At a time when digital music ventures are suddenly hot commodities, the Y Combinator-backed startup Bop.fm has raised $2 million from a group of investors led by Charles River Ventures.
Bop.fm seeks to solve a problem music aficionados sometimes encounter when they try to share a link to a favorite track or playlist. Sometimes, a song isn’t available on a friend’s preferred digital music service. Other times, they’ll need to sign up for an account just to listen.
The new service attempts to untangle this musical gordian knot.
Bop.fm maintains an inventory of the major digital music services’ song libraries. Whenever someone uses Bop’s website to share a song link, it detects which music service the recipient uses and brings up the appropriate player (or the official music video on YouTube).
“We mediate between services,” said co-founder Shehzad Daredia. “We're not limited by catalog.”
Artists such as Snoop Dogg, Tiesto, Lil Wayne and Paul McCartney are using Bop to share playlists.
Bop picks up revenue by referring traffic to the various digital music services, but over time it hopes to mine its data to find connections between, say, Imagine Dragons fans and their soft drink brand preferences.
