Can The Wild West Of Music Discovery Be Tamed By One Startup?

Just ask rock band The Silversun Pickups. I did (below). Best known for the low-fi, garage blur and piercing crescendo of their first hit single “Lazy Eye”, The Silversun Pickups say right

now they have to be best friends with the music tech companies. And while they did perform that night at the Slacker party, they truly believe there’s no clear front-runner yet worth tying

their horse to.

Until recently, the three pillars of music discovery — on-demand, automated radio, and human curation —  were fragmented across different services. There was Napster and then iTunes and then

Spotify. There was Pandora. There were blogs. But now we’re seeing companies like Slacker and Spotify attempting to unify these into a single service.

Slacker’s recent redesign highlighted this convergence, making it easy to swap between searching for specific songs, radio that evolves to your preferences, and hand-picked music selections

from actual DJs. Spotify went from being strictly on-demand to adding radio, and now is starting to roll out a new Twitter-esque following system to help you get recommendations from real

people. Slacker’s far behind in traction, leaving Spotify the most likely company to bring order to the music discovery space and make us comfortable settling down.

In some ways that might not be a good thing. Without a single company in control, competition forces innovation and low prices. Decentralized and self-determined music discovery liberates

us. We can chase what uniquely resonates with us rather than surrender our tastes to mass media. It may not be civilized and easy, but true music fans like life with a little edge.

Constine currently writes a weekly newsletter called Moving Product at https://constine.substack.com/ where he discusses big ideas facing the startup industry, the most exciting new tech

products, and interviews top industry talent about the most important recent launches.

Previously, Constine was the Editor-At-Large for TechCrunch where he wrote over 3500 blog posts about social tech giants like Facebook and Snapchat as well as early stage startups across

verticals. His work was cited on the floors of the Senate and House Of Representatives, and led to the shut down of Facebook’s Onavo market surveillance app.

Constine was formerly the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook through its acquisition by WebMediaBrands, covering everything about the social network.

Constine graduated from Stanford University in 2009 with a Master’s degree in Cybersociology, examining the influence of technology on social interaction. He researched the impact of privacy

controls on the socialization of children, meme popularity cycles, and what influences the click through rate of links posted to Twitter. Constine also received a Bachelor of Arts degree

with honors from Stanford University in 2007, with a concentration in Social Psychology & Interpersonal Processes.

Josh Constine is an experienced public speaker, and has moderated over 190 on-stage interviews in 18 countries with leaders including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram’s founders,

whistleblower Edward Snowden (via on-stage video conference), and U.S. Senator Cory Booker. He also delivers keynotes on how to pitch startups, press strategy for tech companies, and how to

turn your passion into your profession. He is available to moderate panels and fireside chats, provide keynotes, and judge hackathon and pitch competitions. You can contact him at Joshsc

[at] gmail .com

Constine has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, The Atlantic, BBC World Magazine, Slate, and more, plus has been featured on television on Good Morning, America, The Today

Show, China Central Television, and Fox News. Constine was ranked as the #1 most cited tech journalist on prestigious news aggregator Techmeme from 2016 to 2020.