Imagine a world where you can record, create, and share a ten second video montage with a soundtrack with a few taps on your phone. This is now possible with the latest music app, Playy, which hit Apple’s App Store on December 17, 2015.
Founded by Marc Milberg, CEO, Stoyan Vasilev, CTO, and Grant Pittman, Director of Community, Playy places the creative role in the hands of its users allowing them to create music videos on their phones.
The concept is simple, fun and rather genius: a mobile app which allows music fans to record and synchronize a 10-second video with a music library of up-and-coming artists and producers – much like a combination between SoundCloud and Vine. Like SoundCloud, anyone can create an account and upload their own music to the Playy platform. Playy’s web interface allows all artists/ musicians/ producers/ rights holders to manage their music collection and see how many videos have been made with each track. Once a user makes a music video, other Playy users can comment, like, or repost it. Videos can also be shared to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Like many other apps, Playy includes a search function which users can use to easily search the latest video uploads by entering the names of specific artists or tracks. They can also browse featured tracks, curated by Playy’s editorial team. Playy launched with 1,700 tracks from labels such as Simplify Recordings, Build It Records, Desert Hearts Records, Popgang Records, Le Castle Vania, Music is 4 Lovers, Kairos Audio, Cut Snake, Stephan Jacobs, Fyer, Patrick Baker, Air Zaire, Basement Love, among others.
We had a quick word with the creators.
How did you all meet and how did the concept come about:
Grant and I both attended the NYU Music Business program. Stoyan runs a small digital agency, J28, and NYU is one of their clients. So the common thread is NYU, music, and business. All 3 of us have a background in music and are very passionate about changing the music industry landscape. The idea came to us earlier in 2014 and everyone on the team was really into it, including the lead engineers, and designers (who Stoyan brought). So we got to work almost right away.
How do you intend to stop people from uploading music they don’t own the rights to? Do you foresee this as being an issue:
That’s a great question. We do not endorse or condone copyright infringement. In fact, our entire point is that you can use music/sound which artists are offering directly and specifically for this purpose — there are other apps where you can make videos with top 40 tracks. When a user signs up for an account with Playy they confirm that they agree to our Terms of Service, which state very clearly that users are only allowed to upload content which they own the rights to. It is impossible to monitor every upload, so instead of doing that we have implemented reporting mechanisms for taking down content based on infringement according to DMCA’s regulations.
Is Playy a free app or will you include advertisements?
Playy is free to download on the App Store. There are no advertisements anywhere in the app or our web portal. It is possible that in the future we will explore different types of advertisements as potential revenue streams, but that’s not our focus at the moment. Our first priority is building a product which people love and a community that really cares about what we are doing.
Are you looking to partner with any other companies, if so who and why?
Yes. We are very interested in partnering with other companies. These could be: within the music & tech industries, lifestyle, fashion, basically anything that we consider current and/or relevant to what we are doing. Ultimately Playy is a stage for both content and concepts (including brands and social movements) to shine. We are open to working with anyone who has something meaningful to express.
Which other artists and labels are you hoping to work with:
Any artist and/or label who would benefit from an innovative stage (to showcase their talent). We are very passionate about getting the artists themselves on the platform. At the same time, we’ve already found out that labels are more readily receptive to the idea — they see the value in terms of promotion, reach, and virality. Our goal is to cover the entire spectrum of creators: from bedroom producers to top artists who seize the opportunity to engage with their audiences in the most innovative ways possible.
Do you see Playy as an opportunity to create a new source of income for songwriters and artists who provide their music (If not now, what about in the future?)
Definitely. It will require a lot of hard work on our behalf to grow to that point. But that’s one of our main goals: to improve artist’s lives via discovery, growth, and monetization of their talent.
Which genres of music do you expect to be most popular:
In the beginning definitely electronic music. However thinking of music in terms of genres is somewhat of a “pre-internet” (or at least “pre-SoundCloud”) mentality. The question is more “what tracks do we think will amass great numbers of likes, shares, and possibly help discover the next big artist?” We don’t really know the answer to that, but we can’t wait to find out.
This app is definitely one to watch and we are keen to find out how it will fare in the app market. We would definitely recommend downloading it for yourself and checking it out.
