Sezion is undoubtedly one of the most interesting startups to have come out of Telefónica’s acceleration program. As we reported, its presentation yesterday during the Wayra Madrid Demo Day made a big impression on the audience – and not only because its team played the electric guitar on stage.
Launched in the App Store a couple weeks ago, the startup’s first app is called Sezion Studio. As for Sezion’s tagline, it was actually coined by the Israeli VC Ehud Levy. After listening to Sezion’s pitch, he summarized it very simply: “You are the Instagram for amateur musicians,” he told the team, who decided to adopt his suggestion.
This is indeed a good way to describe Sezion’s proposal, which is targeted at anyone who likes to play music. According to its CEO, Madrid-based Panamanian entrepreneur Josías De La Espada, “we all like music and we can all play it”. There are around 200 million amateur musicians in the world’s main markets, he adds. While 52 million of them own a smartphone, they are clearly underserved by the advanced music collaboration tools available at the moment.
While these solutions may be of interest to professionals, Sezion has decided to adopt a different strategy, by developing a simple product that anyone can easily use to record and share tracks. To start co-creating a song, all you need to do is to download Sezion Studio on your iPhone; here’s what it looks like:
As you can see, the ‘Record’ screen is pretty straightforward. You can then assemble each contribution to form a track:
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Once completed, tracks become available to the community, while private sharing is also in the plans.
At the moment, Sezion’s free app is in invite-only beta testing – you can request access on its homepage. While it has around 1,000 beta testers, mostly in Spain, the US and Mexico, its next goal is to build a strong global community. However, its team wants to listen to initial feedback first, and take it into account for the iPad version it is currently working on.
As for its business model, Sezion plans to introduce freemium options, and has also closed partnerships with music festivals and Movistar’s music editorial department. The company is currently raising a round to finance its growth – and based on its warm reception yesterday, we wouldn’t be surprised to hear more on this very soon.
➤ Sezion Studio, via the App Store
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