A new venture called A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya is challenging the current wave of generative AI music tools by offering a suite of interactive applications that require no AI prompting. The company, which recently secured a $5.5 million pre-seed funding round, aims to shift the focus back to active human engagement with sound.
Investors in the round include Mantis VC, SV Angel, Boxgroup, Quiet Capital, ERA, Common Metal, Gold House, Liquid 2 Ventures, Breakers VC, Systemic Ventures, and Dawn Ostroff, the former chief content and advertising business officer at Spotify, who has joined as an advisor.
The startup was founded by Máuhan M Zonoozy, a former head of innovation at Spotify who departed the streaming giant in 2024. Before his time at Spotify, Zonoozy founded Bubbl, a video clipping and remixing platform that was acquired by Cricket Media. He noted that while streaming solved access issues, most user interaction with music remained passive consumption.
“I think when I looked at emergent behaviors and younger audiences, like everyone’s growing up playing with culture through games, through filters, through creation tools. And I just felt like there was an opportunity to empower people to do something similar with music,” Zonoozy told TechCrunch.
The company releases its projects as a series of “singles” forming a broader album. The current portfolio includes several web-based experiments. Speed Surfer, a Chrome extension, allows users to alter the speed and filters of audio playing in their browser. Usersound lets individuals create an audio username where each letter corresponds to a musical note. Stacks functions as a stem player where users build mixes by toggling bars on a 3×3 grid. Drops involves placing plaques to deflect falling marbles into musical notes, while Sampler transforms YouTube videos into beat-based samplers.
More ambitious is bop, an iOS application that enables users to arrange instruments and effects on a grid to remix base tracks. The app allows for tempo adjustments and one-time effects, with easy export options for TikTok and Instagram. The team is also developing a multiplayer version to facilitate collaborative remixing.
Despite the industry trend, Zonoozy emphasized a deliberate choice to avoid integrating AI generation into the creative core of these apps. While AI may be used for infrastructure and development, the products prioritize human participation.
“AI is obviously extraordinarily powerful, but I think we just don’t necessarily believe that the future of music is simply generation, like song generation via AI,” he said. “And I think if AI starts to make that content more abundant, it actually makes taste and human perspective and interaction and participation even more important and even more valuable. And we’re just trying to make sure it doesn’t make it even rarer.”
Looking ahead, the company plans to launch a “musical sandbox mixer” later this year, a product designed to let users experiment with various elements of music-making, including the creation of custom instruments.
Shibuya location is a nice touch. It’s great to see hardware and software merging back into pure creativity rather than passive consumption.
As a DJ, I find the stem player idea fascinating. Does bop export stems or just audio? That technical detail matters for producers.
Interesting concept, but will people actually pay for music tools instead of just generating songs with AI? The business model is a question mark.
I love Stacks and Speed Surfer! They make music interaction feel like play again, not just endless scrolling or prompting.
Finally, someone prioritizing human touch over algorithmic shortcuts. This feels like the antidote to the current AI music flood.