Music startups raise their voices at Sonar+D

“Stop importing culture and technology from other countries, create it here!” exclaims John Acquaviva, a prominent Italian-Canadian entrepreneur who was a DJ in the 1990s and now works as an investor with the American fund Plus8, which specializes in financing startups in the sector.

Acquaviva is at the event held at The Venue, a hidden space beneath the Montjuïc Olympic Stadium where investors and entrepreneurs from the sector gathered on Thursday for the Sónar festival. “I see a lot of creativity in Barcelona, ​​but we need to know how to better promote this industry,” he comments in a loose conversation about his entrepreneurial career, marked by the companies Final Scratch and BeatPort, two significant inventions in the electronics sector. With house music playing in the background, Rishi Patel, his partner at Plus8, adds that the Spanish ecosystem “is still small” compared to that of the United States, and that large investors, such as himself, face “bureaucratic obstacles and an overly conservative climate” in this country.

The founders of Plus8 and other local and international investors have come to Barcelona to hunt for opportunities. Sonar+D, the innovation event held within the festival, has been the venue where startups and cutting-edge music technology companies have gathered for over a decade.

“We come here to network and get feedback from the audience,” says Domenico di Paolo, founder of a British startup that addresses the spirituality of the future through interactive musical creation. This space also brings together representatives from Google DeepMind, Japanese technology companies, and representatives from universities such as Elisava and La Salle, as well as the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. “With the artist Maria Arnal, we have designed an artificial intelligence voice system,” says Fernando Cucchietti.

From the Barcelona Music Tech Hub association, they state: “Sonar +D is the place to be because it's where innovation and music merge,” says president José Luis Zagazeta. The organization, which represents dozens of local companies, has brought entrepreneurs from all over Europe to celebrate the awards ceremony of a European music technology academy.

The latest edition of Sonar+D at the Fira de Montjuïc venue hosts 60 activities to boost the digital music industry.

The event hosts conferences, project presentations, tests, and experiments... the industry seems to be in turmoil, even though by mid-morning on Friday, the venue was half empty. This is the last edition of Sonar+D held at the Fira de Montjuïc venue, and this time, the organizers have brought together 60 national and international projects. Among the topics covered are biology in artificial intelligence, sound technology and the side effects of hyperconnectivity, and the current ecological crisis.

Indeed, music technology is present in very diverse areas, ranging from music creation to intellectual property rights solutions and concert ticket sales. According to the Barcelona Music Tech Hub, there are 50 companies in Catalonia and 150 in Spain specializing in the sector.

“At Sonar+D, we're here to present our startup, called Escena 4.0, which specializes in ephemeral architecture for cultural events,” says entrepreneur Isaac Domínguez, who hopes to raise €150,000 to kickstart the project. “It's a shame that investment funds still view us as a niche industry, and that's why we're struggling to raise money,” laments Pau Agustí, founder of Sounds Market, a platform that sells secondhand DJ equipment, an activity he says is currently in vogue among the public.

Investor Mercè Tell, from the Encomenda fund, comments that there are still no investors specialized in this field in Spain. "We have agnostic vehicles, meaning they invest in all types of sectors, and now we're approaching the music industry because we see opportunities," says the partner at Carlos Blanco. The investor admits that the music sector isn't easy, that it's more complex than other software startups, as copyright and technical complexities come into play, making startups less scalable and, consequently, slow returns for funds.

Agustí, who has been an entrepreneur for more than seven years, acknowledges that the sector "has a long way to go" and that, for now, "it has no choice but to make an extra effort to demonstrate its full potential," he concludes.

Can music be created without sound?

Can music be created without sound? At Sonar+D, the startup Hop Beat presented a small device, a kind of miniature soundboard, that allows people to experience music through touch. By placing a finger on a sensor and pressing several buttons with the other hand, anyone can create—and experience—a sequence of rhythms that a computer can then translate into audiovisual content. “I'm an artist, and sometimes I get overwhelmed with so many hours of exposure to sound, which is why I invented this device. There are possibilities to reach artists, but above all, to reach groups with hearing impairments. This way, music is accessible to everyone,” says South Korean entrepreneur Joujin Jeon.