Was a pleasure to join @niccjohnson on the panel at Australian Music Tech Summit a few nights ago. Muru seems really cool and I'm excited to finally try it out.
@niccjohnson can you elaborate more about how Muru is unique compared to some of the others?
@dannyfiorentini it was a pleasure to meet you too. Muzeek looks amazing so I look forward to digging into that a little deeper too.
Muru is the easiest tool to create personalised playlists within seconds. Muru works on top of streaming services like Spotify, but you will need a premium subscription.
With Muru, we wanted to give people more control over their own music experience but in an easy enough way that someone that knows zero about music, can create great playlists in the same way professional DJS prepare sets.
When a DJ prepares for a set, they have a very good idea what type of music they want to start with and they have an idea what song they want to end their set with. The middle bit depends on the feedback they get from the audience.
Using those same principles we created a UI that is easy to understand but that is hooked up to an algorithm that finds songs that fit perfectly together and that can adapt to you.
Muru has 4 sliders: Tempo, Energy, Popular and Era - which allow you to adjust your journey so that the music suits your vibe.
So wether you are at home relaxing, going for a run, hanging out with friends or trying to study - You are in control over what songs of the Spotify catalogue get played.
Consider Muru the perfect mixtape 2.0 with Discover Weekly, Now trending and Pandora all rolled into one.
@dannyfiorentini yeah - quite simply we are not allowed. It is due to licensing restrictions that Spotify have with the labels. On the bright side, we never play adds in Muru, so its 100% music all the time.
We will also be rolling out a paid stand alone version of Muru in the US at a much lower price point than existing streaming services - giving a user the choice to use our app for free if they already pay for Spotify or signing up directly to our lower cost subscription service.
Pandora already does a pretty good job of creating a playlist you'll love, imho. Is Muru Music just better or how would you so it compares to other music discovery services in the market, @niccjohnson? What I'm really curious to know is where you'd put it in a market matrix but that's a lot to ask. 😊
@rrhoover thats a good question and I would agree with you that Pandora does a great job, but it does have its limitations.
See below - but in a nutshell it sits in the sweet spot between lean back (Pandora) and on demand (Spotify)
A Pandora station (or Apple, Spotify and others) is "single seed" which means you pick a starting genre/artist and based on that it will create a station with a set of songs.(playlist). After a while you will notice a similar pattern of songs and will hear repeat songs in that same station.
Muru has a multi seed algorithm, and the user selects a start and end for their journey (playlist). This comes back to the DJ principles and actually allows for a more diverse path but also allows us to progress through genres. Every song that is selected in that journey, fits perfectly with the previous and the next and all the songs are connected as a whole (like when a DJ selects their tracks for a set).
So in Muru you can say " I would like to start with Blues and end with Deep House and have a set of 2 hours". Within seconds Muru starts playing music and your journey will natural progress from Blues through connected genres till it reaches Deep House. On top of that you can modify your journey through a series of sliders - Tempo, Energy, Popular and Era. Simple adjust the slider to suit your needs and the music will automagical update in real time. - It's like you would have the DJ in your room playing your favourite music and you being able to tell the DJ " Hey, can you actually bring it down a bit and play something more mellow" "Dj, pick up the pace, im about to head into a food coma, so I need some uptempo beats to snap me out of it"
When selecting your Pandora station the next day - you will get the same set of songs (repeatability is an issue due to their relatively small catalogue) with Muru you can create a preset of your favourite journey and every time you hit play it will follow the same path (Tempo, Energy etc.) but find new music you will love - this is our very own "discover weekly" feature that is ingrained into our recommendation engine.
Lastly - Muru has its own genre assignment system -which means you can throw 30Million songs into our system and it will assign them to our own genre map. That is pretty cool in my humble opinion and it allows for some pretty crazy stuff in the future.
In a nutshell it sits between the Pandora lean back and Spotify On Demand experiences. It is designed to be just as powerful for an audiophile like myself and for a first time user that knows nothing about music.
All I can ask for, is that you give it a go and let me know Ryan :)
@niccjohnson@rrhoover This is intriguing. The multi-seed algorithm is an interesting play, and something that could possibly carve out a little bit of a different niche than the other big players have at the moment, depending on how you all evolve it.
What I'm most curious about though is your content acquisition and retention. Because licensing deals between the big players (Spotify, Apple, etc.) and the major labels are always in flux, building on top of those API's can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's a faster implementation. On the other hand, however, if they change the access point to their API, or if licensing deals fall through/stagnate, it can drastically affect services which sit on top.
Thus, consistent access to material can be challenging, and I'm curious how you all think about that long-term. Cool hunt!
@adammarx13@rrhoover Very good point Adam and definitely something we had to think about carefully from day one. One choice was to focus on a service that sits on top of streaming platforms, rather than getting into music licensing etc.
Streaming is here to stay but it needs a lot more premium subscribers in order for any of these businesses to be around for the long term. This is where I think we can add significant value.
We want to partner with these services and through our app help them convert free users to premium subscribers.
Apart from that we will have an autonomous ecosystem in the long term - with a particular focus on people who have not converted to streaming yet, but see the $9,99 a month and the complexity of some services as a major hurdle.
We will also be partnering up with hardware manufacturers to offer the Muru experience across a range of music services and content providers.
With Muru we want to focus more on the user experience than anything else and ensure that you as a music listener get the best music, best recommendation and above all, the most flexibility when discovering new music.
Hope this answers your question, but happy to chat more about this @adammarx13
Hi Guys and Girls, we are very excited to share Muru with you and walk you through any questions you have
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I've seen Muru develop from earlier days, and given my background in music and technology, I can say that I've not seen an algorithm and surrounding product make as much of an impact in the way that I listen to music as Muru has. The way it selects tracks that I've not heard before, is like having a programmatic version of Spotify's Discover Weekly that I can control.
However the most interesting part of this is that I've installed Muru on my 10 year old son's iPad, and this experience speaks volumes. He loves the app, has had a lot of fun experimenting and creating playlists that morph across different genres, and it's opened his ears to music that he's never thought of enjoying before (like some jazz and older music with the "era" slider).
@justin_baird it is really great to hear about your son's experience with Muru.
It was always my hope that this could be a tool for people to be encouraged to explore new music and the fact that your son is experimenting with "era" and Jazz is amazing!
We are looking for Beta Testers for our latest update before we go live on the Appstore. If you are interested in being a part of the test group and don't mind answering a few questions, please drop me an email nicc@murumusic.com. Many thanks
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@niccjohnson Very interesting and congrats! Given the Muru algorithm, what world you recommend independent artists to do to prepare their releases for AI based categorization engines like Muru?
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