Highnote launched to the general public at this time, permitting musicians, podcasters and different creators to collaborate on audio information by recording voice notes immediately over a monitor, making timestamped reactions and creating polls to get opinions.
Highnote additionally announced its pre-seed funding spherical of $1.7 million.
The brand new platform goals to be an area for musicians, podcasters and their collaborators to hearken to audio information and have conversations multi function place.
It’s typical for creators and their groups to depend on e-mail, textual content messages, Phrase docs, Google Drive, Dropbox and different file-sharing companies and instruments that aren’t optimized for audio content material, Highnote co-founder and CEO Jordan Bradley informed TechCrunch.
“May come as a shock, however the audio world, largely, makes use of general-purpose instruments to debate and iterate their information, which is extraordinarily inefficient,” Bradley stated. “Simply think about there are dozens of tiny adjustments to quantity, timbre and pronunciation which may want to enter the ultimate edits of your favourite podcast episode and the necessity to annoyingly flip forwards and backwards between scrubbing in Google Drive’s janky default audio participant and manually typing ‘0:23 – decrease the echo’ dozens of occasions over. Highnote adjustments that.”
Whereas there are numerous collaboration platforms for artists to add tracks, there aren’t many platforms that permit them to touch upon the monitor immediately.
Spotify’s Soundtrap is arguably probably the most well-known DAW (digital audio workstation platform) and launched a collaborative voice note tool in 2020. In August 2022, Soundtrap was testing a software for folks to write comments on totally different components of a monitor. Thus far, nonetheless, Soundtrap hasn’t carried out a function that enables creators to create polls for listeners to reply.
With Highnote, musicians, podcasters and different creators can add a music monitor or audio file to their non-public Highnote workroom or “House,” which is sort of a Slack or Discord channel. The creator invitations their group to the House to allow them to all collaborate on the audio file, handle totally different variations, chat with one another and place time-specific written/voice notes on prime of the monitor.
Highnote designed an interactive audio annotation format that mixes audio and time-specific playing cards “in a approach not seen earlier than,” Bradley claims. So, because the creator listens to the monitor, they’ll see the feedback move over the monitor because it performs.
There’s additionally the choice to create polls to immediate the listener with questions at a selected time.
Creators can share a non-public hyperlink to anybody they need, whether or not that be followers/listeners, producers, mixing and mastering engineers, A&R (Artists and Repertoire) groups or music supervisors.
Highnote is free to make use of, and no obtain is required. Customers can create an account by going to www.highnote.fm. The platform is accessible on any machine.
Whereas there isn’t a paid possibility but, the corporate plans to launch a SaaS subscription mannequin for Highnote in some unspecified time in the future. It’s additionally within the means of growing a “Highnote for Groups” for giant manufacturing studios and document labels.
Highnote additionally closed its pre-seed funding spherical of $1.7 million, with buyers Afore Capital, Character Capital, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures and Precursor Ventures, together with angels from YouTube, Auth0 and Splice.
“With our current fundraise, it was about organising store and constructing. We predict that transferring ahead, present and future companions can actually assist us make waves,” he informed us. “We are able to scale as much as basically create the Slack or iMessage for audio creators and their groups — the go-to communication platform for a world of hundreds of thousands of individuals for which working with audio is core to their each day enterprise.”
The platform started as a facet mission for Bradley, who took a break from his band in 2018 to create a software that gave creators the flexibility to obtain extra constructive suggestions.
As a musician himself, Bradley is to see if different musicians will use Highnote to let followers get a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes course of. He additionally recommends Highnote for music college students who wish to ask their instructor play a chord higher.
“I’m excited to see how Highnote takes form in these totally different environments,” he added.
Co-founders Paulina Vo and Chris Muccioli are additionally skilled in music tech. Vo has a background as a songwriter and producer, and can also be the co-founder of The Digilogue, a music tech neighborhood. Muccioli is a musician, inventive director and marketer who has led initiatives at Splice, Spotify, and Kickstarter.
Picture Credit: Highnote
Highnote has been in beta testing for a yr, and some dozen customers signed up for Highnote’s waitlist. The suggestions was “overwhelmingly constructive,” Bradley claimed.
The corporate offered a quote from Barry Rashawn, a combination engineer who has labored with Drake, JCole, Nicki Minaj, The Weeknd, Juice WRLD, Kodak Black and Meek Mill, amongst different well-known artists.
Rashawn stated, “Highnote makes shopper collaborations straightforward and seamless. The largest challenge I used to face with shoppers will not be getting a timestamp for the part that they’re referring to of their notes. With Highnote, that’s an issue of the previous. I’ll hand over a shopper earlier than giving up Highnote.”
Leave a Reply