The ever-growing world of music can all fit in the palm of a hand, but is scattered across different apps. In combining two of the most used music sharing apps, Alec Ellin, the co-founder of Darkchart, has been working on a solution.

In a couple of weeks, Ellin, a senior television, radio and film major, will release the music app, but only to a select few people. This exclusive, invite-only launch aims to create a community dedicated to music before it’s available to the rest of the world.

Ellin explained the concept of Darkchart in three parts. First, it combines Soundcloud and Spotify. Second, it makes sharing music with friends simple by letting you choose where artist recommendations come from. Third, they make it easy to create, share and talk about playlists.

The app has been tested in-house in order to make sure it works correctly and efficiently without any bugs or issues. Once opened to the general public, Darkchart will serve as a social media platform to share and discuss music.

Ellin has been writing a music blog for over six years, Thelaidbacklife.com, which he used to share new music with his friends. Over the course of a year and a half, his blog blew up and Ellin had over 25,000 subscribers.

Through his blog, Ellin was hired to help out in the A&R (Artists and Repertoire) Department at Sony in the summer of 2014. He finally was able to see just how the music industry works. His job involved scouting the internet in order to find great new music and artists that hadn’t been signed yet.

While he was working there, Ellin created a list with at least 50 new artists that he recognized as hidden gems. He found a huge range of artists in different music genres and after repeatedly showing the artists to his boss, who was a rock and roll fan, he felt disappointed when his artists were overlooked and not signed.

“I kind of got discouraged from this system that they had set up at the label,” Ellin said. “In the meantime, I was still running the blog and seeing how cool it was to be able to get music spread online.”

About a year and a half ago, Ellin along with the other co-founder of Darkchart, Prodan Statev who recently transferred to NYU, were brainstorming a way to make sharing music much more simple and efficient. Statev and Ellin met while taking COM 400: “Trendspotting in Digital Media,” and started hanging out because they shared a love for technology and design.

They discussed the idea of Darkchart a lot while Ellin was in the process of building it. Statev told Ellin he would be willing to drop all of his other projects in order to join Darkchart. Since then, they have worked together to build the app. After they put their own money into Darkchart and formulated all of the different aspects of the app, they have been reaching out to big names in the industry.

They’ve built a team of advisors, including Ellin’s former boss from Sony who was vice resident of A&R. They also have the support from the former CEO of Virgin Records and another manager in the industry.

“Basically, we are just trying to get a good mix of thoughts throughout the industry to observe what we are doing and give feedback,” Ellin said.

After graduating, Ellin plans on moving back to Los Angeles in order to fully invest his time into Darkchart and expand it to its fullest potential.

“We are trying to build it up before I graduate and start building the hype over the summer,” Ellin said. “Hopefully, it will be full-scale by the end of the summer.”

Published on April 11, 2016 at 8:57 pm