Social Media Startup Wants to Support Song Sharing

“Splash.FM is the Twitter for music,” explains Alex Gatof, Splash.FM co-founder. “People go to Twitter to share news. People go to Instagram to share photos. You come to Splash to share music.”

“Too often you see a friend posting a Youtube link on your Facebook feed or your Twitter feed to show you a great song,” says Gatof. “There needs to be a better route for artists to promote their music and friends to share it.”

Users of Splash.FM can post song recommendations, browse friends' recommendations and receive a Splash Score based on the influence of their recommendations. In addition, users can stream newly discovered songs in full length or preview-only, depending on the selected song's copyright status.

“We want Splash to be a place for everyone to discover music,” says co-founder Jason Fiedler. “We have significant traction. This isn't a game of thousands or tens of thousands. We are looking to get into the millions. That's the kind of user base that is going to make this really powerful. Anything shy of that is not nearly enough.”

Gatof and Fiedler say they plan to leverage their college ties to attract potential Splash.FM users. Fiedler is a recent graduate from University of Pennsylvania, while Gatof is a current student at University of Michigan. The two co-founders reveal plans to sponsor concerts and other events on college campuses.

In his January blog about Splash.FM in TechCrunch, John Constine writes: “A year ago people were used to hearing samples, but in the age of Spotify, serious music fans who Splash.FM is targeting demand more.”

Fiedler says a lot of people mistakenly ask, “How are you going to beat Spotify?” In response, Fiedler notes that Spotify, in addition to Pandora (NYSE: P), are experiencing financial losses. “That's not a business that we want to be in,” asserts Fiedler. “We have to respect the ambitions of our investors as well.”

Fiedler says Splash.FM will begin talks about additional funding within the month, both with music groups and institutional investors. Moreover, within the next month and a half, Splash.FM plans to release a mobile application that will provide further integration with Facebook and Twitter, says Gatof.

Gatof predicts, “I think it will definitely evolve as not only the platform for friends to interact with each other, share music and share experiences, but also a platform for artists, especially aspiring artists and DJs, to promote their personal brand and release their music on Splash.”

“The beauty of it is: the more people we get, the better it gets,” concludes Fiedler.

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, I did not own shares of any companies mentioned in this post.