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This Irish startup has developed a radio service that reacts to you

Gramma Music describes its app as ‘reactive radio’ and it has ambitious aims.

THE MUSIC INDUSTRY in Ireland is well-known for the type of artists and bands that come out of it, but when it comes to technology, it’s only finding its feet.

There is some cause for optimism as the likes of Soundwave being acquired by Spotify recently, a vote of confidence for any other startups who want to go down the same route.

One of them is Gramma Music which offers what it calls ‘reactive radio’ which serves up both relevant and new music.

It does this by taking into account a number of factors. The obvious ones like taste and interests are already known by connecting to Facebook but others like location, the current weather, the time of day, whether you’re moving or not (and how fast you’re moving) and even your facial expressions can be used to shape the type of music played.

It’s an ambitious aim, but it’s something its founder Patrick Quinn has been working on for the past two and a half years.

While it’s still early days (the app was released the day before St Patrick’s Day), creating it and determining the right factors was a challenge. And that’s before you delve into the many different studies that cover music psychology he delved into during its creation.

“Finding the right model [was the biggest challenge],” he said. “If you’re walking somewhere, what is the right music, tempo, energy… we had to go off and create something that has a universal understanding of how music relates to content, and nobody else seems to have done that”.

IMG_0120-2 Gramma Music founder Patrick Quinn. Gramma Music Gramma Music

Part of how they determined what songs fit what mood was down to a service called the million song dataset, which rates the attributes of millions of popular songs, and working with a company called the Echo Nest.

That took much of the heavy lifting away from the team of seven, but they still had to do a lot of research in music psychology as well as other things like the average running tempo so it could cater for certain situations.


gramma musicSource: Gramma Music

And the initial target audience for the app is students. While the beta test covered a wide demographic, Quinn believes if it can cater to students, it would stand a good chance at catering to other demographics.

"We're going to market it originally towards students," he explained. "Students probably have the most contextually-shifting days. They do so much during the day or nothing at all".

You can never predict what a student is going to do so they're our target to see whether this app which fits their lifestyle actually works. We've tested it with small groups up until now, but we want to see how it goes [with a wider audience].

Now that it's out in the open, Quinn is focused on taking feedback from users and improving the app.

While the initial aim is to build up its audience for the first year, it also has one eye on the future.

The obvious one is how it will develop its business model - one of the examples Quinn gives is using the algorithm data to help advertisers decide what songs to include with ads based on tone - as well as future developments like the Internet of Things which would use smart items like thermostats to help decide what music to play.

Such aims are still a long way from happening so for now, it's about fine-tuning the app. The app doesn't share what you listen to (unless you do want to share something) so users will be free to have a service that truly reflects your tastes, regardless of what that might be. 

Music is a really personal thing. It means a lot to people and it gets us through hard times and it brings back memories. To have to shape your musical tastes to fit what your friends think you should listen to or what you want people to think you listen to doesn’t seem right... the whole thing about this is personal radio.
That’s what the radio does really well, it will push good music and new music.

Read: The next batch of local websites are going to be a little bit more Irish >

Read: The Wild Atlantic Way just went all Virtual Reality, and it’s deadly >

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    Mute Ziggy722
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    Mar 30th 2016, 11:41 AM

    They are already talking about using this technology to cure phobias like speaking in public and other more general forms of social anxiety. The possibilities with this technology are immense and positively exciting.

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    Mute Teddington
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    Mar 30th 2016, 1:23 PM

    More likely people will use them to escape social situations as we veer further towards a fully virtual society.

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    Mute Insert funny comment
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    Mar 30th 2016, 8:22 PM

    Porn, it’s going to be used for porn. Same as the Internet.

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    Mute Gooney
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    Mar 30th 2016, 11:46 AM

    FFS get a grip,that was pure shite!

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    Mute Cosmo Kramer
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    Mar 30th 2016, 11:41 AM

    Jasus The Journal has gone downhill if this is considered newsworthy

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    Mute Foghorn Leghorn
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    Mar 30th 2016, 11:47 AM

    They’ve always peddled fluff alongside the more pressing issues. Room for them both

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    Mute vv7k7Z3c
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    Mar 30th 2016, 11:59 AM

    Every weekday at 11am we have Take a Break, it’s generally a lighter video like this. We have about 60+ articles a day, so there’s plenty to read that isn’t like this.

