Exlusive Interview with Boomrat Founders

Posted by VMan on September 22, 2014

In an era where technology and music are even more intertwined, and platforms such as SoundCloud, iTunes, Pandora, Spotify, Beats and Hypem are even more in competition with each other to break the way we discover music, 2 young entrepreneurs, Ariel Lee and Andrew Silberstein, come along with Boomrat, the newest platform to shake up the music/technology scene. For those who aren’t familiar with the website, Boomrat is a blog aggregator which compiles the latest posts from the hottest dance music blogs (FreshNewTracks included) to display a real time interactive chart of the hottest tracks of the moment. I had the chance to sit down with Ariel, and Andrew to discuss the idea behind their latest venture, their background, what makes Boomrat unique, what they’re listening to, and so much more! Click on the jump for the full interview and check out Boomrat.com and see what the hype is about!

1. What was the idea behind Boomrat, what lead you guys to start this?

Andrew: Ariel and I grew frustrated at the amount of time it took to discover good dance music online. There are too any blogs to keep track of, and it seemed like new ones were popping up each week. We built a tool that we wanted to use — one that aggregated content from the leading dance blogs and then filtered it based on our tastes so we could spend less time listening to music that didn’t appeal to us. The idea snowballed into what Boomrat is today.

Ariel : We built Boomrat because we wanted to use this service. Today, we’re still our own target market. Boomrat is a tool that makes it easy to find the best new songs and artists, something that works for you instead of the other way round.

2. If you could tell me a little about your backgrounds in music and technology… And what got you into it?

Ariel: I built websites in middle school, then worked in the nightlife industry as a teenager, promoting and organizing club events while I was living in Hong Kong. When I moved to LA for college, I did a lot of creative direction and design work- including branding / logo designs for electronic artists like Alesso, MAKJ, Nervo, etc.

Andrew: I have always been a computer nerd and started building web sites when I was 10. I started working in the hip-hop and R&B world after throwing the first concert for R&B superstar Ne-Yo. He ultimately hired me to run his web site and online fan club and soon after I began consulting with Def Jam Records (Ne-Yo’s label) on a bunch of their projects, including Nas, Rick Ross, Young Jeezy, and Rihanna. When I moved to LA for college I discovered the dance music scene and quickly fell in love with it. I started a dance music site, ICanGiveYouHouse.com while at USC and decided upon graduating that I wanted to continue to pursue my interest in the digital dance music space.

3. What kind of music have you guys been listening to lately? Any hidden gems you’d like to share?

Ariel: My most recent 3 favourite songs have been:

Durante ft. Chuck Ellis – Slow Burn — such a jam

Oliver – Light Years Away — Obsessed with this EP

Caribou – Can’t Do Without You (Mano Le Tough & Tale of Us Remix) — favourite song at Burning Man!

Also very excited for the new Gorgon City album to drop.

Hear more of my picks here and at Chilled Playlist  | Electronic Soul Playlist

Andrew: I’ve been obsessing over all of Ten Walls’ new material, including his recently released Essential Mix. I’m also a big fan of Adriatique, Bob Moses, and Matthew Dekay. In terms of a hidden gem, I just heard the new Kele record coming out in October. I’m really digging the album – look out for it!

Hear more of my favorite tracks here.

4. Other than FreshNewTracks what are some of your favorite blogs to find new music?

Andrew: Rolling Tuff, Gotta Dance Dirty, Vacay.io, and Earmilk

Ariel: We’ve listed our top blogs to find new music in the Boomrat Directory, but a few of my faves include Gotta Dance Dirty, Rolling Tuff, Hypetrak, Earmilk, and Caveman Sound.. a lot of the bloggers behind these sites are featured users on Boomrat as they have amazing taste.

5.A blog like ours, we’re focused on discovering new talents, how can Boomrat help emerging artists looking for exposure?

Andrew: Boomrat helps emerging artists reach new fans worldwide. For years, web apps like Soundcloud and blogs like yours have helped introduce new music to tens of millions of music fans worldwide. Nowadays there is so much new content coming out on a daily basis, which can be daunting for fans of electronic music. The goal of Boomrat is to filter this content for our users based on their personal taste so they can waste less time on consuming undesirable music and more time listening to tracks and mixes they’ll love. We hear from our users all the time that they have discovered their latest favorite DJ through Boomrat, and such discovery is critical to driving ticket sales and general demand for that artist both online and at event.

Ariel: From a feature perspective, our trending chart is the fastest dance music chart that exists – it updates hourly and songs quickly trend based on real-time movement online. I’ve heard from many fans that they are finding new artists via the chart in addition to our curated playlists where we often try to feature songs from more emerging producers. The Artist Card feature on Boomrat can also be very useful–when you’re listening to a song you can click any underlined artist name to see that artist card pop out with info + more songs by the artist, and can instantly track them to get updates when they are tagged to new music. We also do our best to highlight emerging artists within the Directory.

6. Where do you see yourselves in 5 years along with the platform?

Both: In five years we hope Boomrat will be a must-use application in the dance music space that provides significant value to all of its users. We’d also like to see the Boomrat brand expand into the fashion and event markets. We’ve also discussed applying the same principles of aggregation and filtration to other music genres. 5 years is a while from now though, so who knows!

7. What are your long term goals as entrepreneurs and people?

Ariel: As an entrepreneur, to create beautiful products that make people’s lives better. As a person, to impact the world in a positive way.

Andrew: I want to ease the process for people to discover products (be it music, art, clothing, etc.) that they will love. There is so much amazing stuff in the world. The internet gives us access to discover seemingly infinite amounts of content, but discovery channels are fragmented and chaotic. I would like to apply the strategy we devised for Boomrat to other industries.

8. And last but not least, any secrets you can share about ways of facilitating tracks up the chart? The Hypem formula is still an enigma to me, why I’m asking!

Both: We built a proprietary algorithm with our development team that includes the number of blogs posting songs (including Soundcloud sources), how recently the blog posts were written, social media statistics, and our users’ interaction with the tracks on Boomrat itself. So while having users track songs on the chart isn’t the main factor behind song rankings, it definitely helps!

Tags: artist, Boomrat, electronic music, idea, love, playlists, song, time, track