Follow me on Medium and sign up to my newsletter.

Well there you have it. The first Web Summit in Lisbon is over. And it might be just the first of five. I guess the sun, surf and low rents charm did work. And for all of the normal hoops that an event goes through, the overall feeling was that it was a success.

I wouldn’t know. I was mostly focused on enjoying the high concentration of music industry players in Lisbon, either by meeting them one-on-one or by organising music tech drinks alongside Inês Santos Silva, one of the 40 industry-specific events of the so-called Night Summit that happened that week (link in Portuguese).

Organising a music tech networking event allowed me to get to know better some interesting startups. Here are three that attended the event, that I find quite interesting:

Two promoters, having had over 400 events under their belt, set out to create a platform that actually meant something for passionate consumers. The big pull behind the Ticket Fairy is that consumers can get rewarded for their effort of gathering a group of friends to go to a concert or a party through discounted tickets. But promoters also get a bunch of consumer insights and the opportunity to target specific taste networks, which previously, apart from social network links, you couldn’t previously reach. All in the effort of maximising their efficiency in sales, via the least amount of marketing spend. I met the Patel boys and was impressed with their ambitions to quickly grow outside of their present markets, which already include the US, the UK, AUS and NZ.

The Audio Hunt was created by Stephen Bartlett who, after working as a producer in some of the world’s best recording studios, can name the pros and cons of each and every one of them. But more than that he wanted to try and eliminate some of those cons. Specifically, the lack of certain hardware that a producer would face when finishing a track. So he set out to create a globally-distributed network of studios that can help any producer in the world create the track that they want using whatever equipment they might need. Imagine having all the different types of synths and filters available to mankind through one service, that’s Audio Hunt. It is now part of the amazing Abbey Road Red, the first European music tech incubator, and Stephen isn’t stopping at production equipment.

Tradiio, a Lisbon-based startup, got a lot of press a while back for having created the first virtual stock market for artists, where fans could bet on the artists that they liked listening to the most, creating virtual leaderboards. They now are unveiling a new model where they are focusing on what they do best: connecting artists to their fans. Tradiio are allowing fans to support their favourite artists through a monthly streaming subscription which gets spliced up and distributed by whomever they like. While on the artists’ side, they can very easily connect with their fans, offering them exclusive content or unique experiences like private gigs or meet-and-greets. The guys have grown organically to have both an international artist and user base, but are now tackling key markets such as the US.

I was fortunate enough to meet many more startups through music tech drinks, but if you were at the Web Summit and I didn’t get to meet you then drop me a line or definitely register to attend for next year.