SKYPE A FOUNDER #2: Holger G. Weiss, CEO of Aupeo

Online music services are the talk of town (again). Pandora is filing for an IPO, Berlin based Soundcloud passes 4 Million users, Turntable.fm awes early adopters and according to Zuckerberg, music is the next social frontier, with facebook rumored to enter a deal with Spotify. 

Spotify clearly gets the most buzz at the moment, but it is currently only available in 9 countries, excluding the US or Germany, for example. Other popular services such as Pandora (only available in North America) or Last.fm (only available in 4 countries) also face limited adoption due to unfruitful negotiations with record labels. 

Enter AUPEO! Personal Radio: Aupeo is an online music streaming and discovery service offering personalized audio streams and radio stations that is available in 40 countries and pre-installed on over 25 Million devices, including Acer Netbooks and TVs from Philips, LG or Loewe. 

Integrating software applications with hardware manufacturers has become an area of expertise for Aupeo CEO, Holger G. Weiss. His previous company Gate5, a leading supplier of mobile mapping software, was sold to Nokia in 2006 for a rumored €151 Million. 

Apart from discussing the development of music streaming services and Aupeo in particular, we also talked about the tech ecosystem in Berlin and Holger’s role as a mentor at the Founder Institute. 

by Nikolas Woischnik