mind.

What problem does Playmysong solve?

We all love music, but often we end up in situations where the music could be much better. Playmysong gives us the chance to see what music is available in the music collections of the bars and parties we are visiting, and to select the songs we’d like to hear there right now for free.

Music can make or break a house-party and the party host’s music computer or ipod is often the centre of attention for music loving party guests. But should the party really be about hunkering around a PC to queue up songs? We think not. With the Playmysong Spotify app party guests can use their own mobile phones to select songs to be played and the host can set up limits on how often one guest can play a song and how often one song can be played. This makes it fun for everyone and less beer is spilled on computers.

Also, the competition between bars and cafes is tough. Playmysong’s interactive music experience gives venues the chance to serve their customers better than their competitors. When customers can influence the music around them, they will stay longer, buy more and tell their friends via Playmysong’s in-built social features: “I just played Green Day at Idle Hands Bar.”

What’s your secret sauce?

Our “jukebox meets location meets social networking” approach sets us apart from most of our competitors just trying to make jukeboxes usable with smartphones. We are on a mission to get rid of random music from planet earth and the mobile jukebox experience is just one piece of the puzzle. Our upcoming social features will grow our community even faster and in the future we will be the standard in being able to influence the music around you.

What’s one dilemma you’ve encountered in the startup process?

Maintaining focus on doing the right things at the right times.

What’s one challenge you’ve overcome in the startup process?

We started up doing too many things simultaneously with a very small team: iOS app, web app, Android app, Windows Phone app. Winamp and Spotify app. This lead to a situation where it was hard for us to bring the absolute best user experience out on any of these platforms. In the summer we decided to simplify our website playmysong.com to a pure landing page and to focus developing the best experiences on Spotify platform and our mobile app. Some of that stuff is already out, but the really big updates will be released soon. We are already seen the positive impact of this focus in our user-base growth numbers.

Who are some of your mentors and business role models?

Petteri Koponen from Lifeline Ventures, our seed investor, has been giving extremely valuable advice for us. Aside from providing us with fantastic product feedback, has also great experience in taking Finnish startups international. Sean McCullough, the co-founder of LaunchRock, is also our advisor and he has been given us some great insight on our product and how the SF tech scene works. Gian-Luca Cioletti, who has great experience from building relationships between startups and corporations from his career at HP and Nokia, is also one of our valuable advisors.

What’s next for Playmysong?

During the summer we have been building Playmysong 2.0, which is the result of the great feedback we have received from our end-users and venue customers. We are now rolling out Playmysong 2.0 and our apps can be found from the iTunes App Store and Spotify App Finder.

Linkage:

Check out Playmysong here

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