The musician matchmaking app Syncopate was born out of frustration by Omaha-area doctor Sajan Mahajan.
Mahajan wanted to take his hobby of playing music out of his home and onto live stages, starting with open mic nights, and found that connecting with the right people can be difficult.
He recently built the Syncopate app, at first to match musicians in the Omaha area, but quickly expanding that to other areas in the Midwest and eventually connected with venues, producers, music teachers and more.
The idea is to allow people to gig swap in other towns for bands, build up bills locally, and help venues find the right artists.
The starting point and inspiration for Syncopate is to match musicians.
“I met a few people on the Facebook groups,” he explained, “and we would maybe practice the song separately and just come up with two or three songs, meet up there, and it seemed to go well. Then they stopped coming. There are regulars at the open mic, but you’re not really like building a band together, you know? To find the people that want to do the same thing you want to do is hard when you’re just doing it in person or on Facebook. I feel like you might find even a bigger pool of people to match if you use tech.”
Syncopate is kind of like a dating app for area musicians. You build your profile with your skill level, what instruments you play, what genres you play, what you are looking for, and more. If you match, you can swipe right or left, and if you match, you can send one message. The site is set up so musicians cannot spam each other.
“I think one of the friction points is skill level,” Mahajan said. “Someone’s posting and they’ve been playing guitar for six months so they’re a beginner, and they’re messaging someone who’s an advanced drummer, and you’re wasting time talking to each other. The main way to match is you actually pick your skill level, and you can pick beginner, advanced beginner, intermediate, intermediate to advanced, advanced. If you’re an intermediate guitarist you can check just intermediate or intermediate advanced, and you’ll only match with those so you won’t waste your time back-and-forth messaging with people that are out of your league or below you.”
One of the biggest obstacles for musicians hoping to connect is scheduling. Mahajan said he’s thought of that.
“The other way you match is by your schedule,” he said. “A lot of times you might match ability-wise, but schedules don’t overlap, so you have to overlap at least one evening or afternoon a week, and if it matches that way you’ll show up in the swipe deck and you can send them a message. That’s where you can see the other things, you can see their genres, you can see what equipment they have, you can see their playlist, their jam bucket, link a video, you can see how they play, and you might go ‘yeah we have the same ability, we have the same schedule, but I’m not going to waste my time because he totally does not like the same music I like,’ and then swipe left on them.”
Mahajan gathered feedback and worked bands, venues, and other areas in the Midwest into the mix on Syncopate.
“I had a friend who’s in a band, and he was saying he didn’t like the bills that would form at some of these dive bars,” Mahajan said. “He’d have people leave in the middle because his band is aggressive and kind of loud, but it’s more alt rock from the 90s, and then the next band coming up is scream noise metal or something. Both are aggressive, but they don’t make sense together actually. He said, ‘I wish I could just find other emerging bands that are similar to me.’ So in the app if you do a band login, not only are you trying to find people who fill your guitar role, you can actually, you might not have any vacancy in your band, but you can match with another band, become friends with them, start making bills together.”
Bands can also connect with venues and communicate about a gig. He has hubs set up so far for Omaha, Lincoln, Sioux Falls, Sioux City, Kansas City, and Des Moines. There is also a general national hub. One of the exciting possibilities of Syncopate is the ability to gig swap.
“Some bands were saying a lot of ways they get gigs out of town is gig swapping,” he said, “and so that’s when I was like, you know, I can’t just limit this to Omaha and Council Bluffs. I should probably add some of the regional towns. If you are interested in gig swapping and similar bands in other cities will match with you, and you can propose a gig swap with them. You can see their profile, find out if you really want to gig swap with them or not, and see what venues they’re playing.”
Other additions to the app include logins for producers, teachers, audio engineers, and more. Those roles do not “match,” but they are there for connection purposes and as resources.
Mahajan has matched with musicians, himself, and has heard from others who have matched and played with people in the app’s short existence. Mahajan stated he plans to keep the app free for musicians, but it’s already getting a little expensive to host and he’ll have to figure out a way to make it work financially.
Syncopate only works when enough people sign up. It’s in a soft launch and only has a small number of users. He is confident in its ability to connect musicians.
“In my test database when there’s 300 people, 50 bands, 20 producers, 20 teachers, that thing is flourishing,” he explained. You know their connections-bands are filling their slots, people are forming bands, producers are finding bands -there’s a message board, people are posting stuff for sale, it’s a very active community. Right now it’s not that, so what I want to see is like people getting on board. It doesn’t cost anything, it costs 10 minutes of your time, and once we hit that number I know people are going to love it.
“We just have to get over that hump of getting enough people in there, and then these early people shouldn’t give up on it because they didn’t get a match. With the new email feature you can sign up, and you really might not have matches for weeks because it’s a slow process, but you will get that email, and you might find a guitarist to jam with, or you’ll find that trumpet from Blair to add to your ska band.”