A startup named after a Shibuya bar is betting that music apps built without AI prompting will find an audience anyway. A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya has raised $5.5 million in a pre-seed round, and its founder says the company is deliberately avoiding AI generation in favor of letting people tinker with sound and melody themselves.
The company is built by Máuhan M Zonoozy, who previously led innovation at Spotify and founded Bubbl, a video clipping and remixing startup later acquired by Cricket Media. Zonoozy left Spotify in 2024, and he told TechCrunch that he wanted to return to building something of his own.
The Apps That Make Up The Album
The startup releases its projects like singles on an album, each one a small experiment in interactive music. Here is what the company has put out so far:
| App | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Speed Surfer | A Chrome extension that changes the speed and filter of sound playing in your browser window |
| Usersound | A website where each letter represents a note, letting you create an “audio” username |
| Stacks | A stem player where you toggle bars on or off in a 3×3 grid to build mixes |
| Drops | A game-like app where you place plaques to deflect marbles falling down, generating musical notes |
| Sampler | A website that turns YouTube videos into music samplers based on beats from the song |
The common thread is interaction. Each app asks the user to move a slider, drop a marker, or turn a switch, rather than telling the computer what to generate.
The Bigger Bet Behind Bop
The company’s most ambitious product is an iOS app called bop. It lets users place musical instruments and effects in a grid to create different mixes of a base song, adjusting tempo and adding one-time effects along the way.
Once a mix is ready, users can export it directly to TikTok or Instagram. The company is also working on a multiplayer version.
Why The Founder Says AI Is Off The Table
Zonoozy said the company is making an informed choice not to infuse AI into every part of these apps. He is open to using AI to build the products and to shore up infrastructure, but he sees a limit to what AI can do for music.
“I think we just don’t necessarily believe that the future of music is simply generation, like song generation via AI,” he said. “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.”
He added: “And we’re just trying to make sure it doesn’t make it even rarer.”
The funding round came from Mantis VC, SV Angel, Boxgroup, Quiet Capital, ERA, Common Metal, Gold House, Liquid 2 Ventures, Breakers VC, Systemic Ventures, and Dawn Ostroff, the former Spotify chief content and advertising business officer, who joined the company as an advisor.
What Comes Next
This year, the company aims to release a “musical sandbox mixer” product that would let users play around with different elements of music-making, including the ability to create instruments.
The apps are designed to let users interact with music in a way that feels less like consumption and more like creation.
The Bottom Line
A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya is a startup that sounds more like an indie band name than a corporate entity, and that is exactly the point. Its apps are small, often playful, and deliberately hands-on. The company is betting that people want to make music themselves, not just listen to what an algorithm suggests.
The $5.5 million pre-seed round gives the team room to keep building. Whether users agree with that bet is something the apps themselves will have to show.
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