Interview with Ikenna Orizu, Founder, Truspot, The music centred social network
0Interview conducted by Munashe Gumbonzvanda, blogger at TechMasai – Guest blogger
Techmasai is a website that showcases Pan-African startup news and reviews. Visit Techmasai online here. Celebrating Progress Africa is a proud media partner of TechMasai.com
Munashe Gumbonzvanda had the great pleasure to get the chance to Interview Mr. Ikenna Orizu, the founder of one of the few African success stories in African web 2.0.
I started building a site called NaijaSpace in May of 2006 while attending my first year in college.
The site was originally made to be just a podcast for African DJ mixes, but I felt I had to do more than that to take African music to a global audience and so I renamed the project Tru Spot! and relaunched it as a platform on December 1st, 2006
TechMasai: What makes Truspot different from all other music orientated social networks
Mr. Orizu: We have a unique live station with well produced shows and hosts, the first African radio blackberry web application, and a close to perfect recommendation system based on the listening activities of 750,000+ users that have used Tru Spot! , enabling us to guide users through our music catalogue with thousands of tracks streamable for free and help them find what they will like thereby enhancing their music discovery.
Let me just say, It’s always a music adventure, when you’re on Tru Spot!
TechMasai: Nigeria is a promising web 2.0 market, with even major international companies like Google starting to take an interest. What potential do you see the sector having on improving the day to day life of normal Nigerians.
Mr. Orizu: Yes the industry looks very promising now and I see more major corporations taking interest in the market in the near future.
For the average Nigerian, it will help by creating more jobs for the many interested in that field and will push more minds to be creative and see the limitless possibilities of the web and also attract investors.
TechMasai: The music industry is not faring very well due to the influence of the internet on music sales. What impact do you see Truspot having on both local artists and music industry as a whole
Mr. Orizu: Tru Spot! serves to do more for artists and the music industry in general. As I said earlier, we aim to expose their music to a worldwide audience which in return can guarantee them more shows overseas.
Also, with our AfriTunes platform set to release before May artists will have a central spot to put their songs for sale and have listeners buy as they listen to tracks they’ll love to take outside website.
TechMasai: What ideas do you think lie in the future of Mr. Ike Orizu the entrepenuer
Mr. Orizu: A lot!
Tru Spot! is still in its start up stage and I plan to make it a site that every African music lover will want to be on. This is in addition to other projects that are already in the works which will be launching this year. So the future looks bright as the African social web scene begins to evolve.
