Vinyl Bar in Shibuya Raises $5.5M to Build Music Apps Without AI Generation

While generative AI dominates music technology conversations, a new startup called A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya is charting a different course. The company, which takes its name from a concept that evokes an indie music project, specializes in releasing compact applications designed to let users experiment with sounds and vocal elements.

The Tokyo-based venture has secured $5.5 million in pre-seed funding from a roster of investors including Mantis VC, SV Angel, Boxgroup, Quiet Capital, ERA, Common Metal, Gold House, Liquid 2 Ventures, Breakers VC, and Systemic Ventures. The round also includes backing from Dawn Ostroff, the former chief content and advertising business officer at Spotify, who has joined as an advisor.

Máuhan M Zonoozy, who previously served as head of innovation at Spotify, founded the company. Earlier in his career, he launched Bubbl, a video clipping and remixing platform that was later purchased by Cricket Media. Zonoozy departed Spotify in 2024 and expressed a desire to pursue his own venture again.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Zonoozy explained his thinking: "I think when I looked at emergent behaviors and younger audiences, like everyone's growing up playing with culture through games, through filters, through creation tools. And I just felt like there was an opportunity to empower people to do something similar with music." He observed that while streaming platforms solved the problem of music access, most user engagement remained passive consumption rather than active participation.

A Portfolio of Experimental Tools

The startup releases its products as individual "singles" within a broader album-like collection. Each application or web tool centers on manipulating different musical components to produce or alter sound.

• Speed Surfer is a Chrome extension that adjusts playback speed and applies filters to audio streaming in your browser
• Usersound is a web platform where you construct an "audio" username by assigning musical notes to each letter
• Stacks functions as a stem player, enabling users to build remixes by toggling bars within a 3×3 grid interface
• Drops involves positioning plaques in sequences to guide falling marbles, which generate musical tones as they descend
• Sampler transforms YouTube videos into music samplers by extracting beats from different song sections

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The company's flagship offering is an iOS application named bop. This tool allows users to position musical instruments and audio effects across a grid to construct varied arrangements of a base track. The app supports tempo adjustments and single-use effects, and finished mixes can be shared directly to TikTok or Instagram. A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya is also developing a collaborative version that would enable multiple users to remix songs together.

Deliberately Avoiding AI-Driven Generation

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Zonoozy emphasized that the company has made a deliberate decision to avoid embedding AI into every feature of these applications. While he remains open to leveraging AI for product development and infrastructure improvements, the philosophy differs from the AI-first approach dominating the sector.

"AI is obviously extraordinarily powerful, but I think we just don't necessarily believe that the future of music is simply generation, like song generation via AI. And I think if AI starts to make that content more abundant, it actually makes taste and human perspective and interaction and participation even more important and even more valuable. And we're just trying to make sure it doesn't make it even rarer," he said.

Looking ahead to the current year, A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya intends to introduce a "musical sandbox mixer" product. This offering would grant users the ability to experiment with various music-making components, including the capacity to design custom instruments.