When former NFL offensive lineman Jason Fox saw Cam Newton jamming some tune on his Beats, warming up while hyping up the crowd, he really wanted to know what he was listening to. And he realized the thousands of fans in the stadium likely wanted to know, too.
That was the idea behind music tech startup EarBuds, which has workers in Dallas and Austin when it was formed a few years ago. Now, as it builds out its platform, the company is looking to raise $3 million, of which $2.5 million has been committed, Fox said.
“We’ve been building EarBuds… to bring people together through music,” Fox said. “I think we got a really good start on that, and we're building more and more every day.”
The EarBuds platform adds a social component to the music listening experience, allowing users to curate, share playlists and engage with each other in real-time or retroactively, including with verified users like Patrick Mahomes and Baker Mayfield. While the high-profile users help add traffic to the platform, Fox said most of the app's usage comes from friends listening in with other friends.
“Think of this as a horizontal layer that’s across vertical planks of music services,” said Chris Gannett, EarBuds’ recently-hired president and former advisor and investor. “We like to say you come for the talent and stay for your friends because that’s what we think is the ultimate endgame for EarBuds – this is where people come to interact with the people they care about through premium audio and music.”
The company’s app has been available for iOS for about a year and launched on Android about two weeks ago.
It is already integrated with Spotify and Apple Music and will soon be adding Pandora. So far, it has more than 200 verified users, including influencers and several pro athletes, given its founder’s background.
As EarBuds grows its app and expands its reach, the company is set to collect large amounts of user data on listeners' preferences and locations that creators, venues and advertisers could use to reach new audiences. So far, it has raised about $3 million in capital from investors like Ecliptic Capital and Techstars, as well as senior executives from Live Nation and Facebook.
“Naturally, we want to attract profiles that would bring their audiences as well,” Fox said. “It’s great for the talent as well because it’s a complementary way for them to engage with fans. This is not an experience you can have on another platform right now. It’s also not a performance social experience, where it’s me on a yacht, living my best life.”
The pandemic brought Fox and Gannett back to DFW. The company’s six-person team is split between Austin and North Texas. Gannet said the company is close to bringing on a new head of product and will likely be staffing that team with around four new hires.
Fox said EarBuds is still in the process of building. However, with the new funding coming close to being secured, the company is looking to bring on more verified users and build them a “suite of tools” that will host live sessions and monetize their engagement with fans.
“The general expectations of what you can build in north Texas has expanded dramatically, and a lot of that has to do with the talent that we’re producing now,” Gannett said. “The Fortune 500 headquarters that are moving into North Texas are bringing savvy consumers who are interested in our products.”
This article has been updated to clarify that EarBuds counts and executives from Live Nation and Facebook as backers, not the companies themselves.
