ATLANTA—Blair Farinholt, director of business development at Maestro Music, a startup that provides remote access to users’ music collections, first heard about the company while still working the investment banking side of the street. “I asked all the questions from a merger and acquisitions due diligence standpoint during a couple of trips to Atlanta, and I was sold,” he says.
Farinholt tells TechJournal South that in addition to the company’s primary feature, a patent-pending Web-based service platform that lets users access their music through any Web browser and across multiple devices, it also provides music portal social networking features. It includes “enhanced” music discovery tools. Listeners can move around the portal site while continuously streaming music. Multiple users can steam music from the same account at the same time.
“We have fun features such as shout-outs,” Farinholt says, “but in the background is this powerful technology that connects people and people to their music. PC and Mac versions are available.” A version for mobile phones is on the way and it’s possible that users could load the application on any mobile device at some point.
The company evolved from its founders’ frustrations with buying and transferring music among multiple devices, a laptop, car device, mp3 players, and PCs. The site also offers artist pages with song lyrics and the latest news and other content.
Clarkson C. Logon is the company’s co-founder, president, and CEO. Most recently, Logan worked with Lincoln Financial Group, where was in the top five revenue producers in his group. He also previously worked at an early-stage private equity fund in New York City.
Initially the company will make money from advertising, a storefront, and a deal with Amazon’s MP3 store. It plans to sell concert tickets and a pay-premium service with higher quality is also in the works.
Converted from a previous site with about 70,000 unique users a month, the current site has about 50,000 to 70,000 uniques monthly and 7,000 registered users. “We’ve just begun our marketing campaign,” says Farinholt.
The company has raised $750,000 from angel investors and is in the middle of raising a $1.5 to $2 million round. “It’s half spoken for,” says Farinholt, who most recently worked for Thomas Wiesel and J.P. Morgan as an investment banker. Currently, he notes, as with many startups, his title is director of business development, but he acts as “everything from CFO to trash man.”
The six-employee company expects to hire developers and engineers “furiously,” once it completes its funding, Farinholt says.
The company says it expects to have about 250,000 unique users by the end of the year.
The market is certainly large enough to accommodate new players. “Music is a $35 billion industry,” Farinholt notes. “All the vested parties see CD sales dropping 15 percent a year, artists are selling directly to consumers. We’re trying to smooth these channels in a more efficient way, connecting artists with users and using Maestro as a concert hub, for instance. Although we’re starting on a smaller scope, this whole thing could be grandiose and quite successful.”
On the Web: www.maestro.fm.
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