Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sharooz Raoofi. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Sharooz, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I’m a firm believer that a company or a startup can’t or won’t exist if it’s simply a deck. A deck is a glorified daydream in my opinion. With Wavetick I knew we needed an actual tangible venture – real IP, revenue, community, a customer base, before we even thought about a deck or raising money. I’ve spent over two decades making and selling tools to musicians, so Wavetick’s existence was more of an evolution of my trajectory than a blue sky moment. With that said, I’d had plenty of experience (between prior startups being acquired) to understand precisely what was wrong with music tech.

We had a problem to solve. We didn’t want to offer a subscription model, we wanted to allow anyone and everyone to sell beats on our site, frictionlessly, with complete control over their destiny, and with the lowest possible platform commission in the industry. It took a LOT of work. From development to launch, it was an insane journey – the sheer scope of the legal work alone (we allow the wholesale rights purchase of tracks and sounds on the site). The build, particularly the payment gateway integration was the biggest technical challenge I’ve ever faced. We went through two separate teams of developers to get it right in the end.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve been a producer, DJ, music maker, sound designer, publisher and label owner. Almost entirely by accident I founded a company selling sounds and musical components for other producers to use in their music – and it just hit from the very beginning. A decade later it was acquired by Splice. While I was there I started another company developing music production software, and that was again sold to Splice. I had a small music publisher that BMG acquired and prior to that, had developed the first website for distributed sampled sounds, which was sold to Beatport. It’s been quite a journey. An accidental entrepreneur if you like.

Wavetick is a sort of amalgamate of all the things I’ve ever wanted as a producer of music. It’s a two-sided marketplace that allows users to sell royalty free beats to any music user to utilise, in any fashion they wish – by adding vocals, sampling or using the beats outright, unmodified, We offer 1 of 1, limited edition and unlimited beats. Beatmakers can keep all their copyrights and cancel at any time. It’s up to them to decide how and what to sell, and at what price. It’s free to upload and we only take 12.5% commission, paid instantly to the beatmakers. We even offer the wholesale IP purchase of song, so customers can even be bonafide record labels or publishers. It’s a utopia for creative rights.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

We care intensely and deeply about everything we do. It’s simple. Every singular aspect of our sound, aesthetic, even writing copy comes from a place of deep love and care. Without this, I don’t think it’s possible to have any confidence in the ability to appeal to a market, especially one as flaky as music. If you care about what you do, the rest of the story sort of writes itself.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

At Wavetick we make our own ‘in-house’ tracks and sounds as well, as those the general public ‘beatmakers’ are invited to upload. Almost everyone I know is a producer, musician or a studio boff. When I started we were all struggling to pay rent. It was (and still is) impossible for the vast majority – living in a city as expensive as London and trying to support yourself solely with music. So we needed a side hustle, and that became the ‘product’. I knew I could and had to draw on the resources of everyone in my friend circle – that’s how I’ve always approached our ‘products’ – by involving creative friends to the fullest extent possible. Strings players, arrangers, studio owners, topliners, mastering engineers – at some point we’ve called upon all of them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.wavetick.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wavetickmusic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wavetickmusic/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/91512922/admin/feed/posts/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/wavetickmusic

Image Credits
Brad Kinnan Laura Price-Bates