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Songfinch is a personalized gifting company that brings stories, feelings and memories to life through one-of-a-kind songs. With the option to have a song created from scratch or to personalize an existing song foundation, their community of professional songwriters will handcraft the most personal gift you can give. To find out more about their service and platform, we sat down with Rob Lindquist, Co-Founder and President of Songfinch.
Q: Can you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Songfinch?
A: Songfinch offers everybody a new way to connect to a loved one through a medium that almost every human on earth enjoys and can relate to – music. We’ve developed a platform that allows customers to shape their song as close to their vision as possible resulting in the most unique, personalized gift they’ve ever given.
Q: Tell us about your Song From Scratch product offering and how it works.
A: Our Song From Scratch is the first product that we launched with back in October 2016. These songs are totally built from the ground up and heavily influenced by the customer. The process is pretty simple, our customer starts by telling us who the song is for, what the occasion is and how they want the recipient to react when they hear it. From there, they tell us their favorite stories, memories and feelings which are used to craft the lyrics of the song. Next they select the genre, vocalist gender and moods they want the song to convey. We take this information and hand-select the best fitting songwriter from our Songwriting Community of 300+ to bring their song to life. The songwriter develops the melodies, creates the instrumental, writes the lyrics, records the song and mixes it before delivery to Songfinch. Within 7 days, the song is completed and living on your Story Homepage (a personalized url) where you can listen and download the song, read the lyrics, learn about your songwriter and share it on social platforms.
We recently released a photo slideshow product that allows anyone that purchases a Song From Scratch to upload photos and we will generate a beautiful slideshow and sync their new song over it. It amplifies the meaning of the lyrics and is a great way to deliver the song to that special someone. It makes the best gift even better.
Q: You’ve recently launched a new way to create personalized songs; can you tell us about that?
A: After creating over 800 songs, we talked with a lot of our customers as well as visitors that didn’t purchase to get some feedback and insight. Based on these conversations, we developed an offering that would solve what we identified as two minor roadblocks with our original product: the unknown of who your artist is before purchase and offering a lower priced product. Although the feedback from our first 800 songs was overly positive, we wanted more people to be able to experience the magic of a personalized song so we launched the option to Build From An Existing Song Foundation.
Q: What is a Song Foundation and how does it work?
A: A Song Foundation is a pre-made chorus and instrumental giving the customer more insight into the final product’s sound and feel, while costing half the price of a Song From Scratch.
The gift-giver begins by browsing through our collection of song foundations until they find the one that fits the occasion, style and the message they want to convey. From there, they answer a few questions about their favorite memories with the recipient, what makes them special, etc. and their songwriter uses this information to write and record two personalized verses over the selected song foundation. This makes the song sound and feel like it was made from scratch for them even though half of it was already created. Below is a visual that explains a bit more in depth of how our Song Foundations are laid out and where the personalized verses fit within the song:
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You can listen to our available Song Foundations here.
Q: What occasions are good to give songs as gifts?
A: A personalized song makes a perfect gift for almost any occasion – especially for those that are impossible to buy for because they have it all or buy anything they want before you can.
We’ve done a bunch of songs for the typical holidays like Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Sweetest Day and Valentine’s Day. We’ve also done quite a few songs for life events such as birthdays, bar mitzvahs / bat mitzvahs, anniversaries, weddings, memorials, graduations, family members being deployed in the armed services and newborns. Aside from that, there are also some ‘outside of the box’ purposes people get songs created for such as songs to help loved ones fight cancer and/or support throughout, break up songs, songs to help get through rough times in life, songs to recognize star employees within a business, songs to help sales teams get meetings with that client they can’t get ahold of and many more.
In the end, many of our songs revert back to the main theme of love, togetherness, appreciation and/or support.
Q: Tell a bit about your Songwriting Community and what makes them special.
