A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya is a startup from a former Spotify leader for making music apps
TechCrunch Ivan Mehta ● Covered by 2 sources
A former Spotify exec just raised $5.5 million for a music-app startup. A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya wants people to play with songs, not just stream them.
Based on reporting by TechCrunch, Ivan Mehta — read the original for the full story.
Summary, retelling and take written by AI under human oversight; images are AI-generated illustrations. How we work · Report an error
A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya sounds like a band, but it’s a startup from former Spotify innovation chief Máuhan M Zonoozy, and it has just closed a $5.5 million pre-seed round. The backers include Mantis VC, SV Angel, Boxgroup, Quiet Capital, Remarkable Ventures, Common Metal, Gold House, Liquid 2 Ventures, Breakers VC, Collaborative Fund, Systemic Ventures, and former Spotify chief content and advertising business officer Dawn Ostroff, who is advising the company.
Zonoozy left Spotify in 2024 and says he wanted to build his own company again. His thesis is pretty simple: streaming solved access, but it didn’t change the basic shape of how most people interact with music. They still mostly consume it. He thinks there’s room for something more hands-on, especially for younger users who are used to playing with culture through games, filters, and creation tools.
So the company is shipping small experiments instead of one giant product. Speed Surfer is a Chrome extension that changes the speed and filter of sound in your browser. Usersound lets people make an “audio” username, with each letter mapped to a note. Stacks is a stem player built around a 3×3 grid. Drops turns marble deflection into notes. Sampler converts YouTube videos into music samplers based on beats from different parts of the songs. The pitch is less “AI will make your song” and more “here’s a new way to mess with sound.”
The bigger bet is bop, an iOS app where users place instruments and effects on a grid to build mixes from a base song. You can change tempo, add one-time effects, and export the result to TikTok or Instagram. The company is also building a multiplayer version for remixing with other people, and it recently added prompt-based sound creation. Even then, Zonoozy says AI won’t be shoved into every corner of the product. This year, the company plans to release a “musical sandbox mixer” that would let users play with more elements, including creating instruments.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the sane version of music and AI: tools first, hype second. Not everything needs to be a prompt box with a synth slapped on top, and the fact that A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya is leaning into play and participation feels like a decent antidote to the usual “generate a hit in one click” nonsense. Music apps have spent years acting like listeners are passive. That’s a very old idea, and a boring one.
Read more about this at: TechCrunch
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