This is the second and final part of the interview I had the pleasure of conducting with Jason Grunstra from JamCloud. We talk about his musical likes, and lots and lots of underground artists.  If you haven’t already done so, read the first part of the interview here.

PART II

MUSIC & YOU

When did you become interested in music? What was the first album or single you ever purchased?

I believe that we are all born with a natural interest in music. It’s part of our DNA; just listen to the rhythm of your own heart beat! I’m sure our early ancestors were making music as soon as they were able to bang two sticks together!

The first music I purchased was in 1991 and was Naughty By Nature’s self titled album.

Are you in a band yourself, or have you been in a band in the past? Is there a clip on YouTube or elsewhere we could watch?

I once dabbled in recording engineered and recorded a demo tape with a close friend of mine from high school. YouTube didn’t exist back then though. I wish I had registered the domain name though!

Musical likes and dislikes? Favorite artists?

I tend to follow the hip-hop genre most closely, but I’ve also discovered a lot of really great content in other genres by using JamCloud. Recently I tend to gravitate to more underground artists, like Homeboy Sandman  or Classified . I think a new artist by the name of Shy B  has a lot of potential. My favorite artist of all time would have to be E-40 because if his unique style and overall creativity and hustle.

As far as dislikes… I try to keep an open mind, and one of the popular rooms on JamCloud is “The Music Lounge” which is an anything goes room. Generally I can tolerate most of the music played in that room. But the other day someone played some trance music and I just couldn’t handle it. I have no desire to be in a trance – I prefer to be cognizant. Continue reading →

Today I bring you a really complete interview with Jason Grunstra from JamCloud, the revolutionary service for enjoying music and videos collectively that I profiled last week on MusicKO. I sincerely thank Jason for having taken the time to answer everything so thoroughly. You can read the first part of the interview below; the second part is here.

Full Name: Jason Grunstra
Age: 33
Startup: JamCloud
Position: Co-Founder & CEO

PART I

THE STARTUP

Tell us a little about your startup. How was it conceived?

JamCloud was created as a way to harness the massive amount of media that already exists out in the cloud and collect and organize those items that you love from various content providers into one unified player.

What are its most distinctive features in your opinion? Does JamCloud lend itself to more than listening to music? Who else could benefit from it?

Overall I would say that the most distinctive thing when you first use JamCloud is really the overall app itself in that it is really intuitive, easy to use and just looks great. If I had to choose a specific feature I would probably say the discovery tools that we’ve come up with give people multiple ways to discover some really great music and videos that they may have never otherwise heard of before. Tapping into the collective knowledge of friends and peers really helps bring some hidden talent to the surface.

Music is certainly the first thing that comes to mind when using the app. But when you think about it, JamCloud is actually the perfect app to use for any type of content that is fun to watch with others. Comedy routines is a great example – everyone loves to laugh with friends. Or sports highlights is another example where users can chat in real-time as they watch the same sports clips that are synced up across multiple peoples computers. JamCloud really creates an environment where you can socialize with others about any interest really. Or how about animated short films? We even have a group that shares woodworking videos with each other and get inspiration from others for their own projects. The possibilities are limitless.

So far, in which countries has JamCloud been better-received?

We started with the US audience since that’s where we are based, but we’ve had a really good reception in Canada, Germany and the UK. Many times people outside of the US will see a new music platform spring up one day to only to get shut down a few months later due to the record labels clamping down and I think those people are just plain tired of it. With JamCloud since we aren’t the ones providing the actual content we are able to reach an international audience without any problems. We’re just finishing up work on translations for the application into Spanish, German, French and Japanese. Continue reading →