Decibel supplies in-depth music data to drive the next generation of digital music, with over 30 million tracks in the database to help people discover music.
What can it do? For the music biz it could mean increased sales and for music services better listings and information for users. Decibel wants to licence its information and search technology via its API to software developers, music services, labels and hardware manufacturers. The service is now leaving its stealth mode and officially launching and says it has a number of potential clients lined up.
CEO Gregory Kris, pitching to the GeeknRolla start-up panel, said that “meta-data powers all music services” and argued that “poor metadata is holding back music sales”. “We want to enhance the public’s engagement with metadata and power the next generation of music services,” he says.
Specifically, the metadata Decibel deals in is that artist and song details attachted to every CD and digital track – but the company’s plan is to increase that data beyond the simplest detail to include related artists and other facts.
The company projects it will make £34 million in annual revenue by 2014, but Kris says it’s about six months away from being revenue-positive at the moment.