Rormix Helps You Discover New Music by Focusing on their Videos

We all love YouTube, but it’s hard to deny that it has probably gotten too big for its own good. There is so much content—the company states over 100 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute—and so much of it gets lost in the clutter (understandably). Music videos make up a large percentage of the content on the site, and yet so many of them go unnoticed, having to live in the shadows of million-dollar mini-movies from the likes of Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and so many others.

Rormix is a new app that is looking to help with the uncluttering, offering a space for unsigned and underground artists to upload their music videos without the fear of being pushed aside for bigger, more well known acts. Co-founder Emma Owens said they were hoping to create a platform for quality videos, but one that “took the Miley Cyruses and the cat videos out of it”.

Outside of YouTube, the internet is littered with innumerable options for finding a new favorite artist or song, with everything from Pandora to Last.fm to the hundreds of thousands of blogs all doing their part to spread the good word. While it’s not difficult to listen to new tunes, videos are often not the focus for the most of the alternative options, which is where Rormix comes in.

The company officially launched a rough version last October, but the app that’s available now was rolled out this past April. The program already has over 100,000 downloads, with 4,000 artists submitting new videos on a daily basis.

The app allows users to search for music in a variety of ways, whether it be via what’s new, what’s trending, or by searching the name of a popular singer and seeing who is similar. Artists posting their videos get to categorize their work by genre and by tagging more famous names who they feel closest compare to what they are recording.

So far, reactions have been positive all around, with both those submitting videos and those viewing agreeing that Rormix is a great idea. The company has been around just long enough where a few of the acts that were there from the beginning have started to find real success, placing songs on radio and synching on TV spots.

Music videos entered a new golden era several years ago, and it can be argued that they are more important now than ever before. High quality cameras are cheaper and more available than they used to be, as is the software used for editing and adding special effects, so making a video isn’t as difficult as it was in MTV ’s heyday. Having said that, even a small budget can be big bucks to up and coming artists, and it’s a shame that so many invest their time and money into crafting visuals to match their songs, only to have the internet swallow them whole.

The company is looking forward to another round of funding this fall, promoting their recently-launched web presence, and on monetizing the app. Rormix is looking into new, progressive advertising options, as they feel the typical 30-second spot before a clip plays isn’t the way to go, as it interrupts the viewing experience. In addition, they are also looking into a new “Quick” option, which lets viewers catch only a few seconds of a song before deciding whether they like it or not.

It’s nice to see a space where discovery of new singers and bands is based around both the music and the visual, which have never been more intertwined than they are these days. The internet is the go-to place for new music discovery, and with mobile increasingly becoming the avenue through which people go online, an app is the obvious next step for underground artists to share their work with the world.

I personally discovered a few interesting new bands—such as Rush Midnight and Reuben and the Dark—after only a few minutes, and I'm excited to find more.