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Startup A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya Offers Music Apps Without AI Prompting
Developing
In Short: A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya, founded by Máuhan M Zonoozy, is developing music apps that allow users to create and modify sounds without relying on AI, focusing on empowering human interaction and taste in music.
A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya, a startup founded by Máuhan M Zonoozy, is creating music apps that eschew AI prompts, offering users a way to interact with sounds and vocals in a more traditional manner. Zonoozy, who previously led innovation at Spotify, believes that while streaming has solved the access problem, most music interaction remains focused on consumption. Instead, A Vinyl Bar is developing 'singles' that are part of an album, allowing users to play around with sounds and vocals.
Zonoozy told TechCrunch, 'I think when I looked at emergent behaviors and younger audiences, like everyone’s growing up playing with culture through games, through filters, through creation tools. And I just felt like there was an opportunity to empower people to do something similar with music.
The startup is making an informed choice not to infuse AI into every part of these apps, believing that if AI makes content more abundant, it diminishes the value of human perspective and interaction. Zonoozy said, 'AI is obviously extraordinarily powerful, but I think we just don’t necessarily believe that the future of music is simply generation, like song generation via AI. And I think if AI starts to make that content more abundant, it actually makes taste and human perspective and interaction and participation even more important and even more valuable.
The common theme between all of these apps or websites is interacting with different elements to create music or modify sound, with A Vinyl Bar focusing on releasing a series of small apps that let you play around with sounds and vocals, much like a vinyl record collection.
What's still developing
- Disrupt 2026: OpenAI, Anthropic, Replit, and more take over 6 industry stages. 25% off tickets now Back by popular demand: Save up to $300 on Disrupt As AI rages on, new startups are creating tools for people to create music using generative AI prompts in the style of any artist they want.
- Prior to that, he founded a video clipping and remixing startup called Bubbl, which was acquired by Cricket Media.
Sources
- TechCrunchlink