How We’re Revolutionizing The Music Industry
From 3 believers — Matej, Vasja, and Umek to a 50 person team, everybody breathing the same vision — to revolutionize the music industry.
It all happened so fast, but one thing is clear — for Viberate, the year 2018 was a success. We worked with the most influential organizations in the music industry, signed 4 partnership deals with the biggest ticket providers in the world, and created two completely unique apps that are already on the market. We tripled our database, doubled our team, and inspired a number of amazing artists to join our mission. By the end of the year, we got an invitation to partner up with the biggest electronic conference in the US — Viberate became the main data source for selecting the nominees of this year’s IDMAs. Even the big guns from the tech industry did not miss all the buzz around our story and we got invited to TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco this autumn.
Viberate’s highlights of 2018
It seems hard to believe now, but a few years ago, when we first started sharing the idea of pushing the music industry to another level with data solutions, people thought something like that was impossible, some even thought we were nuts. But we knew we were onto something when more and more industry leaders came to us to talk about the same pain we had — not enough data to understand what is happening on the scene. They knew something was missing and they were eager to find the solution that would help them make better decisions and predict future trends in the music sphere.
So we talked about the possible solutions and their execution. We found the best people in the field and inspired them with our vision. Now 50 of us are waking up every morning with one goal — to revolutionize the music industry.
Viberate is poised to become the place where every decision in live music is made. We are not just talking about music discovery, we are talking about data insights, business solutions and establishing a standardization in the industry for the first time in the history of music.
Viberate team wants to revolutionize the music industry
In the right spot at the right time
At the beginning of 2018 (feels like decades ago), our hands were full. We just got back from one of the most important business congresses in the world — World Economic Forum in Davos, where our COO Vasja Veber had a great talk about the future of blockchain in the music business. Later on, we even met with American hitmaker and philanthropist Akon. Not long after, we got approached by another music celebrity Imogen Heap. The Grammy-winning artist was so inspired by the idea of changing the music industry that she joined our team as an Advisor and Ambassador.
Meanwhile, our product and development team were working day and night to release the brand new look and amazing new features on Viberate.com. Even though our hands were full, we managed to increase the number of exchanges that our token VIB is listed on — we are now on an enviable 17. By the way, most of the other tokens only reach 3 exchanges.
By the end of March, big players from the industry started calling us for meetings, so we picked the biggest one, the one and only — Ticketmaster. It was not long after the meeting that we signed a partnership agreement. After that, our talks with other ticket providers caught fire. A few weeks later we closed a deal with Skiddle, Eventbrite and Europe’s biggest ticket provider Eventim.
In 2018 we tripled our database, doubled the team, signed 4 partnership deals and developed 2 unique apps
We tripled our database in less than a year and here’s how
At the same time, our database was expanding like crazy, more and more contributors from around the world heard about our mission and wanted to join!
Viberate became the biggest music network in the world, analyzing billions of data points daily. Viberate’s massive database now features rich profiles of over 400.000 artists, 100.000 venues and more than 500.000 events at any given time.
With an in-depth look into the statistics, our platform acts as a standard source that gives music professionals a chance to discover real insights and predict future trends. But more about trend prediction later…
That time when The Chainsmokers became a part of our story
The topic was hot, so hot in fact, that even the biggest stars on the international scene wanted to become a part of our story. In April 2018 the hottest electronic duo in the world The Chainsmokers claimed their profile. They joined thousands of other artists who already realized the opportunity of being a part of Viberate’s story. Robbie Williams, RedFoo, Noisia, Showtek, Richie Hawtin and San Holo, are just some of many already utilizing our services.
Thousands of artists joined our mission
On the other hand, the blockchain side of the business blossomed too. We joined forces with some of the most influential companies from the blockchain sphere and launched Blockchain Alliance CEE. A month later we organized the first ever European Blockchain Summit with amazing keynote speakers and panelists. One of them was none other than Joseph Lubin — Ethereum co-founder. We were lucky enough to host him in our offices afterward, talking about future opportunities that the blockchain is bringing to the table.
This is what the market is craving for
We set another goal — to create the ultimate nightlife guide. We locked ourselves in the office and researched the market and its needs. We created a series of prototypes of Tonight app, that our beta users tested internally and externally. Thanks, guys, you were awesome! We then did a field test in the biggest party getaways, Berlin, Amsterdam, and London. We wanted to show them what we created, collect their feedback and learn from it. We would do that again if we had to.
