The platform, which began operating a few weeks ago in Vienna, eliminates intermediaries and makes available to the musician, at affordable prices, venues, and even instruments, to rehearse without worrying about neighbors, family, or roommates.
The application has a mechanism similar to Airbnb, a pioneer in the rental of homes around the world. Through filters, you can select the city, the day, the time, the size of the venue, the price range, and the need to rent a particular instrument.
Once the priorities are defined, Music Traveler shows a map with all the offers, from large concert halls with a grand piano for 20 euros an hour in the center, to a small office with a xylophone for 7 euros on the outskirts of the city. city.
The idea behind Music Traveler is that anyone can become a space bidder, as long as they have a free room.
The Russian-German violinist Aleksey Igudesman is one of the founders of the platform and offers his own apartment in Vienna, the only city where this service is currently available.
The spirit of Music Traveler is "to give value to the power of opening doors to people," he told Efe.
The group, which “Trio KlaVis” has used the platform from the beginning, considers that it was something that the world of music needed.
“When we were students, we used to stand in long queues to get a room, only to have to leave it a few minutes after the rehearsal had started,” recalls Miha Ferk, the group's saxophonist.
He assures that finding a space to rehearse for hours was previously "almost impossible" and that the platform will facilitate his work abroad as well.
"When they include more cities we can forget the stress of giving a concert without being able to practice anything before due to lack of space," says Jenny Lippl, violinist of the ensemble.
According to Igudesman, safety is one of their priorities and that is why they have insurance that covers the value of the instruments by up to 100,000 euros.
The idea for Music Traveler was born in 2015 out of sheer necessity. Igudesman and his partner, Julia Rhee Music Traveler, a businesswoman, and former professional pianist, had experienced the stress of not being able to rehearse when traveling abroad on multiple occasions.
Speaking to Efe, Rhee says that from the beginning they were sure that there would be clients since "for a professional musician, losing hours of rehearsal means losing money."
Although initially, the idea was to offer venues for classical musicians, the investigation they carried out revealed that the lack of rehearsal spaces was "a chronic problem in the world of music" in general, so they opened it up to other styles.
The success of the platform is also related to the choice of Vienna as a "pilot city", due to its status as a world music center where more than 250,000 musicians play, some 50,000 of them professionals.
Another advantage is the financial aid offered by Austrian public bodies and which are, according to Rhee, “among the few that value creation in the world of startups”.
Since its inception, the company had famous investors such as the German soundtrack composer Hans Zimmer, the singer Billy Joel and the actor John Malkovich.
Rhee sees a key to success that investors have seen other startups, like Airbnb, later transformed into highly profitable companies.
After the good reception that the platform had in Vienna, the company seeks to expand quickly but safely.
"If we don't take advantage of our advantage, it's going to become a competition in which whoever makes the most money and moves the fastest will win," he says.
At the moment the expansion will be European, since "in the United States the legislation is more complicated and puts more obstacles", although tests are already being carried out in New York.
The first destinations to which the company will expand are Austrian regional capitals, such as Salzburg, and the German cities of Berlin, Munich, Cologne, and Hamburg.
In the case of Spain, “Madrid and Barcelona are clear objectives”, concludes Aleksey Igudesman, founder of Music Traveler.
