Google Maps creator Lars Rasmussen discusses new music start-up, Weav

Last week, ex–Facebook engineering director Lars Rasmussen, who co-founded Google Maps and Google Wave when working in Australia, beta launched a new music start-up, Weav.

Co-founded with his fiancé,Elomida Visviki, Weav aims to change the way artists compose and fans experience music.

Speaking to TMN, Rasmussen explained how the app works:

“Weav is a relatively simple desktop Mac app that sits next to a musician's DAW and other existing tools. By using Weav at the end of their music production process, musicians can produce songs that are 'interactive' (some have called it 'elastic'): during playback, the listener can change the playback tempo to any value in a wide range, and the song immediately adapts to that tempo.”

The software created by Rasmussen and Visviki’s team of six engineers and four designers allows musicians to record separate elements of a song at different BPM trigger points.

“It is entirely up to the musicians who made the song to ensure that the song still sounds awesome by adapting the song's arrangement to suit the new tempo,” Rasmussen told TMN. “Weav is the tool that lets the musician achieve this. The listener can only change the tempo; everything else is up to the artists behind the song.”

Rasmussen said the listener’s input shouldn’t necessarily change the tempo during playback and hints that the technology opens Weav up to be used by third parties such as fitness or exercise apps.

“Rather we envision that apps on their mobile devices will do this for them, for example by automatically matching the song's beats to a runner's speed, or by guiding a runner through an interval training session by changing the song's speed a pre-determined points during the workout. And many other cases we haven't even thought of yet!”

In fact, Rasmussen told TMN the motivation behind Weav stemmed from a conversation among friends and family about a possible workout aid.

"We at first thought it'd be fun to have a metronome-like app on our phones to help guide you through a run or workout, but with a nice beat rather than the traditional metronome tick-tick-tick. Little by little we realised that an app like that would have wider applicability, and that it could be actual music rather than just a beat changing speed."

Rasmussen announced he was leaving his post at Facebook in April to launch Cute Little Apps, the London-based venture behind Weav.Before Rasmussen joined Facebook in 2010, his Sydney-based company Where2 Technologies was acquired by Google in August 2004. Where2 became the basis for Google Maps. Visvikihas experience in advertising and non-profit charities. Cute Little Apps is her first post outside of Athens, Greece.

“We have varying backgrounds, and specifically neither of us have experience in music,” Rasmussen told TMN. “We are looking for forms on interactive music where specifically the listener needn't have any musical skills or talent themselves in order to enjoy the experience. We have a lot to learn and frankly that is one of the attractions of building Weav as well!”

Rasmussen and Visviki are yet to discuss a business model for Weav and during its beta stage is free for artists to use. Musicians have been offered the chance to test the software alongside their own DAW software atwww.cutelittleapps.com.

“We have yet to prove that this new type of music can be produced at scale and – as we believe – provide a new and delightful experience for music lovers,” Rasmussen told TMN. “During the beta testing phase use of Weav will of course be entirely free.

“When in the future monetisation does become relevant, we will try hard to find a mechanism such that Weav – if it's as successful as we hope – can help fund the production of new music in addition of course to sustaining Cute Little Apps as a company.”