Voisey attracts high profile investors ahead of planned US launch

19 June 2019 - Press release

New short form music format gaining traction prior to international expansion

Voisey, the mobile music app that allows users to record short videos using professional vocal effects and backing tracks provided by hundreds of credible producers has attracted a series of high profile music industry investors to its first round of fundraising.

Voisey is a collaboration between Norwegian and English music industry entrepreneurs Olly Barnes (Universal Music, Rdio, Space Ape Games), Erlend Hausken (Soundio, Vibble, Opera), Pål Wagtskjold-Myran (Soundio, Vibble) and Dag Langfoss-Håland (Sony Music, Soundio, Vibble),  and was inspired by the exponential rise of mobile platforms that encourage users to ‘do’ rather than just ‘look’.

Voisey’s audio processing technology lets users simply sing into their headphone mic to achieve professional quality results, meaning specialist recording equipment is no longer a barrier to music fans becoming songwriters, artists  and collaborators. Simplicity is at the forefront of the Voisey experience and every recording is open to collaboration, with users having the option to split their videos into 4 different tracks, either of themselves, or other Voisey users contributing harmonies. 

Voisey videos are a maximum of 1 minute in length and centred around hooks rather than full songs.

Soft launched last December in Norway, and late January in the UK and currently available on iOS only, Voisey is already showing signs of rapid growth despite there being no strategic marketing or PR in place to date. With 2000 new Voisey videos being uploaded each day, many of which are being shared to social media where they receive hundreds of thousands (and in some cases millions) of plays, this ‘hook only’ music format is gaining traction.

Early analysis of Voisey users has found that individuals view on average 25 videos each per day, with the first million plays registered in the 4 months since launch. Most notably, over 90% of all videos uploaded and played are original songs, written by the Voisey users, with the remaining 10% being innovative covers of existing popular songs.

A&R executives are already turning to Voisey as a talent discovery platform which has led to a partnership with Platoon, the independent artist development and distribution company who will be releasing the first single from Voiseys current most popular user, Olivia Knight, which is a full length version of her first ever original Voisey ‘Wind Up’, in late June.

Voisey will launch in the US imminently with a worldwide rollout continuing throughout 2019 and a number of high-profile investors have already come on board to back the platform including: Tim Clark (Co-founder, IE music, whose clients include Robbie Williams), Denzyl Fiegelson (Founder of Platoon), Rak Sanghvi (Global President, Spirit Music Group), Andy  Saunders (Founder, Velocity Communications)  Erling Maartmann-Moe (Alliance Venture Capital), Simon Hade (Space Ape Games) and various other entrepreneurs and angels, including original seed investors Jason Brook and Terry Fisher.

Olly Barnes, co-founder of Voisey said, “The growth and engagement in Voisey has been really exciting given the fact that we’ve pretty much kept it a secret so far, but the biggest surprise has been the quality of talent and original songs that have been appearing on the service. We’re seeing new artists appear, write original hooks, attract collaborators and start establishing a passionate fan following within hours. The thousands of messages we receive each week from around the world suggests that wider availability for Voisey, alongside our continued focus on building the best possible mobile environment for creating music could see Voisey trigger a long-awaited revolution for how artists and songwriters emerge and take their first steps.”