Thanks to a very successful crowdfunding campaign last month, music e-learning platform Chordify will be able to enter a new phase of accelerated growth in the coming year and launch new products that will make its platform more social and mobile. The company plans to expand its team to quickly roll out a new Android app next to the existing iOS and web apps, add new features such as song lyrics and new ways for users to interact, as well as further developing the third-party player for musicians and other music platforms.
Accelerated growth is important, according to CEO and co-founder Bas de Haas: “Even for music platforms, it’s about the principle of winner takes all. So for Chordify it’s necessary to grow fast and become the biggest player in the market.”
In December 2016, Chordify launched a crowdfunding campaign on Symbid to help finance their plans for accelerated growth, and received €230,280 in total, well exceeding the original goal amount of €180,000.
Because of the support of more than 200 investors, Chordify is now able to enter a new growth phase and pick up the pace in 2017. The music platform released the iOS app late last year and plans to bring more of the premium features of the web app to iPhone and iPad, such as transposing chords, capo hints, slowdown, and MIDI downloads.
Besides the iOS and web app, Chordify will also develop an Android app this year. Additional new features for all three platforms will include an offline mode and automatically adding song lyrics to the music player.
“Music is something you make together, with friends or your music teacher”, Bas de Haas explains. “This is why Chordify wants to make the platform as social as possible, with an emphasis on encouraging interaction between users, like sharing your progress and taste in music with other users on the platform.”
Users will soon be able to follow friends and other people with the same taste in music, create and share their own setlists of favorite songs, and get the option to easily find and connect with other users to start their own band.
With the further development of the Chordify embedded music player, third parties will be able to use and integrate the Chordify experience into their own website. “We think fans who play your songs are really the biggest fans you could have. And with the rise of Spotify and other streaming music services, the question of how to connect with and engage your fan base in this digital age is also becoming more important.”
“We want to give musicians, teachers, festivals, and other platforms the opportunity to reach out to fans, students, and followers in a new and easy way, using the intuitive Chordify player. A great example is the band Orange Skyline, who’ve added our player to their website, so fans can immediately play along with their songs.”
About Chordify
[Dutch version below]
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Chordify is an online music service, made for and by music enthusiasts, that transforms music from YouTube, Deezer, SoundCloud, or your private collection into chords. The service automatically recognizes chords from the audio signal, and aligns them to the music in a simple and intuitive player for guitar, piano, and ukulele.
The Chordify web app has been up and running since January 2013. Since then, the company has grown steadily and organically, in total welcoming over 300 million unique visitors to the platform. To date, 25 million songs have been chordified by users and over 6.4 million people have registered to the service.
Over the course of its existence Chordify received a lot of international acclaim, winning the Dutch Pitch Session at the Northside Festival in New York in 2014 and the San Francisco MusicTech Summit Startup competition in 2015. They were also selected to pitch during The Next Web Conference in New York and were showcased during the SXSW Festival in Austin, TX.
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Chordify is een online muziekservice, die muziek van YouTube, Deezer, SoundCloud of jouw privé collectie omzet in akkoorden. De service herkent de akkoorden uit de muziek automatisch en zet ze op muziek in een simpele en intuïtieve muziekspeler.
De Chordify WebApp is al sinds januari 2013 online. Sindsdien is het bedrijf gestaag en organisch gegroeid, en heeft het meer dan 300 miljoen unieke bezoekers mogen verwelkomen. Tot op de dag van vandaag zijn er al 25 miljoen liedjes gechordified door de gebruikers en hebben zich meer dan 6.4 miljoen mensen geregistreerd bij de service.
In de jaren dat Chordify bestaat heeft het bedrijf veel internationale waardering gekregen, wat resulteerde in het winnen van de Dutch Pitch Session bij het Northside Festival in New York in 2014 en de San Francisco MusicTech Summit Startup competitie in 2015. Chordify was ook geselecteerd om te pitchen tijdens de Next Web Conference in New York en presenteerde zichzelf tijdens de SXSW Festival in Austin, TX.