A: Our Songwriting Community is one of things that makes Songfinch so incredible. We really pride ourselves on treating songwriters and musicians like part of our family and providing a source of immediate income so they can make money doing what they love to do. The music industry can be a rough place, especially for up and coming artists. So when we were developing Songfinch, one concept we really wanted to keep in the forefront of it all was making our songwriters feel like they are a vital part of our business – which is 100% true. I’ve worked in the music industry for over 10 years and I’ve seen firsthand how artists usually get the short end of the stick, so we developed a platform they can feel great about being a part of and feel like we are on their team and not against them.
Our Songwriting Community ranges from artists that have written number one hits, toured with some of the biggest names in music and have millions of streams to up and coming artists that just put out their first album and are building their name. Every one of our artists have a couple things in common – they want to make a positive impact with their music and they are super-talented songwriters and musicians. Every artist goes through an onboarding process to become a part of our Songwriting Community – we’re pretty selective about the musicians we work with.
We work with professional musicians and do not have a small roster of musicians that imitate different genres. If you order a country song from Songfinch, we curate an actual country artist to create it for you making the song sound and feel authentic. This leads to a much better product for our customers and makes our artists feel a lot more comfortable creating the songs.
In the end, we couldn’t do what we do without our community of songwriters, musicians and artists.
Q: What has been the feedback from your Songwriting Community thus far?
A: The feedback from our Songwriting Community has been great. They love the fact that they can use their gift of music creation and songwriting to spread love and impact people in meaningful ways. We always make sure to pass customer feedback to them about the songs they make and this really helps connect the dots and show the artist the type of value they’re providing. When the songs they create make people cry, connect like never before, help get through rough times, etc. it offers a sense of validation and satisfaction to the artist that is tough to get on a constant basis making your own music. It also offers a sense of confidence that can be tough to maintain while working in this industry.
Another thing our songwriters and musicians really love is the fact that they are paid right away. Everything in the music industry is ‘hurry up and wait’ style. Hurry and get the song sent over for a TV show license and then wait 3-6 months for payment. Royalties generally take around 6-12 months to be paid out. So when they can knock out a few songs for us and have the money in their pocket the same day – it’s an overly-welcomed, rare concept to them that they appreciate.
Overall, the feedback has been fantastic and we’ve developed a community of some of the most talented artists I’ve had the privilege of working with. I look forward to building with them and becoming a place that thousands of musicians can come to and put together beautiful songs for people all over the world.
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Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: We have a bunch of exciting things in the works. First of all, we want to keep spreading the word that a gift like this exists so more people can experience the magic of connecting to a loved one or celebrating a major life event with a personalized song. Many of our customers are so blown away by the songs they receive, they tell their friends and family and referrals have been a good way to spread the business but we need to keep spreading the word.
Next, we are continuing to expand our Song Foundation offering. This will get more artists involved, expand the styles of music we offer and get more options in each occasion. We really think that this offering can be something similar to the new music greeting card. Think about it, you select the instrumental and chorus “off the shelf.” The instrumental is similar to a card’s design and feel while the lyrics of the chorus are similar to the pre-written message on and in the card. Once you buy it, you personalize two verses which is very similar to the personalized message you would write in the greeting card. The thought process behind both are pretty similar from a consumer point of view but the power of a personalized song is much greater than a greeting card.
Another thing we will be launching this year are add-on products. We’ve tested a few and the response has been positive. We’ll be launching with the ability to get songs pressed on a 7” vinyl, songs delivered on a CD, handwritten lyrics by the artist, and more. Along with this, we will be expanding on our photo slideshow service to offer more themes and additional features and controls for the user. We launched our current slideshow product last week and so far, the feedback has been incredible. It really brings the song’s lyrics to life and adds a lot to our product.
Q: Would you like to add anything else?
A: First off, thank you for chatting with me about Songfinch. I feel we’re onto something really special and the impact we are making with every song is beyond anything I’ve ever been a part of or witnessed. I’d love to put a song together for anyone reading this to experience the magic first-hand.
I hope to create some songs for some of your life’s most special occasions! Cheers.
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