TL;DR Kemal, Pal and I launched SendMusic – Check it out… and subscribe to our newsletter.
I was sitting alone in a shed in the back of my mums garden in our small village in rural Norfolk. Salvaged iBook in front of me on the desk. Surrounded by computer parts, bits of old bike and some garden tools. It was a turbulent time. I dropped out of college for this. My main gig at the time – building a website for the local yoga school. So. Many. Dreams. But I was very far from reaching them.
A package arrived franked and stamped Toronto. The bubbled package ripped and a copy of Entrepreneur magazine slid onto the desk. With it were a few hand written words. Thanks Ben. On the cover of the was Mike McDerment – the founder and CEO of FreshBooks. I’d tweeted him a congratulations a few months earlier and he offered to send me a copy. That was the first time I felt connected with the wider startup community.
Chew
Five years and two jobs later I’d move to London, started a new life and with it my first proper company – Chew. With Chew I continued to combine what I cared about – music and technology – to make a platform that levelled the playing field for DJs. Cutting the red rope that keeps some of the most creative musicians and performers out of other big name live streaming channels.
I have a lot to be thankful for from those years. But I’m most thankful for the people I met. One person who supported me the most with advice, introductions and the occasional well needed drink was Kemal.
SendMusic
When Kemal and I caught up earlier this year I was right in the middle of planning my cycle trip round the world. So I was surprised when he asked if I’d like to work with him on his new project – SendMusic. I was delighted.
SendMusic aims to take the core product of the music industry – recorded music – and put grease to the gears. Helping music move smoothly from artist, to label, to distributer and to you. Ultimately the goal of SendMusic is to get more great music out in the world.
Kemal and our co-founder Pal explain the SendMusic concept the best on our the SendMusic blog and as we grow and develop the product you can find out what’s new through our personally crafted newsletter. If you’re a musician, producer, DJ, label or publisher try sending some music yourself. There are many more tools coming for you as we grow.
As I continue my trip around the world I’ll begin to share more on the process of building and securing a product like SendMusic along with sharing my experience on the road. And if you’d like to know more you can hit my new email address ben@send.mu. I’m looking forward to catching up.
