Industry Interview: Ampollo

Hey You!

For our long-term readers, you might remember this 👉️ 

From that feature, we had the brilliant opportunity to talk to the co-founders behind Ampollo. We’re big on transparency and support in the industry, and what Ampollo do is bridge a gap and offer an incredible platform for artists.

But… they can tell you better than us!

What’s the core idea behind Ampollo? What inspired its creation, and what problem does it solve for artists and the industry?

The biggest challenge in music today isn’t just getting heard—it’s getting started. Musicians struggle to find the right collaborators, get discovered, and monetise beyond streaming. Collaboration is messy—endless email chains mapping out timestamps for edits, bouncing out stems with long WeTransfer times, DAW project swaps and missing audio plugins and feeling disconnected…

Ampollo is aiming to change that.

We have built an audio-first collaboration hub designed for musicians. Artists upload their tracks, tag the collaborators they need, and instantly connect with like-minded creators. Instead of hoping for discovery, Ampollo turns passive networking into active music-making, resulting in real connections that lead to real music, exciting new releases and fulfilling music careers.

But we didn’t stop at collaboration. The current industry model sees artists receiving low-paying streaming and fragmented social media engagement. We’re redefining how independent musicians earn by unlocking new revenue streams through collaboration.

With Ampollo, artists can sell their music directly to their creative fans, offering immersive experiences like "collaborate with me". Fans aren’t just passive listeners; they become part of the creative journey, demixing stems and remixing tracks, supporting, and engaging in various ways that traditional platforms don’t allow.

This is more than a platform; it’s a new creative economy, enlarging the pie and making it more accessible to the whole industry, whether you are a newcomer or a seasoned vet. Ampollo empowers artists to connect, collaborate, and monetise on their own terms, building sustainable careers through community-driven creation. The future of music isn’t just about consumption, it’s going to be about co-creation, direct artist-fan engagement, and new revenue streams to earn. That’s what we’ve already built and strive to progress.

How has Ampollo evolved since its launch? Can you highlight key milestones, investments, or collaborations that shaped its journey?

The music industry is broken for independent artists. Finding collaborators is difficult, social media relies too much on algorithms, discovery is unpredictable, and streaming pays unfairly.  With a team including signed artists to major record labels and publishers, DJ’s and producers, music venue owners, festival and gig planners, and amateur musicians, we saw this struggle firsthand and set out to build something different, a space where artists, singer-songwriters, and musicians could create, connect, and grow together without these barriers regardless of preferential genres and levels of ability across all borders.

We launched Ampollo with a simple but powerful idea: musicians deserve a pure space where they can practice, remix (including free stem separation), collaborate on the tracks they love, share their work, get feedback, and build a community around their music. This isn’t just another distribution platform or social app, it was a creator-first space where artists could experiment, engage, and be discovered on their own terms putting music at the forefront.

Beta testing proved the demand. During our open beta, we raised £2.3 million from investors across tech, music, gaming, content, and VR — people who see where the industry is going. We also secured strategic partnerships with Royal Academy of Music, BIMM, Pirate Studios, and Studio Spares (now part of Gear4Music). We have 30,000+ downloads, 19,000+ registered musicians during the open beta testing phase in the app store only having opted for the most realistic testers being music centric users who we don’t know personally, having succeed on gaining a huge amount of feedback through our personal network of a multitude of both professional and ameature individuals in the music industry including established bands, independent musicians, signed singer-songwriters, famous artists, Dj’s, producers, beatmakers, and more.

This phase was critical. We built a core group of musicians who have been deeply engaged with Ampollo. Their feedback shaped everything. We learned:

We pivoted to build exactly that and launched the new version in Q1 2025:

This approach didn’t just improve the platform, it also helped us receive industry recognition and credibility. We secured an advisory board of international recognised industry leaders who share the same mission with us, including former RCA & Polydor execs, Founding team and previous senior manager at Spotify for Artists and fan monetisation, former A&R Director for Sony Music International, music managers to globally recognised artists, co-founder of Music Business UK Awards. We have also expanded our partnerships post-pivot, working with GigPig, H.O.M.E, and BSI Merch to offer even more career development and discover opportunities for Ampollo artists in the future. In addition, we have already been in deep conversations with globally-renowned studios and iconic venues in both the UK and US that have been home to some of the most influential independent artists. These partnerships will provide huge value for producers, musicians, and singer-songwriters, both from a technology standpoint and through real human connections.

What’s the long-term vision? Where do you see Ampollo in the next few years?

The future of music isn’t just streaming. It’s collaboration, co-creation, and direct monetisation. That’s the gap we’re filling.

Right now, Ampollo is redefining collaboration, making it seamless and rewarding for musicians. But our long-term vision is much bigger: we’re building the world’s leading collaborative music ecosystem.

In the next few years, we see Ampollo evolving into the go-to creative economy for musicians, where artists don’t just connect, but earn, grow, and build sustainable careers through collaboration. Imagine a platform where:

Artists at every level, from emerging to established, monetise directly through collabs, stems, and interactive experiences with their fans.

Musicians discover opportunities beyond just making music; they are looking forward to getting sync deals, session work, brand partnerships, and education.

Our tools accelerate the creative process, from smart stem separation to track management, making collaboration faster and more intuitive.

A global artist network replaces outdated industry gatekeeping, allowing talent to break through without chasing algorithms or labels.

We’re already working with top industry execs, music institutions, and brands to make this a reality. Ampollo will be the backbone of a new era in music where creative work is valued, discovery is organic, and collaboration is the key to success.

How does Ampollo use the data it collects? What insights does it provide to artists, and how do they benefit?

