How do you find a singer to work with?
For many, including musician and developer Marius Westgaard, by wading through a sea of spam and less than serious messages on Instagram. Frustrated with that method, Westgaard created CLBZ, the app that has helped him and a thousand other musicians cut the crap and start collaborating.
Westgaard works alongside his brother Kristoffer, an interaction designer, in Brainify, a small consulting firm. After work, he creates music.
But trying to find good singers to work with was holding him back. Instagram returned far more spam than serious proposals, taking up too much of the time he had to create.
“When you create and share music on Instagram you get bombarded with messages and comments from people want to collaborate. But sorting out the spam from the serious inquiries is not easy,” Marius says.
So the brothers sat down to try to find a better way. That sit-down started what eventually became CLBZ, the app to help musicians find musicians and begin working together. “The response was immediate,” says Kristoffer, lead designer on the app.
“Early in the process, we shared a few ideas and sketches on Instagram. Just to show the things we were thinking about. The response was overwhelming. We got thousands of followers commenting and liking before we had coded even a line.”
The brothers figured this meant more people had the problems Marius had, and started to devote most of their free time to designing and coding the app.
In his day job, Marius spends most of his time working with so-called hybrid apps to React Native. Now the same technology consumed most of his nights and weekends as well.
“Kristoffer really put pressure on me when he announced the December 1. launch without asking me. From then on out it was full speed ahead.”
Their employer, Brainify, also joined the team. The got to spend company time finishing the first version, along with the tools needed to get it out. Brainify also supplied some of the capital needed and Johannes Hoff Holmedahl, the manager of Brainify as chairman.
“When great employees come up with something as promising as this, it’s better to go along for the ride than to lose them completely. I expect CLBZ to become their full-time job eventually.”
CLBZ launched in December, and so far more than 1500 musicians have downloaded the app. But that is not the number the Westgaard brothers are looking at.
“We measure success in the number of matches. Getting people to collaborate is the real goal. And already we’ve had more than 16,000 swipes and almost 180 matches. 360 musicians who have found someone to work with.”
Before launch, the app had already garnered more than 3000 followers on Instagram. Since launch, that number has doubled.
CLBZ in numbers
- An app that lets composers and musicians find people to work with, through matching people with mutual likes.
- Numbers per February 8th. 2019
- Users: 1006
- Registered projects: 148
- Swipes: 16818
- Matches: 173
- 1500 app downloads in total
To download the app, click here.
