Former Spotify Executive Raises $5.5M to Build Playful Music Apps

A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya, a music technology startup founded by former Spotify innovation chief Máuhan M Zonoozy, has raised $5.5 million in pre-seed funding to build a series of interactive music apps focused on remixing, sound and participation.

The round included Mantis VC, SV Angel, BoxGroup, Quiet Capital, Remarkable Ventures, Common Metal, Gold House, Liquid 2 Ventures, Breakers VC, Collaborative Fund and Systemic Ventures. Former Spotify chief content and advertising business officer Dawn Ostroff also joined the company as an adviser.

Zonoozy, who left Spotify in 2024, said he saw an opportunity to move music experiences beyond passive streaming. His startup, A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya, is releasing small experimental products that let users manipulate sound, remix tracks and interact with music in different ways.

Music apps built around play and remixing

The company describes its products like singles on an album, with each experiment exploring a different way to interact with music. Speed Surfer, for example, is a Chrome extension that changes the speed and filtering of audio playing in a browser.

Other projects include Stacks, a stem-based mixer that lets users turn musical layers on and off through a 3-by-3 grid, and Drops, which creates notes by using movable objects to redirect falling marbles.

The startup has also built Usersound, which turns usernames into short musical sequences, and Sampler, which converts parts of YouTube videos into beat-based samples.

Bop takes the idea to iPhone

Its more ambitious product is an iOS app called bop. The app lets users arrange instruments and effects on a grid to create different mixes of a base track, adjust tempo and add one-time effects before exporting creations to TikTok or Instagram.

A multiplayer version is also in development and would let people remix songs together. The company recently introduced a prompt-based feature for creating sounds. Still, Zono said the startup is deliberately avoiding the idea that generative AI should power every part of the music experience.

Instead, the company is betting that easier access to AI-generated content will make human taste, interaction and participation more valuable. It plans to release a broader “musical sandbox mixer” this year that will give users more ways to experiment with music, including creating their own instruments.