Saying that all music-based startups are doomed is a pretty broad statement that I’d have to respectfully disagree with.

Musical.ly is one of the hottest if not fastest growing social network startups that is music/video based. Soundcloud is also a massive music-based social network that has been at scale for a minute despite the attacks on them. Also, Splice which is GitHub for producers with a social network aspect is growing like crazy as well.

Not to mention (and I’m biased) but my startup Rapchat has been growing steadily in 2016 with a lot of promise with our Android launch coming soon. We’re the top mobile hip hop network that allows anyone to create, share, and discover freestyle rap with over 5M+ raps shared on the platform to date.

However, I definitely understand and agree with a lot of the points you made in this post. For one, music startups have it harder than most fundraising (especially in this climate). Not only are most music startups consumer-based which investors are somewhat weary of atm but the stigma around the “music startup” scares many.

Also, the obstacles you mention that music startups face is real…you have to try and work and partner with some of the most notorious people in the world who are busier than hell and there’s a lot of red tape and moving parts with any deal in the music industry. Not to mention, you have to somewhat alter consumer behavior if you really want to have a startup blow up while working with artists (e.g. — using Rapchat to post freestyles from their phone instead of recording a freestyle and uploading it to Soundcloud).

That being said, I’m still a firm believer that there is a TON of potential for music-based social networks…and that’s probably because I see it first hand every day working on Rapchat.

Don’t let a few failures (or even a lot) discourage you from thinking that all music-based social networks are doomed because there are some that are doing very, very well :)