TNB – How do you describe SoundStorming to someone who is unaware?
Arnau – SoundStorming allows any music maker (singers, songwriters, producers, beatmakers…) to use daily musical ideas (audio recordings) like a tweet or a post, to engage with their audience and bring them along their creative process.
TNB – Can you walk us through a flow of events on the platform?
Arnau – How the platform works: Artists click the record button in the app and record their musical idea (a melody, a beat, chord progression…). Then the idea is shared with the artist’s fans and other artists, using a title, a description, or hashtags that categorize the recording (electronic, beat, hip-hop,…) and they can add an image too. Once the idea is published in the community, fans and other artists can interact with the idea (like and comment) and even contribute to it. By clicking the collaborate button other artists and fans can record on top of the idea.
TNB – What have some success stories been?
Arnau – Boon, a 16-year-old musician, and producer, used SoundStorming to collaborate with Atlanta-based rapper Freeco while self-isolating in his Nashville home. The success of their song, “Feelings on the Floor,” helped Boon sign his debut EP to the CloudKid label this spring. He was part of our feature at Forbes.
TNB – How has the app been functioning during Covid?
Arnau – These are really tough times for everyone, especially the Music Industry. But the majority of artists have been struggling even before Covid. Covid has changed artists’ perspectives and minds, in a way that has forced them to be open and try new ways to engage with their audiences. The engagement between artists and fans has grown dramatically and we’ve been exposed to really incredible music-making events and raw performances that we would’ve never imagined. Our platform SoundStorming has been serving artists an outlet to keep them focusing on creating and collaborating and giving them a sense of community.
TNB – What inspired you to tackle this idea?
Arnau – I’d been working in advertising for 15 years, but my true passion has always been music since I got my first guitar at age 7. For the last 4 years, I’ve been working for Apple Music as a Creative Director, and one of the challenges I was facing was to help promote artists that didn’t have any new music. How can we promote them if they don’t have any new music? I learned firsthand how the music industry has shifted into an always-on industry where daily engagement with fans is a MUST. Artists going off-line for months, working on their new songs, is deadly. While Artists spend the majority of their time making music, the fans are left behind wanting something. This inspired us to revolutionize two things by one effort: we can help artists capitalize on the music-making process while keeping fans engaged.
TNB – How has the app been gaining traction, and how do you hope it will continue to do so?
Arnau – We released our alpha product in February 2020. Our official launch event was a 3-day experience at the Gold-Diggers where Grammy and Emmy winning artists where involved. We partnered with music entities and music schools where artists and students submitted original work to SoundStorming for a chance to co-write and co-produce a song with Grammy and Emmy artists. Here you have our launch recap video. Since then we’ve started to get some attention in Forbes, Pitchfork, Reverb, and others… and some upcoming artists are getting attention through the platform. That gave us some organic growth.
TNB – Any funding history?
Arnau – As I mentioned, we’ve been self-funded to this point. Now we are looking to raise our first capital to give us the injection we need to develop the product that will allow us to grow as we envisioned.
About the founder.
Using my phone as a recorder, I’ve been sharing music ideas (short recordings) with the people that I was jamming over the weekend or making music with, across the world. That was the beginning of my obsession to understand the music-making process within any level artists, as well as the type of platforms artists use to engage with their audiences. As a Group Creative Director, I’ve been leading the most significant and most iconic global campaigns for Apple. All of them with Music on its core. From the launch of the Apple Music platform to AirPods to HomePod’s Launch Film, I have a deep understanding of how to create emotional content through Music. One of my latest works is considered one of the most culturally relevant pieces of communication for Apple in the last decade.