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    Mute Foghorn Leghorn
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    Mar 30th 2016, 12:35 PM

    Great, now look what you’ve done Cosmo. Hope you’re happy.
    Pass no heed aoife you’re doing a sterling job. Snapchat hun?

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    Mute Cosmo Kramer
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    Mar 30th 2016, 12:48 PM

    Yes but not every video with an “Irish Mammy” is funny

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    Mute Paige Turners
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    Mar 30th 2016, 12:59 PM

    I like the Journals work @Aoife. Never mind the bugrudgers! I think it’s a great video. .. shows how accessible it is. The Irish mammy dropping f-bombs is classic!!

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    Mute Brian
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    Mar 30th 2016, 1:33 PM

    Nothing to do with begrudging, it’s just my opinion and many others that it is cringeworthy and not remotely funny. Journal can do much better than this

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    Mute Chewy_Burton
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    Mar 30th 2016, 11:38 AM

    Yawn

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    Mute GameOverMan
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    Mar 30th 2016, 11:46 AM

    Was expecting more ‘

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    Mute J Judd
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    Mar 30th 2016, 12:05 PM

    FFS Filming in portrait !

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    Mute OU812
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    Mar 30th 2016, 1:18 PM

    You’d think they’d make the cameras not record video in portrait by this stage…

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    Mute graham galvin
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    Mar 30th 2016, 6:05 PM

    Or you would think people would know to record with their phone sideways by now.

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    Mute IrishGravyTrain
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    Mar 30th 2016, 12:15 PM

    Was only a matter of time before these videos arrived.

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    Mute Slew Lok
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    Mar 30th 2016, 12:26 PM

    I wonder what she was watching

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    Mute Peter Cavey
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    Mar 30th 2016, 12:32 PM

    It’s the jurassic Park clip. A sleeping bronctosauaus wakes up and comes over to you. It’s really cool

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    Mute Peter Mc Hugh
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    Mar 30th 2016, 12:06 PM

    Why is the footage warping at sections around the womans body?

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    Mute Foghorn Leghorn
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    Mar 30th 2016, 12:41 PM

    Illuminati and or NWO, with a possibility of lizard people shapeshifting

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    Mute Michael Sands
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    Mar 30th 2016, 1:12 PM
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    Mute Tertullian
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    Mar 30th 2016, 7:23 PM

    That’s nearly two minutes of my life wasted. On the plus side, at least she didn’t pepper the entire video with multiple effing and blinding which, unfortunately, one has come to expect from such Irish-made videos. But for gawd’s sake, why can’t the makers of them use landscape mode?

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    Mute Vladimir Vasyectomy
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    Mar 30th 2016, 4:12 PM

    That looked like me coming home from the pub last night.

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    Mute Gerry Fallon
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    Mar 30th 2016, 12:02 PM

    Have a look at that wine rack in the background, packed!! Bit early in the day to be drinking!

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    Mute itsonlyme
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    Mar 30th 2016, 12:42 PM

    Are those the 30€ dunnes headsets?

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    Mute Peter Cavey
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    Mar 30th 2016, 12:56 PM

    Gear VR

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    Mute Gerry Fallon
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    Mar 30th 2016, 11:59 AM

    That kitchen looks a bit dated!

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    Mute Foghorn Leghorn
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    Mar 30th 2016, 12:47 PM

    Billy big balls cause he has an island in his

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    Mute Michael Sands
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    Mar 30th 2016, 1:01 PM

    I think this is an advert…

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    Mute Michael Sands
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    Mar 30th 2016, 1:00 PM

    This pornos great…

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    Mute Vladimir Vasyectomy
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    Mar 30th 2016, 4:18 PM
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    Mute Jim Woodcock
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    Mar 30th 2016, 10:16 PM

    Can’t wait to play knockout kings on this so I can finally win a fight.

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