Exclusive Interview with Dario Zampetti: CEO of Veenue.com
Recently I had the occasion (and the pleasure I have to say) to interview Dario Zampetti, founder and CEO of Veenue, the first online music collaboration platform we talked about some months ago. Here’s the interview!
THE PRESENT & JOE SATRIANI
I have seen that you managed to involve Joe Satriani, a great guitarist indeed! How did this collaboration start?
Well, from the beginning, we were thinking that it would have been great to see a great musician participate to the project, record some music, make it available to everyone and, then, see the people’s reaction to this contribution.
After some calls we managed to reach Joe and he told us to be really interested into the project. Then, since the last concert of the Chickefoot tour was in Düsseldorf, I flew there to meet him. You know, I’m a guitarist, I always studied Satriani’s riffs and music so for me, having the chance to meet him was definitely a “dream come true”.
He was really professional, positive and, despite the fact that his concert was about to start, he dedicated time to me to answer all my questions.
He then went back home and he sent me two videos. When I saw them, I was surprised because he actually recorded two entire songs while I was expecting maybe only two loops: there were infact a refrain, a bridge, a solo and everything. A great occasions for all our users to challenge themselves and play with this great musician!
THE BEGINNING
Where did you find the resources to start bulding up Veenue.com?
Since from the beginning my first thought has always been to use and work with videos. I decided then to contact an off-shore company that developed the technology and the software needed for the project. I did some demo and the idea reached the board of Volkswagen thanks to Blackboard Berlin , the company I still work for. The marketing department of Volkswagen liked the project a lot and decided to use it to promote the new Beetle. So we started building the website.
For the website who do you rely on?
After some researches, I found a company called Bulls and amazing guys (Alberto Ribotta, Carlo Syed and Mario Ciardulli) who helped me out with the website and all the IT side of the project. They have done an amazing job indeed.
THE FUTURE
So now let’s talk about the future: which are the future developments of this project?
I would like to bring the vision and the concept of this project on mobile. Now we already have a mobile app that makes easier to upload videos on musicians’ profiles by simply resizing the file recorded with a smartphone. In the future I would also like to make the sync tool available on mobiles too.
Which is your ultimate idea for your project?
My dream at the end of the day is to reward the musicians and their music. Basically I would like the musician to stop feeling “useless”. You know, when you’re a musician you study so many hours at home, without any reward, that at certain point you look outside of the window and you ask yourself: “why?” and you end up looking for another job. I would like to say “no” to this situation because a musician’s studying is so intense that deserves recognition and must be rewarded somehow.
And nowadays we have so many possibilities with internet and new technologies that we really need to work to fix this. For example we have now two partners: Muse Score (free music composition and notation software) and Sell A Band that allows fans to finance musicians they like, both great examples of how internet can help.
YOU & MUSIC
Which are your top three musicians/bands?
You know, having studied guitar for many years I listen a lot of guitarists so I would say
1) Jon Gomm
2) Zoe Keating (an example for every musician who wants to use the power of internet and social media)
3) Foo Fighters
Thank you very much indeed for your time Dario!
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