We will not deny, there were many opportunities to take things beyond the initial scope of the project, providing a solution for finding the best-hidden spots in the city, getting the best offers and even creating a platform for secrets events — some of those were really tempting. But to keep app development on a schedule, we had to remain focused on what users would value the most and from what we heard many times, was an app for event discovery that matched their music taste.
We were searching around, playing internet detectives, checking on every app store, investigating researches in many languages and in the end we could not believe our eyes. There was nothing like it on the market. Until now.
Tonight app is the only event discovery app in the world that matches the user’s taste.
The story behind Tonight app
After months of development, we decided to choose one of the most demanding markets in the world to test it — Slovenia. But what happened once we released the app blew our minds. The big players on the market saw the possibility of expanding the reach of their events and joined our mission, artists grabbed the opportunity to expose their newest work to new fans that already like similar music. Fans got something they have been craving for years. It wasn’t even two full days after the release of the campaign when Tonight app took number 1 spot on the App Store and Google Play. With thousands of users searching daily for new events that match their taste, this is one of the most successful event discovery apps on the market. Ever!
While working on research for the Tonight app, a part of our team discovered huge pains in the festival industry segment. The need for a clear and useful app for every festival was enormous, but the current solutions were way too expensive. After months of development, they created a solution called Mainstage app, which will help bring every festival a unique branded app with a complete festival lineup and an option of creating a personalized schedule of favorite artists. Besides that, fans will benefit from a full festival map, integrated chat, special offers, and most importantly, it will help organizers in sharing important and vital information with their festival fans. The Mainstage crew already signed a partnership agreement with several important festivals.
Another milestone: Published by Mixmag
Just in time for the summer, our data science team started focusing on festival insights. They dug their heads deep into artist numbers, their popularity, and growth, analyzing every little detail of festivals like Tomorrowland, Ultra Miami, EDC Las Vegas, Awakenings, Exit, and Fuji Rock. Not long after publishing the first festival insights edition, one of the most respected electronic music magazines — Mixmag included our extensive analysis of Tomorrowland, EDC, and Ultra Miami in their October edition which was released at the biggest electronic conference in the world — Amsterdam Dance Event.
How we partnered with Ultra Miami
Just when we thought things are going to slow down a bit, we got another crazy phone call. This time from the US. Guys from Ultra Miami, who also organize the most important electronic music conference in the North America — Winter Music Conference, wanted to partner with us for their International Dance Music Awards. Our metrics provided 5 female and 5 male nominees for 8 different genres: Pop/Electronic, Techno, House, Bass, Trance, Drum n’ Bass, Downtempo and Hardstyle. What we’re trying to say here is: This year IDMA’s will be powered by Viberate! We could not be prouder of what we have built together with US #1 electronic music awards.
But that’s not all. Our COO Vasja Veber will reveal all the predictions for the electronic music in the exclusive panel about Data Solution and talk about the future of decentralized transactions with Charlie Shrem on the Crypto & Blockchain panel at this year’s Winter Music Conference in Miami.
Big things on the radar for 2019
Meanwhile across the pond in San Fran… The biggest tech-savvy enthusiasts at TechCrunch noticed that something is buzzing about us, so they invited us to share our solutions with the amazing minds of Silicon Valley in September at their biggest annual event Disrupt.
At the moment, we are getting everything ready for MWC Barcelona, where we will talk with the biggest Telecom providers in the world on how to connect with the youngest generation — Tonight duh! During the year you can spot us talking business and dancing at IMS Ibiza, ADE and Burning Man. Our CEO Matej Gregorčič and COO Vasja Veber are also looking forward to joining other tech experts on Webit in Sofia in September.
We know, it’s a long read, but that’s just a glimpse of what’s happening right now. Our product development team is on a mission to bring one-of-a-kind solutions to music industry leaders, artists, and fans. Our new platform will be the most powerful tool on the market for artists and for music industry leaders. There will be nothing like it. We are already testing some of the features with international artists and their management teams and the feedback is amazing — just wait, you’ll soon be able to see it for yourself.
At the moment of you reading this article, there are 50 team members with their sleeves rolled up, working on the next batch of solutions that will bring the music business to another level.
Until next time,
Viberate Team
