A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya is a startup from a former Spotify leader for makingmusic apps

As AI rages on, new startups are creating tools for people to create music usinggenerative AI prompts in the style of any artist they want. A Vinyl Bar inShibuya [https://www.shibuyaaa.com/], a startup that sounds more like an indieband name, is focused on releasing a series of small apps that let you playaround with sounds and vocals.The company has raised a $5.5 million pre-seed round from Mantis VC, SV Angel,BoxGroup, Quiet Capital, Remarkable Ventures, Common Metal, Gold House, Liquid 2Ventures, Breakers VC, Collaborative Fund, Systemic Ventures, and former Spotifychief content and advertising business officer, Dawn Ostroff, who joined thecompany as an advisor.The startup is built by Máuhan M. Zonoozy, who was the former head of innovationat Spotify. Prior to that, he founded a video clipping and remixing startupcalled Bubbl, which was acquired by Cricket Media.Zonoozy, who left Spotify in 2024, said that he always wanted to go back tobuilding something of his own. He thought that while streaming solved the accessproblem, most of the interaction with music was still around consumption.[https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Copy-of-Mauhan-Headshot.jpg?w=524]founderMáuhan M. ZonoozyImage Credits:A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya“I think when I looked at emergent behaviors and younger audiences, likeeveryone’s growing up playing with culture through games, through filters,through creation tools. And I just felt like there was an opportunity to empowerpeople to do something similar with music,” he told TechCrunch.The startup releases these experiments like “singles” that are part of an album.The common theme between all of these apps or websites is interacting withdifferent elements to create music or modify sound. For instance, Speed Surfer[https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/speed-surfer/oepkojmchiibbhbdpaefmllmbnennllk?hl=en]is a Chrome extension that changes the speed and filter of sound playing in yourbrowser window.Usersound is a website where you can create an “audio” username with each letterrepresenting a note. Stacks [http://www.shibuyaaa.com/stacks] is a stem playerwhere you can create mixes by turning bars on or off in a 3×3 grid. Drops[http://www.shibuyaaa.com/drops] is about placing plaques in a pattern todeflect marbles falling down, which creates musical notes. Sampler is a websitethat turns YouTube videos into music samplers based on beats of different partsof the songs.The company’s more ambitious product is an iOS app called bop[https://laylo.com/shhhibuya/nfKHR]. This lets you place musical instruments andeffects in a grid to create different mixes of a base song. You can also adjusttempo and add one-time effects. Once you create these mixes, you can easilyexport them to TikTok or Instagram. A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya is also working on amultiplayer version, which would let users remix songs with others. The companyrecently added a prompt-based feature to create a sound.Zonoozy said that it is making an informed choice not to infuse AI into everypart of these apps. He is open to using AI to build these products and to makeinfrastructure solid, though.“AI is obviously extraordinarily powerful, but I think we just don’t necessarilybelieve that the future of music is simply generation, like song generation viaAI. And I think if AI starts to make that content more abundant, it actuallymakes taste and human perspective and interaction and participation even moreimportant and even more valuable. And we’re just trying to make sure it doesn’tmake it even rarer,” he said.This year, the company aims to release a “musical sandbox mixer” product thatwould let users play around with different elements of music-making, includingbeing able to create instruments.The story title was changed because, at the time of testing last month, therewere no prompt-based features in the startup’s apps. The company addedprompt-based features more recently to its apps.