Pocket musicians, rejoice: The ensemble of instruments available at your fingertips is set to expand.
Paul Sakuma/Associated Press Ge Wang of Smule demonstrates the Smule iPhone app at Apple headquarters in March.On Wednesday, Smule, the software company behind applications that turn the iPhone into imaginative instruments, announced that it had secured $8 million in additional financing.
The new round of financing was led by Shasta Ventures and previous investors in the company, Bessemer Venture Partners and Granite Ventures. The company raised $3.9 million from investors earlier this year.
Ge Wang, co-founder of the company, also helms the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra, a group of musicians that performs on iPhones amplified by speakers attached to small fingerless gloves.
In an article in The New York Times about the orchestra, Professor Wang said he founded Smule to democratize the process of making music, so that anyone with a cellphone could become a musician. “Part of my philosophy is people are inherently creative,” he said. “It’s not just people who think of themselves as artists.”
The fresh infusion of cash will go toward developing new iPhone applications, the company said in a statement.
Smule, based in Palo Alto, Calif., has already had several hits for the iPhone and iPod Touch. One, called Ocarina, allows users to play their phone as if it were an ancient flute. Pressing colored circles displayed on the screen and blowing into the microphone releases the haunting hum of a wind instrument.
Another, called “I Am T-Pain,” mimics the effects of Auto-Tune software, which can distort and transform a singer’s voice. The application is named for the rapper who helped popularize the Auto-Tune sound with a liberal use of it in his songs.
Smule says that since 2008, users have downloaded more than 2.4 million applications from the company’s catalog.
“Candidly, we were not planning on raising capital at this stage of our business plan,” Jeff Smith, the chief executive of the company, said in a statement. “Yet as we got to know the partnership at Shasta, we found they had a similar perspective on the importance of innovation, and a robust understanding of the new consumer market realities. We are therefore excited to have them join us on our mission to redefine the mobile social experience.”