Smule has just announced the winners of its “On A Boat” contest featuring its “I Am T-Pain” iPhone app. And, while the company was founded by a bunch of Stanford computer scientists, it’s now clearly making its mark in the rap industry—albeit via YouTube.
If you don’t already know, the I am T-Pain app is named after the rapper who uses auto-tune technology to digitize his voice while singing. In just 10 weeks, Smule received 115 complete video entries, and awarded a $5,000 prize and a Big Ass Chain (actually worth $47) to TheMisunderstoods of New York City, who filmed “I’m On A Phone.” In their video, the rapping duo had such classic lines as “you can call me Steve Jobbs cuz i got soo many apps.”
To be sure, Smule was doing well before I am T-Pain, but it did not have the same kind of street cred as it does now, especially with previous products being called “Leaf Trombone.” Comparatively, the auto-tune app was an overnight success. Within the first three weeks, it was downloaded 300,000 times, and the average user spent 66 minutes with the app, recording 4.1 million performances. That’s when Smule launched the “On A Boat,” contest, which was a song from an episode of Saturday Night Live skit. In the past year, Smule has raised another $8 million, and 2 million more users have joined its network, which now has more than 50 million user-generated songs.
Here’s “I’m on the phone” by TheMisunderstoods:
A video demonstration of Leaf Trombone at an Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) event: