
1. There are a lot of music sites out there, why was soundsearch created?
Before soundsearch, we set-up a new music discovery blog. As a result, we were constantly looking for new and unsigned music to feature on the site. The process of finding suitable artists can be a long, lonely, and often unrewarding experience, believe us! Last.fm is good for discovery, but it only recommends you bands of equal size to that which you’re listening. For example, if you’re a fan of Adele, it suggests you listen to Duffy, Jessie J, and Amy Winehouse (to name but a few), most of which you’ll probably already be listening to. Soundcloud is also great to use and has fantastic embeddable widgets for blogs, but is mainly based around genre search which doesn’t really narrow anything down. Spotify and other streaming services attempt to recommend new music, but their artists come from major labels and distribution services such as Ditto Music, as as a listener you never truly discover new and unsigned music. The very fact there are a large number of sites out there can be intimidating to users and fragments an artist’s audience, as well as putting off those looking to discover new and unsigned music.
We founded soundsearch with the aim of facilitating the discovery and creation of new and unsigned music, giving users an effective discovery tool and artists the opportunity to get their sound heard, as well as collaborate with one another. soundsearch allows you to discover new and unsigned music based on your tastes, after all, music is personal.
The prototype offers users the chance to discover new and unsigned artists based on their current music tastes, with tailored recommendations delivered direct to their inbox. Signing up to this unique new service will introduce you to a new and unsigned artists, together with access to the site’s additional editorial content such as the collection of “discovered” artists.

2. Who is behind the site?
We (Jack and Rich) met at University and immediately found that we shared the same passion for entrepreneurialism and both had an overwhelming desire to create something from scratch. We’ve been trying different business ideas ever since we met, from organizing city-wide student music festivals, through to creating concoctions of wheatgress, milk thistle and crushed up B12 pills in our attempt to try and make a hangover cure!
When we’re not pouring our souls into our laptops working on soundsearch, Rich works as a chartered surveyor at an engineering consultancy and Jack is a Product Manager at Universal Music. We’d say that we both bring different attributes to our partnership which somehow seem to complement each other. If we think about it, we still find it a bit strange that a lad who grew up on a sheep farm and an aspiring south London DJ get along so well. I guess sharing our passion for music and what that brings to people keeps up pretty close.
3. Can you describe the styles of music you feature?
The very nature of our service means we aren’t biased to any particular genre or style of music. Our goal is to have soundsearch become the destination for all types of bands, musicians, singers, producers, and DJs to upload their sounds and let the site drive the discovery process. As it stands, the music we’ve featured is anything and everything that is exciting to us, from summer dance vibes from the incredible Toyboy & Robin, to a French instrumental post-hardcore artist called Man Is Not A Bird, and more recently the delicate acoustic sounds of singer-songwriter Kimberly Anne.

4. You have a brand new site that just launched on Friday, what is it all about?
We have huge ambitions for soundsearch and really believe that it can bring something to the market which could change the music industry forever. Our business plan is made up of a number of assumptions, things which we think music listeners want, and the site before was a prototype to test as many of those assumptions as we could with what little money we had. We’ve been working relentlessly to get our idea out there, hitting the streets of London signing people up, chatting with crowds at festivals to see what people think, and the feedback is encouraging, so we progressed with the new version based on what we heard. We have been lucky to find Myles (our developer) who also has an incredible passion for music, which has driven him on to put the hours in coding. The site works as a portal to find new and unsigned music based on the artists you love, and we don’t see that changing any time soon. The new site will also include our “discovered” artist library, and something new which you are going to have to check out for yourself!
We are constantly looking for music fans and dynamic individuals to join us on our quest for the discovery of new and unsigned artists. Whether you’re a musician, web developer, talented writer, or if music is your life, we want to hear from you!