Thanks to modern technology, it has become much simpler to produce music and make it available online. More than 100’000 tracks are now added to music streaming platforms every day. For emerging musicians, this means it has become very hard to stand out from the crowd because the media and labels are overwhelmed with submissions.

Groover’s web platform helps artists who want to promote their music connect with the best curators, radios, and labels seeking emerging talents. Artists select from an extensive list of journalists, playlist curators, and radio stations to whom they want to send their music to. They pay 2 Euro per contact and get guaranteed written feedback within 7 days – if not, they can use the credits for other curators. If the curators like the track, they will review or broadcast it. Since the launch of the platform in 2019, artists have received over 2 million feedbacks, more than 500’000 tracks have been shared and over 2’000 contracts with managers and labels have been signed. Groover’s platform reunites 150’000 artists and more than 2000 music professionals in over 100 countries.

What led you to co-found Groover?
I am a musician myself, my father already was a member of a rock band. I met my co-founders at UC Berkeley in 2018. Dorian had a music blog, and Rafael was doing music videos for French rap acts. At UC Berkeley, we interviewed 200 artists to understand what their main challenges were, this is why we decided to focus on the topic of music promotion. The problem Groover is addressing has gotten even worse since then. We’re living in a time of music revolution. It has never been easier to produce music and distribute it digitally but nonetheless, it is very hard as an emerging artist to reach and build your audience. Publishing a song can feel like throwing a message in a bottle into the sea. Groover has been built on the premise of helping independent artists reach their fans and increase the diversity of the music industry. There are 8 billion people in the world, and many of them want to listen to something else than just the latest hit album.

Groover helps artists reach journalists and curators. What is their incentive to work with Groover?
They are tired of receiving hundreds of emails per day. Grover offers them a filtered listening experience closer to a playlist than an email client. We make sure that the songs they receive on Groover correspond to their musical taste. They can discover new music from all around the globe in an enjoyable way and monetize their feedback, as we pay them half of what artists are paying us.

How important is the US, where Groover’s story began, still today?
It is our most important market and we’re experiencing very strong growth in the US. We started in the US, but the majority of our operations were always in France. We decided to make the US market a priority and opened our New York office in March 2022 and are also growing our staff base there. We recently hired Erica Leh as a Senior Product Manager, for example, she came to us from Spotify. When I think of our strategic growth initiatives for 2023, building on the momentum we have in the US is a central pillar.

What are the other initiatives to grow your business?
The second pillar is establishing new businesses that help to nurture talents. We launched Groover Club, our 360 degrees coaching and community membership for indie artists. Our second offering is Groover Obsessions, which acts as an accelerator for the top 0.1% of artists using Groover. This is more personalized and continuous support and is based on a revenue-sharing model. We’ve already signed up close to 100 artists for Obsessions, including electro-pop duo Faux Real, rapper Alvin Chris and indie-pop singer-songwriter Zola.

How do you go about expanding your geographic footprint?
We have artists from more than 100 countries on our platform, from the US, Brazil and several European countries such as the UK, France, Germany and Italy. We’re working with freelancers that have in-depth knowledge of a specific music scene and a good network to source and onboard new curators in new geographies. We’re currently on the lookout for more such ambassadors, especially in the US, Germany, and Scandinavia.

“This is one of our main operational challenges, to ensure that high growth goes hand-in-hand with assuring a good quality of curators we work with.”

What about expansion in terms of musical styles?
We’re already covering all the main genres of music such as electronic, hip-hop/rap, pop, rock etc, with the exception of classical music which follows completely different rules. As you can imagine, everyone working for Groover is deeply passionate about music. But we’re constantly working on adding new important high-quality curators and covering the endless subgenres that are out there. This is one of our main operational challenges, to ensure that high growth goes hand-in-hand with assuring a good quality of curators we work with. As befits our mission of helping independent musicians to get heard, we’ll always be on their side defending their interests.