Irish start-up launches its emerging music discovery tool

21 Feb 2014

Pictured: Stephen Brett and Maret Eiland of Emeraz.com

To help the best emerging music be discovered by a worldwide audience, Dublin start-up Emeraz has created the Wall of Sound music discovery tool where the most popular music moves from ‘New’ to ‘Trending’ to ‘Hot’, by getting social activity from their audience.

The Wall of Sound is the newest feature on the social music network site Emeraz.com and has been in beta testing since 9 January. Since then the Wall of Sound has attracted almost 2 million page views and visitors are spending an average of 25 minutes listening to new music.

“The secret of its success is the gamification of music discovery,” says Emeraz.com’s Maret Eiland. “It’s a bit like 9gag for music. Firstly visitors land on the Hot Wall which opens-up a whole new world of music.”

From there, listeners can check out which songs are rising the fastest on the Trending Wall or listen to the latest uploads on the New Wall. It’s also easy to showcase your favorites by sharing songs on Facebook and Twitter.

“Running a successful recording studio for nine years I have experienced how much amazing talent is out there,” said Steve Brett, the founder of Emeraz, who is also a multi-instrumentalist himself.

“On Emeraz we try to connect the talent to the right audience in the most effective way. The Wall of Sound is only the start!”

Showcase for emerging talent

Emeraz is growing fast and Brett claims it is now more popular than Myspace and ReverbNation in Ireland, only second to SoundCloud as the most used music platform.

The platform helps musicians build strong relationships by offering a Profile Page to showcase music, the Wall of Sound to help the most popular music to arise to the top and Projects to where members can write music in the cloud with professionals from all over the world.

Founded in 2010, by Stephen Brett, as a collaboration platform Maret Eiland joined Brett in 2012 to help to conceptualize and design the new version.

It has secured backing for €250,000 from Pat Garvey from Bloom Equity, Tarolun Investments and other angel investors from UK and Ireland.

Emeraz is High Potential Start-Up in Enterprise Ireland and is currently looking to close a funding round.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com