There’s another once-promising music startup heading for the deadpool, and this one’s a shame, because when it first emerged, Cymbal was one of our favourite music-discovery apps.
The app was a way to search for songs and see what ‘likeminded’ people were listening to, but like its closest equivalent Soundwave (later bought by Spotify in an ‘acquihire’ for its team) it didn’t quite manage to find a mass-audience or successful business model.
“Cymbal is shutting down on June 1st, 2018,” explained an email to users yesterday. “To the hundreds of thousands of you that gave this project a chance, thank you for everything. We hope more tools come after Cymbal that succeed in the ways we didn’t.”
“We believe there is a lot to be done and not enough people doing it. Yes, music technology is a tough nut to crack. The licensing issues are enough to intimidate developers into giving up. But please don’t be intimidated! Music is too important, and one of the best ways we can support the artists we love is by creating tools that help them succeed. To this day we believe that somewhere in Cymbal’s app is a really beautiful product the world needs. We encourage you to find it.”
Users will be able to export their profile (and thus the songs they discovered) to Spotify and SoundCloud, in Cymbal’s final months.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…
They shut down because the guys running it had no experience AT ALL and they failed to recruit any industry advisors or people that would dive in an get their hands dirty. They had no industry relations, they had no social media savvy, their app had a horrible UX (‘pick 5 genres or go no further’). I could go on.