An Interview With Kurt Weiberth, The Founder & CEO Of Odesli

SSupported by cloud service provider DigitalOcean – Try DigitalOcean now and receive a $200 when you create a new account!
Listen to this article

Odesli is a platform for creating smart links to help users share music, podcasts and more. Below is our recent interview with Kurt Weiberth, Founder and CEO of Odesli:

Q: For those who haven’t heard of it, what is the best way to describe Odesli?

A: We have automated matching systems that can automatically gather all the links to a song or album across all the streaming platforms, such as Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. On top of this, we’ve built a customization platform which allows the user to edit these smart link pages by adding extra links (e.g. a recording artist will add links to their merch and tickets), or even create a completely custom page to share whatever they’d like. The coolest part is that we have a bunch of relevant, personalizable domains to use for the URLs to these pages, such as song.link, album.link, artist.link, mylink.page, and more.

Having both an automated matching algorithm and a customization platform enables us to be a valuable tool for both content creators (e.g. recording artists) as well as content consumers (e.g. music fans). On the music fan side of things, we have a bunch of integrations that help them share songs and albums, including iOS shortcuts, a Slack bot and a Facebook Messenger bot.

Q: You’ve recently switched your company name to Odesli; could you tell us something more?

A: We originally called ourselves “Songlink” since we started out with a matching algorithm for songs and albums, and everything was hosted at the song.link domain. However, we recently launched a large suite of features that includes user accounts, subscription revenue model, and the introduction of more relevant domains such as album.link and artist.link. Furthermore, we’re about to expand the capabilities of our matching algorithm to include artists, podcasts and more.

So, in a nutshell, we’re outgrowing the “song” in “Songlink” and we knew we’d have to change our name to support our long-term goals and growth.

Q: Can you give us insights into your pricing plans?

A: Our automated links are generated on-demand and are free and open to use; in fact, they don’t even require the user to log in. If the user would like to edit or customize these links, they can sign up/log in, clone the automated page and then make edits, such as adding links or changing the order of the links. Many of these edit features are free, though some are not, such as a custom URL (e.g. artist.link/Adele) or access to the page’s traffic analytics. To access these premium features, the user must upgrade that page at a price of $4 per month per page. More info can be found on our pricing page.

Q: Why is now the time for a technology solution like Odesli?

A: Streaming is growing in music, podcasts, television and film, and the multitude streaming platforms results in content duplication; i.e. a new song is uploaded to at least 10 streaming platforms (and that’s just the US platforms). This causes fragmentation in the consumer market: you may use Spotify but I use Apple Music. So how do we effectively share links to content on these two separate platforms?

This is where Odesli comes in. We help fans share content with each other and also help the content creators share with all of their fans, regardless of which individual streaming platforms anyone is using. In a social media-drive world where there’s only room for one link in bio, it’s important that that link reach and service as many followers as possible, and our links do this.

Q: What are the company’s plans and goals for the future?

A: In the short-term, we will be focusing on improving/tweaking our subscription model and premium offerings since it was just recently launched and we’re getting a bunch of great feedback from users. And of course we want to sell a bunch of subscriptions.

In the long-term, we will be expanding the capabilities of our matching algorithm to include podcasts and other content such as books, TV shows and films. We want to be the (global) technology that powers (all) content sharing.

,