[Interview] Meludia’s Founder Bastien Sannac on how they’re changing the game in music learning

Throughout the July / August vacation period, the Rude Baguette will be running a series of interviews with some of France’s top and rising startups, where their founders give us more insight into their business, their future plans and what sets them apart from the rest. In this installment, we talk with Bastien Sannac, Founder & CEO of Meludia, which  via gamification, is looking to change the paradigm in how people learn music.

For those readers who don’t know Meludia, tell us about what you do and how the idea to start Meludia came about?

Meludia is an online game that teaches how to think and imagine music. We approach music learning through sensations and emotions, before the theory.Meludia started four years ago, when I met Vincent Chaintrier for improving my compositions. After a few lessons, I was so impressed by Vincent’s teaching method that I proposed him to build a game to disseminate it throughout the world.

I imagine your users are seeing positive results from Meludia. What are some of the positive results you’re seeing? What type of feedback are you getting?

This is true, we receive amazing messages from our users everyday. The most frequent feedback we get from them is: “I wish I had learnt music this way when I was just a kid. Now I will do my best to recover lost time”.

What stage is Meludia at in its product development? What are the new features and innovations that you are looking to add?

A beta version of Meludia was released late 2013. Since then, the program is constantly updated, based on thousands of feedbacks. The team is now composed of 20 people and the program is about to be used in the best music schools in the world.

We are about to release a second version of our product. It will include more animations, new instruments, harder levels and social competition. We are very surprised how much our users take possession of our platform. They share brillant ideas with us, ideas which we are currently implementing. This confirms the huge expectations about music learning.

I know that your cofounder Vincent Chaintrier’s 25 yrs of work with over 3k students has formed the foundation of Meludia. How is Meludia working with the academic world today? Do you find music teachers to be enthusiastic users of Meludia?

Thanks to Vincent experience and inspiration, Meludia is probably the most powerful music teaching software ever. We adapt to every style and level of musician. Feedbacks from educators are also very good, even from the most conservative ones.We are being contacted and we are in touch with some of the best music schools in the world. We are currently starting deployments in some of them. Teachers have always wanted to give their students useful, pleasant and trackable homework. Now they can!

Where are your users today (in terms of geography)? How do you see this changing over time?

Most of our users are in the USA, in the UK and in France today. But for the last weeks, we can see interesting variations:Meludia seems to be adopted a lot in Germany and in the countries of Northern Europe…In the mid term, we plan to have a majority of users in the USA. And even if it is not fully in place today, we plan to go global, since the need for music is global.

I understand that you’ve recently closed a round of funding. What milestones will this round enable you to achieve? What’s next for Meludia?

This seed round has enabled us to accelerate our international growth, complete our product team and start R&D projects.As for later plans, we want to become the partner alongside musicians, working with them throughout their life and supporting their needs for training, performing and creating.

Meludia will also be recruiting at our upcoming Paris Startup Job Fair at the CentQuatre on September 13th. So if you’re looking to make your next career move, make sure to sign-up today!

Startups and other high-growth tech companies, if you’re looking to expand your team, make sure to fill-out this form and we’ll get back to you asap!