Why we're building Bounce

The Internet is good at blurring the lines between a creator and a consumer. Anybody can sell on Shopify, write on Twitter and make videos on TikTok. In the words of the great @Casey, "all you need is a smartphone, access to the internet AND A GOOD IDEA".

But when it comes to music there's still a strong distinction between a musician and a listener. When you listen to music on Spotify, you can't really create anything (except maybe playlists) - while platforms like Soundcloud let anybody upload a song, it's still hard to make songs.

Why is it still hard to make music? Because music creation tools are not accessible to most creators. They're expensive and really complicated to use. Most people give up before making their first track. I've been there myself.

But our phones are getting more powerful. Apps like TikTok are simplifying video creation. If a 14-year-old teen can make videos without any prior filmmaking experience, the same needs to exist for music creation.

A tool that makes it easy to create music will not only let more people make songs but will also become the de-facto tool for the next generation of music and audio creators. That's why we’re building this.

Our primary goal with Bounce is to make music production dead simple. It has to be as easy as taking a photo. If something as simple as changing the pitch or adding a reverb effect takes 5 steps, most of us aren’t going to have the patience to learn it.

We are making music creation social. A social graph is beneficial for creators because it sets up immediate feedback loops. It also helps creators build reputation for their music skills. It helps them build a community, a following and a fan base.

Remixing is going to be a core part of the music creation experience on Bounce. It solves the classic cold start problem where you don't have to start with a blank canvas when creating something new. It lets you build on other people's creativity and allows a song to become a starting point for another song.

Social graph and remixing also enables asynchronous collaboration on a massive scale. Long tail artists will make a living by selling their beats to other artists within Bounce. They already do this on websites like beat stars. This is how Old Town Road was made.

Making it dead simple to remix a song will have a huge cultural impact. Being able to add slight variations to audio and share it with anyone will give rise to audio meme culture on the internet. Everybody would be able to contribute to culture via music memes.

Places like LA, NYC, Atlanta, etc. are hot spots with a high density of musicians. People meet, collaborate and compete with each other in these scenes. If music creation is made social, virtual scenes will flourish on top of Bounce and complement physical ones.

There are also tons of other things that we could explore such as NFTs, procedural music generation, AI Instruments, spatial audio, synchronous collaboration, etc. but the most important first step is to make music creation as easy as taking a photo.

Shopify, Airbnb, YouTube, TikTok have empowered a new generation of merchants, hosts, creators and filmmakers. When the same happens to music, there’s going to be an explosion in creativity.

This is why we’re building Bounce :)