Today we’d like to introduce you to Vivek Patel.
Vivek, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I am a true South Floridian. I grew up in Plantation and graduated from Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale. Thereafter, I became a resident of Miami to pursue academia. As my wife calls it, we both are “Triple ‘Canes.” We graduated from the University of Miami for undergraduate studies, medical school, and residency. I am a practicing radiation oncologist currently working in Fort Lauderdale. Along with an extraordinary team, I am also in the process of developing a music and social media company called OmMuse. I have been an avid fan of music for as long as I can remember. On and off, I’ve played guitar for years and even tried my hand at piano and tabla. However, until recently I have primarily focused most of my efforts towards my professional goals. Music remained a constant in my life, but I came to regret that I was not able to focus on this passion as much as I liked. I wasn’t alone in this sentiment as many of my friends and colleagues also felt similarly. Wanting to get back into creating music, I started considering the idea of a platform that would allow musicians to connect, collaborate, and create new music. With my co-founder, Kumar Patel, we created OmMuse. This platform allows otherwise isolated artists of complementary musical skill sets to connect with one another to create music in real-time. Further, these efforts can also create an opportunity for compensation.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Developing and growing a startup company has numerous inherent struggles. At this time, we are working remotely with development teams across the nation and abroad in an effort to be cost-effective. One of our daily struggles is coordinating schedules with respect to not only time zones, but also our professional lives. Time management becomes increasingly important as I am a dedicated medical professional also give adequate time to OmMuse as well. In an effort to ensure maximum efficiency for the highest quality work, our team is cutting out social events and even sleep. We are also facing some of the expected struggles of a startup company including technical challenges of creating a new platform as well as obtaining musicians. We have been working for months on our platform and it was initially difficult to obtain artists; however, beta users have recently given us positive feedback and are looking forward to utilizing OmMuse with their colleagues. We are enthusiastic about future developments.
Please tell us about OmMuse.
The sincere goal of OmMuse is to empower artists to create. We are building a platform where musicians can meet other musicians to not only produce music but also provide an opportunity to copyright, distribute, and receive compensation for their efforts. We want people from literally all over the globe to connect on our platform and create novel music. For example, a lyricist from Asia can work with a vocalist from Africa who in turn can then work with instrumentalists in Europe and then have the works compiled by a producer in North America. We want musicians to work in a supportive and constructive environment with other like-minded artists. We want musicians to have complete creative freedom and also feel protected. As such, we will be providing an opportunity to copyright their work. The terms are created and agreed upon by the artist without any interference. Thereafter, musicians can utilize OmMuse to help with the distribution that can lead to earned revenue.
Any predictions for the industry over the next few years?
The music industry is currently evolving. In the last decade, we have seen a shift from an industry that was based upon physical record sales to one that benchmarked by the number of streams. Record labels also seem antiquated when numerous “unsigned” artists are able to achieve their own recognition based solely on talent through numerous social media platforms. A few of the aforementioned tasks OmMuse handles for musicians are currently handled by record labels and managers; however, there has understandably been a lot of press about challenges artists face in that setting. We are hoping to assuage some of those difficulties with our platform. We want artists to have autonomy and focus on creativity. Currently, true artistic freedoms are often not possible in the world of controlling record labels. Furthermore, artists are often vulnerable to record companies and management teams and therefore lose control of their work (ie the recent public feud between Taylor Swift and Scooter Braun). As such, there is a growing number of successful independent musicians. Consequently, there are numerous challenges in being an independent artist and as such, we feel OmMuse can help with many of the possible struggles they may face.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ommuse.com
- Email: company@ommuse.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ommuse1/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OmMuse-2075787236017581/?view_public_for=2075787236017581
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ommuse1
Image Credit:
Max Fifer, Nuria Jimenez, Shailee Patel
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