Tag: Voisey
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Snap acquires music-focused short-video app Voisey

Avatar photo by Stuart Dredge

Snapchat’s music ambitions just took another significant step forward, with parent company Snap seemingly having acquired startup Voisey, whose app is used to create and share original music videos.

We say ‘seemingly’ because neither company has yet commented, but the news – broken by Business Insider then followed up by TechCrunch – isn’t in doubt. Voisey’s four co-founders resigned as directors last month, replaced by two Snap executives, and the company’s official address is now Snap’s London office.

The news comes just three months after Snap announced music licensing deals with Warner Music Group, Warner Chappell, Universal Music Publishing, Merlin and a number of members of US publishing body the NMPA, and started testing a new feature letting people add music to their Snapchat posts.

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Voisey star Olivia Knight (aka poutyface) signs major deals

Avatar photo by Stuart Dredge

When we profiled social music app Voisey early this year, its co-founder Olly Barnes talked about its ambitions to discover new talent.

“We have users in remote parts of the world, who have never made a song before, and have low self-confidence, but Voisey allows them to make the step to songwriting,” as he put it, about an app that helps singers to find music loops created by producers, to sing over.

Now one of the first people to go viral on Voisey during its 2019 beta test has signed a pair of major deals. Olivia Knight (aka ‘poutyface’) has a label deal with Island Records and a publishing deal with Warner/Chappell, having also worked with Apple’s artist development subsidiary Platoon.

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Music Ally Startup Files: Voisey is the TikTok for music creation

Joe Sparrow by Joe Sparrow

If co-founder Olly Barnes’ infectious optimism is correct, Voisey is a phenomenon-in-waiting. It’s an app that has the potential to shake up how songs are made; tap into hitherto locked-away artistic talent; develop a new breed of pop star and pop songs; and maybe even bypass the traditional label system.

Sounds too good to be true? Barnes suggests that it’s already happening. In an alternate music-biz timeline, Voisey might be the “missing” social media platform: combining early SoundCloud’s zealous userbase, early Hype Machine’s excitement of discovery; Snapchat’s intimacy; and TikTok’s front-facing camera appeal.

Barnes currently divides his time between Voisey and mobile games firm Space Ape, having previously held influential roles at Universal Music and Rdio. He also founded GoMix, an early collaborative music platform.

His pitch is certainly bullish: that Voisey could be a one-stop shop that will help people graduate from TikTok lip-sync wannabes to bona-fide songwriter/performers earning royalties.

“It’s not an application, it’s a movement. People are writing little loops, and users are jumping on them! Voisey may have huge implications for the music industry at large…”