A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya is a startup developing tools for creating music with generative AI. The company raised $5.5 million in pre-seed funding with participation from Mantis VC, SV Angel, BoxGroup, Quiet Capital, Remarkable Ventures, Common Metal, Gold House, Liquid 2 Ventures, Breakers VC, Collaborative Fund and Systemic Ventures. Dawn Ostroff, former head of content and advertising at Spotify, has joined the company as an advisor.
The startup was founded by Máuhan M. Zonoozy, Spotify’s former head of innovation. Zonoozy previously founded Bubbl, a video clipping and remixing startup that was later acquired by Cricket Media, and left Spotify in 2024. The company publishes small apps that shift interaction with music beyond simply listening and focus on letting users play with sounds and vocals.
Speed Surfer changes the speed and filters of audio playing in the browser. Usersound lets users create an “audio” username in which the letters correspond to musical notes. Stacks allows users to create mixes by switching bars on and off in a 3×3 grid. Drops offers an arrangement that produces musical notes by changing the direction of marbles. Sampler, meanwhile, turns YouTube videos into music samples based on the rhythms of different sections of songs.
The company’s more comprehensive product, the iOS app bop, allows users to create different mixes by placing instruments and effects on a grid over a basic song; the tempo can be adjusted and one-off effects can be added. The resulting mixes can be exported to TikTok or Instagram. The startup is also working on a multiplayer version that would allow users to rearrange songs together with others, and recently added a feature for generating sound through prompts.
Zonoozy said they had consciously chosen not to embed AI into every part of their apps. The company plans to release a “musical sandbox mixer” this year where users can play around with musical elements and creating instruments. The headline of the article was changed because the prompt-based features were added later.
Why it matters
A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya’s approach takes music production out of professional tools and turns it into an interaction based on trial and error in browsers and on phones. This makes the development directly relevant to users who have no experience composing music but want to alter sounds, create mixes and share what they make on social platforms. Work on collaborative rearrangement and a multiplayer version suggests that the focus in music apps is shifting from individual creation to collective participation; however, it is not yet clear how these features will change the user experience. The company’s decision not to embed AI into every stage and the addition of the prompt-based sound generation feature at a later stage keep alive the question of whether generative AI will be the core product here or a tool supporting specific functions.