Spotify’s Former Innovation Head Secures $5.5M Pre-Seed for Music App

Spotify’s former Head of Innovation raises $5.5m pre-seed for music app startup, A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya; Dawn Ostroff among the backers

September 15, 2026 By Mandy Dalugdug

A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya , a startup that releases small apps for ‘playing with’ music, has raised a USD $5.5 million pre-seed round.

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TechCrunch reported the round on Monday (September 14), describing the company as releasing a series of small apps that let users play around with sounds and vocals. Founder Máuhan M. Zonoozy pointed to the story as the company’s official announcement. Neither the story nor Zonoozy said when the round closed.

The company was founded in 2024 . Zonoozy left Spotify that year, according to the site.

TechCrunch listed Dawn Ostroff , Spotify ‘s former Chief Content & Advertising Business Officer, among the round’s backers, and reported that she has joined the company as an advisor.

Zonoozy joined Spotify in 2021 as its first Head of Innovation and reported directly to Ostroff , according to an interview published by CNN Business in April that year.

Ostroff ‘s departure from the streaming service was announced in January 2023 , alongside Spotify’s decision to cut over 500 jobs .

Zonoozy confirmed the raise in a post on LinkedIn : “we raised a pre-seed round to design the future of music.”

In the same post, he thanked 13 investors, without saying which had taken part in the pre-seed.

Those 13 were RRE Ventures , SV Angel , BoxGroup , Liquid 2 Ventures , Quiet Capital , Gold House , Common Metal , Avex Music Group , Systemic Ventures , Remarkable Ventures , Breakers , Mantis Venture Capital , and Collaborative Fund .

TechCrunch named all but two of them as backers of the round, leaving out RRE Ventures and Avex Music Group .

The company’s recruitment listing on Wellfound puts its total funding higher than the round, at “$9M+,” and names both NFX and RRE Ventures among its investors.

Writing about the company’s origins in the LinkedIn post, Zonoozy said: “i started a vinyl bar in shibuya to design music products for the ‘post-streaming’ era. i was (and remain) super inspired by what’s happening in music tech, AI, and gaming, and believe the ‘next spotify’ will be found at the convergence of the three.

“if you know me, you know that i also really like toys and instruments. we’ve leveraged the two as our design principles in creating new interfaces for people to express themselves creatively with music. ‘musicking’ as we like to call it.”

> “if you know me, you know that i also really like toys and instruments. we’ve leveraged the two as our design principles in creating new interfaces for people to express themselves creatively with music. ‘musicking’ as we like to call it.” Máuhan M. Zonoozy , A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya

Later in the same post, Zonoozy described the business: “a vinyl bar in shibuya. we’re a music (software) label designing the future of music. lfg.”

In an essay published on X in March , Zonoozy spelled out what that means: “a label that treats software like music: web apps as singles, native apps as EPs, essays as liner notes, prototypes as B-sides.”

He calls the model “cultureware” and says the company is “building a band, not a team.” The company is headquartered in New York , where its current job listings are based.

Its products include Stacks , a stem player built on a three-by-three grid, and Speed Surfer , a Chrome extension that alters the playback speed and filtering of audio in an open browser tab.

Its iOS app, Bop , which launched in beta in April, lets users arrange instruments and effects on a grid to build their own versions of a song, then send the results to TikTok or Instagram .

A multiplayer version of Bop is in development, according to TechCrunch , along with a sandbox-style mixing product the company aims to release this year, which would include letting users create their own instruments.

In the March essay, Zonoozy described building an AI music tool called Hugging Bass after leaving Spotify , then walking away from it: “For a minute, it felt like the obvious path. AI music infrastructure. Picks and shovels.

“Cool, sure. But not the vibe.”

Zonoozy told TechCrunch that the company has made an informed choice not to build AI into every part of its apps, and that it does not “necessarily believe that the future of music is simply generation.”

He is open to using AI to build the products and to strengthen their infrastructure, TechCrunch reported. The company added a prompt-based feature for creating sounds after the site tested its apps last month.

That addition led TechCrunch to revise the headline on its September 14 story, which had originally described the apps as free of AI prompting.

Avex Music Group , one of the investors named by Zonoozy , is the global music division of Tokyo-listed Avex .

Avex Music Group announced an initial commitment of USD $100 million in April to acquiring publishing catalogs and companies.

Avex also backs Hook , the AI-powered remixing and mashup app that raised USD $10 million in a Series A led by Khosla Ventures in February.

Zonoozy has also been an entrepreneur in residence at Collaborative Fund , another investor in the company, since earlier this year, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Before Spotify , he founded Bubbl , a video clipping and remixing company; Cricket Media acquired it in 2018 for undisclosed terms.

By October 2022 , MBW was describing him as Spotify’s Head of Content Business Innovation and Market Intelligence , when he was billed to speak at the Music Tectonics conference.

Zonoozy ended his post: “(oh, and we’re hiring – hmu!)” Music Business Worldwide

News United States A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya Dawn Ostroff Máuhan Zonoozy Spotify

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_Originally reported by [Music Business Worldwide](https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotifys-former-head-of-innovation-raises-5-5m-pre-seed-for-music-app-startup-a-vinyl-bar-in-shibuya-dawn-ostroff-among-the-backers/)._