Startups: Stereomood, Italian emotions
Stereomood is the first emotional music provider that allows people to find the right soundtrack for each moment of their life
Want a movie-like soundtrack while walking on sunshine? Or Mozart helping you find your focus while studying,? Or just the right music to make love, sleep or accompany a dinner with some friends? There is an Italian startup that can give you that!
Stereomood is the first emotional music provider that allows people to find the right soundtrack for each moment of their life. It gathers music from a hundred music blogs from all around the world, adds the tracks of some independent artists and private labels and combines them in different playlists, one for each mood. Clients just have to connect to the Internet, choose their mood and enjoy their soundtrack.
It is even possible to check the profile of others "Stereomooders" with the same mood, buying the songs on iTunes, share your own tracks on twitter or even putting mood tags to the songs, to help add them to the correct playlists.
A key innovation relies on the business model as well. Indeed, it allows Stereomood to provide highly targeted advertising, not only based on the profile of the user, but on its mood as well. Furthermore, the startup can sell songs directly to its users, through its affiliation with Amazon and iTunes.
Finally, Stereomood has the potential to address the B2B market by selling "pro user" account to emerging artists and new independent labels looking for a niche platform where to promote their works. The company also launched the mobile app "Mood O'Clock" that selects the time the user wants to be woken up to and one among eleven different moods (on my own, calm, dreamy, energetic...).
The free emotional Internet radio has been developed since February 2007 and was founded in Rome by the four "music maniacs" Giovanni Ferron, Daniele Novaga, Maurizio Pratici, Eleonora Viviani.
Now, the staff counts 12 members and the startup already achieved a remarkable success in US, Russia, Canada and Brazil other than Italy, with more than 600,000 active users across the world.
Venture Capital investors did not miss the chance to step into the business and boost the commercial launch of the streaming platform. The fund POR FESR I.3, Innogest and some IAG business angels totally invested ? 600,000 for the 45% of the company, thus valuing it today more than 1.3 million euros. The startup was also presented at the second annual Italian Business & Investment Initiative Fall Symposium, organized by Fernando Napolitano, aiming at promoting Italy-originated startups as attractive investment for the US Venture Capital firms.