First and foremost, security and privacy are our top priorities. We’ve built Ampollo to be a safe and secure space for musicians, ensuring that any data we collect is protected and used solely to enhance the artist experience, not to exploit it.

That being said, the data we gather isn’t just about clicks or engagement metrics; it’s about music. We focus on things like musician preferences, instrumentalist usage, genre interests, and collaboration habits. This allows us to build a system to recommend tracks as daily inspiration, suggest potential collaborators, and help artists connect in a deeper and more collaborative way.

For example, if a guitarist frequently collaborates on classic rock or indie tracks, Ampollo can surface producers or vocalists within that space who might be a great creative match. If an artist is looking for session musicians, we can help them find the right instrumentalists based on actual collaboration trends, not just a profile search.

The goal is simple: help artists find each other faster, create more, and build stronger connections. Unlike traditional social media, where discovery is driven by algorithms chasing engagement, our recommendations are rooted in actual music-making: helping artists spend less time searching and more time creating.

Does Ampollo actively manage artists, or is it purely a platform? If you offer career development, what does that look like? If not, why take a different approach?

Right now, Ampollo operates purely as a platform, but we’re actively shaping the future of artist development in a way that scales beyond traditional management models.

With the launch of our new version in Q1 2025, we introduced an invitation-only artist program to onboard accomplished producers, musicians, and A&Rs from our partnerships and advisory board network. This program removes industry barriers by giving independent artists direct access to these top-tier professionals.

Beyond this, career development is a core focus. We’re not here to replace artist managers, but to build the tools and connections that empower artists to grow independently. Through our expanding partnerships, we’re in the process of unlocking:

Our goal is to make sure that the next generation of artists isn’t just heard, but supported and financially empowered.

What’s the typical journey for an artist using Ampollo? How do they start, and what kind of progress do you see over time?

Artists join Ampollo looking for exactly what’s missing from social platforms—real connections, collaborations, and opportunities to advance their careers.

Getting Started

Building a Network & Gaining Visibility

Joining the Artist Program & Expanding Opportunities

Recognition & Monetisation

Artists go from creating in isolation to collaborating with a real community, monetising their creativity, and positioning themselves in front of the industry’s top players.

What does success look like on Ampollo? How do you measure an artist’s growth—streams, engagement, collaborations, or other factors?

Success on Ampollo isn’t about chasing streams or social media engagement. It’s about meaningful collaboration and creative growth. Traditional platforms force artists into a numbers game, but we look at success differently.

For us, success is when an artist finds the right collaborators and builds a network that fuels their creativity. Tracks evolve through collaboration with multiple musicians contributing, remixing, or refining ideas. Artists get discovered not through the videos or soulless selfies, but through the music they create and share.

Musicians earn fairly from their work, whether through direct fan engagement, tips, or our upcoming monetisation features. Growth isn’t measured by vanity metrics but by how often artists create together, how their work spreads within the community and outside the platform, and how deeply they connect with fellow musicians. Ampollo is about music-first success and empowering musicians to monetise their music.

What are your key promotion strategies for artists? How does Ampollo help them stand out in an increasingly competitive space?

The challenge for artists today isn’t just making music, it’s making sure the right people hear it. Social media forces musicians to act as content creators first, pushing them into an endless cycle of posting, engaging, and chasing visibility. Meanwhile, streaming platforms offer exposure but little financial return. We believe there’s a better way.

Ampollo is designed to promote artists through their actual music (not their video director, producer, post-production, editing, and growth hacking skills), through their music and encourages the power of shared audiences. By allowing artists to collaborate with each other, it opens up a unique opportunity for fans of one artist to discover another. This is key in the promotion of artists on the platform and helps musicians stand out via their contributions to music, as opposed to it feeling competitive.

Beyond that, we focus on direct artist-to-fan engagement that is more meaningful than passive streaming. Fans can be invited into the creative process, like remixing tracks, adding their own creative layers, and even participating in exclusive collaborations with the artists they admire. This level of interaction transforms listeners into active supporters, creating a promotional effect that feels organic rather than forced.

We’re also bringing industry visibility into the equation. Through our partnerships with studios, venues, and music organisations, artists on Ampollo can be discovered by A&Rs and producers simply by doing what they do best “creating great music”. Unlike traditional discovery, where artists need to break through the noise of social media, Ampollo allows them to stand out by showcasing their skills in a collaborative environment that is just made for music.

How challenging is it to launch and sustain an artist’s career today? What’s the biggest hurdle in turning visibility into real opportunities?

It’s harder than ever. Visibility alone isn’t enough anymore. An artist can go viral today and be forgotten tomorrow. The real challenge is turning that moment of exposure into something lasting: real connections, real collaborations, and real income.

The biggest hurdle is that artists are expected to do everything. Make music, market themselves, build an audience, create endless content, and somehow still find time to grow creatively. The system is designed to keep them chasing engagement instead of focusing on their craft.

That’s why we built Ampollo; we are here to remove the noise. We give musicians a space where music itself drives discovery, not short-lived trends. Artists connect with other musicians, create freely, and find real opportunities through collaboration, not just by posting more content.

A sustainable career isn’t built on fleeting visibility. It’s built on consistency, community, interaction and creative work. That’s what we’re helping artists achieve.

Does Ampollo use an algorithm to feature artists? If so, how does it work?

At the moment, featured artists are handpicked. However, our recommendation focuses on providing the right collaboration opportunities to the right musicians, based on preferences and music that has been interacted with. We have many other algorithmic tricks up our sleeves that we will employ in the near future, but it is our secret.

-End-

We were delighted to share this interview with you, and we’ll have more new (and exciting) content in the coming weeks.

We’d love to thank Ampollo for spending time with us.

And, we’re excited to see what they do next!

Until next time,