Ola Sars, Founder and CEO of Soundtrack Your Brand on: Partnering With A Giant in Your Industry and Pivoting When The Pandemic Kills Your Market.

My guest today is Ola Sars, Founder of Soundtrack Your Brand, the world's fastest-growing music-platform for B2B, which he co-founded together with Spotify back in 2014. Ola is an expert in music-tech, having founded several music-tech businesses including Beats Music which was acquired by Apple and transformed into Apple Music. Soundtrack Your Brand supplies streaming music to businesses and public venues like malls, restaurants, cafes, and shops and includes clients like Joe and The Juice, McDonald’s, Lululemon, J.Crew, IKEA, and others.
  • [1:33] - Why did you get into music tech?  Why are there so many music tech businesses coming out of Sweden?
  • [5:05] - How has the transition from B2C to B2B business been for you given all your earlier startups were in the B2C space?
  • [7:56] - What did you need to do to go from a field sales go-to-market model to a fully self serve model. What did you need to change in the organization or investment priorities?
  • [17:21] - Some stores like M&S have stopped “piped music” completely in their stores. What are some trends you are seeing in the B2B streaming space?
  • [25:55] - Is there any enforcement happening that educates businesses that streaming music from their personal accounts is illegal?
  • [30:03] - How defensible is your technology and why can’t Spotify or Apple build this into their platform?
  • [33:41] - Why did you decide to separate from Spotify and what advice would you give other entrepreneurs looking to partner with a large industry player in their space?
  • [40:20] - How did the pandemic impact your business given you sell to businesses that were all shut down for months this year?  How do you motivate yourself and your employees to keep going?
  • [44:50] - How are you using the data collected on your platform? What are you doing with this data?

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