Jamio’s Jamming Journey in 5 minutes
“One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you’d rather be in” — Brian Eno
It started out simple: we were not in the world we’d rather be in. In fact, the world we live in was and still is full of obstacles for the artistic-minded.
Musicians struggle to make it. The opportunities most of the time just aren’t there, even if someone is well-versed and willing to put in the work.
This was our starting point, the beginning of an effort that came to be known as “Jamio”. From that point onward we had to talk to the people we hoped we would provide a solution to, musicians. This is how we gained insight in what they would legitimately want to see in the market and actually pay money to use. They spoke to us about how hard it is to find suitable partners and evolve their art together, about how limiting real life music circles can be.
Their added feedback was what essentially helped us find our way, both expanding our vision and ruling out features that did not belong alongside our original, main idea. Our Minimum Viable Product was designed specifically for them and, needless to say, we are extremely proud of the outcome.
The result of all of the above is a platform that we decided to call a “music collaboration incubator”, because of what it tries to achieve.
So, what does it do?
Jamio is an online platform that brings musicians together in the spirit of collaboration. It allows each user to create a fully customizable, unique profile page that includes any information that might be relevant to them and their potential collaborators; musical expertise and studies, previous projects, influences, genres of interests, demos, etc., so that their musical identity is conveyed as precisely as possible. This way, everyone and anyone is discoverable and accessible to potential new partners.
At the same time, Jamio’s core is its “Competitions”. Jamio’s Competitions are the most easy and direct way to find music partners to work with. Let’s use an example: Imagine you are a music producer and beat-maker, in need of vocals for your new track. You may not be confident in your singing abilities, or be male and prefer a female voice for this specific occasion.
In order to find what you’re looking for you can start a Jamio Competition, asking for people to submit their vocals on top of the demo track that you have included in the post. You can describe what you’re looking for in as much detail as you like and even include preferred musical references. You set the prize, whether it is for free and the pure joy of collaboration or a specific amount of money. After a while, you can collect all the submissions with the vocals on top of your track and choose the one you like the most to win, continuing the collaboration as you like. Everything obviously works the other way around too, as people can search for contests that interest them and partake as they see fit.
The Jamio Competition can take any form the user wants, helping them find beats, guitar riffs and even band members, whether regular or just temporary for specific music events. After a competition has ended, everyone who took part in it can choose to display the work they submitted on their personal profile, thus creating a sort of portfolio of recent samples, so as not to have their effort be lost, even if they didn't win.
How we got here
The most inspiring thing about Jamio is exactly the fact that every single decision we made during the design-thinking process stemmed from the musical community itself.
The first step was the Value Proposition Map. We got the chance to see what musicians around the world, professional and amateur alike, had in common. We noted everything down and looked at ourselves and our needs in order to figure out what else we can offer them and what pains can be relieved from their day-to-day experience. Then, we proceeded to come up with ideas that would solve our potential customer’s problems, thus building the skeleton for Jamio.
Later on, we had to test our idea and prototype on the Business Model Canvas. Here is were things got rough. As we tried to fill out every box and answer every question that consequently came up, we quickly realised we had bit off more than we could chew. Maybe we had listened to our customers too much and had tried to incorporate every single possible feature in our product.
This was obviously not the way to go. We had clearly over-expanded our vision and ironically had created more problems than we had solved. Once we understood what was going on we simply took a step back and revised. We thought about what we stood as a team and as a company and concluded that it was more preferable to do two things really well than five or six things in a rather mediocre fashion, and focused on our core values for Jamio; networking and musical collaboration.
Following down this path we erased features and we cut back on ideas just to slowly reach the Jamio we know today: simple, effective and compact.
Where are we going now?
Well, if this is anything at all, it is the end of the beginning. Jamio is set to continue bringing people together in a fun, easy and safe way for as long as it possibly can. The team of the Creator Conspiracy hopes to have you on board for the ride!
The Creator Conspiracy consists of:
Christina Gourgoura (Raed Raees)
We would also like to address a special “Thank You” to our mentors over at ADandPRLab’s Startup Lab: Betty Tsakarestou and Domnika Skreta. We wouldn’t be here without your guidance.
