Sam O’Connell, Matt Simoncavage, and Lyz Klein of TuneFly will be headlining their first show this weekend, Sept. 15-17, as title sponsors at the Electric City Music Conference (ECMC), an event jampacked with an award show, a dozen simultaneous concerts back-to-back nights featuring over 150 bands, and a series of panelist presentations.
Tunefly is a mobile app that allows users to record and post original music, write reviews of the music they want to share and keep followers updated through journal entries, per its website. It avoids the clunkiness of other website-based music platforms while providing an easy-to-scroll feed like Instagram or Facebook.
The TuneFly trio behind the project came together through long-time friendships and mutual interests of social media, programming, and music.
Sam is a musician who wanted to create an app that not only appealed to other musicians but also functioned as something he could use for his own music. Liz is a CPA at her own firm, Numberyard, and brings with her knowledge of accounting and finance infused with the entrepreneurial spirit. Matt provides the technical skills needed to create and maintain the app, something the team boldly decided to do in-house rather than hiring out.
TuneFly became the brainchild of their collaboration, and it has become a major part of their lives over the last six months as they continue to take the next steps forward, like title sponsoring the ECMC in its third year.
The impetus for some of those “next steps forward” also came from the help sessions of the TecBridge Business Plan Competition.
“The help session advisors asked great questions that really challenged us to do our homework on legal issues, to make our user experience really unique, and to grow our ideas for TuneFly into a full-scale business,” said Sam.
Since the sessions, TuneFly has released its app for iOS, attended concerts to promote the app, and amped up production and preparation efforts to be ready for the ECMC.
“This is a great opportunity for us,” Lyz explained of the sponsorship. “Our app is the kind of product [ECMC] was looking for as a title sponsor, and we knew we could reach out to so many bands and music enthusiasts all weekend.”
TuneFly’s title sponsorship will have its name appearing in a dozen venues both Friday and Saturday night as over 150 bands take the stage across the Scranton area. Additionally, they are presenting an award at the Steamtown Music Awards Ceremony on Thursday night at The V Spot and are part of the Saturday conference at the AFA Gallery, where many bands begin their day with an opening breakfast.
Today, TuneFly is available for download in the Apple store with future releases across other phones coming soon. More information on the app can be found on TuneFly.net, and the full schedule and event listings for the ECMC can be found on ElectricCityMusicConference.com.
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