Moises makes everyone a music producer: The app came out of nowhere--attracting users and capital seemingly overnight--and now they're taking on Spotify.

• Author: Okoren, Nicolle

MOISES.AI WANTS TO DISRUPT THE MUSIC INDUSTRY-and they're well on their way. In less than two years, Moises has accrued more than five million users across 210 countries and last month they reached number two in the US App Store for Music--behind only Spotify--and number one in Japan. In July alone, they acquired 1.2 million new users--and they didn't even have to lobby for capital.

Geralod Ramos, 35, founder and CEO, says Moises started as a side project. Ramos is an amateur drummer and he created this platform for himself so he could practice his instrument with more efficiency. "My wife was out of town traveling so I was like okay, this is something I will do to entertain myself this weekend. I decided to work on this project and create this."

He read an article by Deezer, a French-based music streaming company, that published a model on how to split songs effortlessly. Using that initial framework, Ramos created Moises. All a user needed to do was upload a song to the platform, then they had the power to silence certain instruments or amplify others.

If you look at my Instagram, 50 percent of my videos are just me playing the drums. Before Moises, I used to just put on a song and play the drums on top of it. But it was not ideal because the original drummers were still there. So I was like competing with my drums. There wasn't a clean way for me to add my drums or practice effectively.

This technology is not new. People have been remixing and covering songs since the first YouTube video went viral. But five years ago, the technology to extract different tracks from a song was accessible only to those who were privy to music production education and owned expensive software. Moises democratizes this process.

Initially, there was no intention to make a dent in the music industry--especially not this quickly. Ramos simply wanted to become a better drummer. But in November 2019, he posted the app on ProductHunt and immediately found it in the top five. By December, they had 50,000 registered users.

That's when Ramos quit his job and started focusing on Moises full-time. He pulled in his lifelong friend Eddie Hsu, co-founder and COO, who was working in FinTech in Berlin and they launched the web platform in late 2019 followed the app version in December 2020. Exactly one year to the day from launching on the web, they hit one million active users.

"I believe what Moises created is allowing people not just to practice music, not just to...