Rob Morgan

I have always been a fan of electronic dance music. As a DJ and producer myself, I believe the internet needed a tool for fans to discover new music and follow upcoming releases. I've noticed there is often a large hype-curve surrounding an upcoming release from a notable producer. This hype-curve is fuelled by the discussions that take place online in areas such as forums, blogs, comments on YouTube videos and tweets. EDM.DJ is a place to bring all of these discussions together. Also there are a lot of underground producers who deserve to have their work showcased more effectively.

The service will be delivered initially through a web application. Rather than be a closed database of dance music releases we will be crowd-sourcing the inputs to our community. The reason EDM.DJ is solely focused on electronic dance music is because I wanted to iterate on a specific vertical. Tying the idea solely to EDM has allowed me to build a completely focused startup. The content we present will have a global influence and won't be affected by a particular country's charts and trends.

The service is for fans who wish to discover new music and connect with similar people. We are providing channels to showcase popular and upcoming music releases. There are 'smarts' built in to offer users personalised recommendations based on the music they listen to.

We differentiate ourselves from services such as Last.fm by providing features & tools that are only relevant to electronic dance music. One feature I can share with you is the ability to add and follow upcoming music releases. This model doesn't exactly work with other genres of music for various reasons. Our service will place a large emphasis on unreleased material still in production by the artists. This is about all I can share at the moment :)

We will not be providing a radio service as I believe a number of startups already do this very well. However it will be possible to listen to and purchase music. I think these days in order to build a strong relationship with your users you need to implement a lot of social and real-time features. Everybody already has a Facebook or Twitter account. They are not looking for a third service to update but rather a tool that compliments their existing ones. We are building a very targeted community that we hope will encourage users to return everyday. These users will want to discover, discuss and follow trends in electronic dance music. Our community will be very knowledgable in terms of music production and taste.

I think the music industry is having quite a hard time at the moment. The effect of the global recession and the proliferation of illegal music downloads have affected it's performance quite significantly. I feel the traditional models concerned with selling music just don't work anymore. These days the consumer wants 'X' right now and they are willing to go for whatever the easiest option is to acquire it. Major labels such as EMI are billions of dollars in debt. However I believe there is a bright outlook for electronic dance music. It is starting to become more mainstream and is having success penetrating difficult and hard-to-reach markets such as the US.

We hope to launch in the last week of March. So, very soon!