Trubify Music Collaboration Platform
Director of Product Management and Operations (2018-2023)
From Live-Streaming to a Full-Scale Music Collaboration Platform
Trubify was born from a bold vision: a live-streaming platform built exclusively for musicians, giving artists a dedicated space to connect with fans and monetize their performances. Founded by a session guitarist from Hollywood and Motown, the platform quickly gained traction, attracting artists looking for a better way to showcase their music. But as the product matured, early user data revealed a deeper industry challenge—live-streaming required artists to constantly bring their audiences with them, making growth difficult even for established musicians. That insight led to a pivotal shift: evolving Trubify into a music collaboration platform, where creators could build, remix, and distribute content in an open-source copyright and licensing model—a game-changer for independent artists.
Leading the Charge: My Role in Trubify’s Evolution
I joined Trubify as COO and Director of Product Management, bringing my background in music, product strategy, and software development to help drive the company’s vision forward. I played a dual role in both operations and product development, overseeing the roadmap, development lifecycle, and go-to-market strategy, while also partnering with the founder on fundraising efforts. One of my biggest challenges was balancing ongoing growth for live-streaming users while redefining the platform to serve a new core audience—musicians who wanted to collaborate, create, and distribute content in a fresh, community-driven model.
Building an Open-Source Licensing Model for Musicians
At the heart of Trubify’s transformation was its proprietary open-source copyright model, inspired by open-source software licensing. This system allowed artists to collaborate on each other’s work, with individual ownership of contributions and split rights based on input and viral reach. This approach empowered creators, giving them more control over their music and revenue streams, while fostering a dynamic, interactive music community.
User Acquisition, Engagement, and Proving Unit Economics
Pivoting the product meant reworking the roadmap and development schedule to introduce new features to evolve the product without alienating existing users. We tackled user acquisition through early beta release partnerships, where creators helped promote the platform in exchange for exposure and engagement opportunities. At the same time, we needed to validate monetization strategies, testing revenue models including tipping, sponsorships, and ad-based content. We ran paid campaigns to gauge fan willingness to support artists financially and projected potential ad and licensing revenue at scale, helping solidify the business case for investors.
The Power of Data: Driving AI & Music Discovery
As Trubify evolved, we turned our focus to refining content recommendations. While working toward a learning reinforcement model, we used a modified rendition of Gittins’ index, developing a BI-powered system that matched content to users based on their interests—not just by genre, but through unique facets like instrumentation, production style, emotional context, and collaboration trends. However, with limited funding and resources, tagging and categorizing content became a major challenge. We overcame this through rapid iteration and validation, fine-tuning our BI algorithms to make sure content discovery remained engaging and relevant.
Fostering Collaboration & Strengthening Community
A key goal was helping creators find each other. We built a creator-matching system that categorized artists by style, skill level, and production preferences, allowing musicians to connect and collaborate in ways traditional streaming platforms never enabled. To further fuel engagement, we established an Artist Relations Team, using an integrated CRM to tag and categorize users into cohorts for targeted outreach. Through email campaigns, surveys, and direct outreach, we encouraged user participation, collected feedback, and drove ongoing platform improvements.
Impact & Recognition
As Trubify moved toward its transition, we had organically grown to 80,000 active users and over 1,500 high-quality content creators, proving that the shift toward collaboration was the right move. The platform successfully generated revenue through tipping, sponsorships, and advertising, setting the foundation for future licensing and content monetization opportunities. The company’s innovation was recognized with multiple industry awards, including:
- 2020 Winner of Octane Tech Innovation Forum’s People’s Choice Award
- 2021 Winner of Pismo Venture’s Digital Solutions National Venture Plan
- 2021 Finalist in Octane’s Best Tech Leadership
- 2022 Gold Medal Winner of Pepperdine’s America’s Most Fundable Company
- 2022 Winner of The Tech Tribune’s Best Tech Startup
Among these, the Pepperdine Most Fundable Company Award was particularly significant, as it validated Trubify’s business potential against a highly competitive field of startups. Find out about what artists think about Trubify.
Final Takeaway: Reinventing Music for the Digital Age
Trubify started as a Twitch-style live-streaming platform for musicians, but through data-driven decisions, user insights, and relentless innovation, it evolved into something far bigger—a first-of-its-kind collaboration hubwhere artists and fans shape music together. With a proprietary open-source licensing model, AI-driven recommendations, and a passionate creator community, Trubify carved out a new path for independent artists, proving that the future of music isn’t just about streaming—it’s about creating together.
Sample creators:
Launched July 2020
