Former Harmonix and Valve developers Greg LoPiccolo (Guitar Hero, Rock Band) and Tom Leonard (Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead) are combining their expertise in music creation and game design to build this approachable and comprehensive music platform for the creator era.
ToneStone, founded by former Harmonix chief creative officer Greg LoPiccolo and game industry veteran of Valve and Amazon Games Tom Leonard, is building a platform to enable anyone to easily make and share music. LoPiccolo (Guitar Hero, Rock Band) and Leonard (Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead) is on a mission to change the way music is made, shared, and monetized by creating a platform that combines interactive game mechanics with intuitive and easy-to-use creation tools, plus direct community and social integration.
“We want anyone to be able to express themselves through music, to collaborate, and to share their music,” said Greg LoPiccolo, co-founder and CEO, ToneStone. “The last decade has seen key innovations to lower the barrier of entry for media creation and sharing across video, photos, and recent games, but there’s no music platform that combines being accessible, comprehensive, and enjoyable. By bringing together what we have learned from games and interactivity to music, we believe ToneStone can enable that radical leap for the creator generation of music.”
ToneStone is designed to be highly approachable; people with little-to-no experience can begin creating music within seconds, instead of spending hours learning complicated software.
Leveraging the deep interactive entertainment background of its founders, ToneStone is integrating proven game mechanics to elegantly guide progression. Integrated progression and achievement systems will keep users engaged, and encourage exploration and experimentation. Multiplayer options will also allow users to create and modify tracks together simultaneously online.
Creators will be able to share their own music directly on social media platforms or download the tracks for use in broadcasts, live streams, VODs, interactive experiences, and other projects. ToneStone allows shorter formats like loops and beats as well as complete songs. With community-driven source material made available to everyone, musicians will be able to monetize their work and build up their fanbases.
ToneStone is currently in private beta; early adopters can sign up here to try out the very early stages of the platform before launch. Already you can quickly create and share music, and overtime game mechanics, multiplayer and the marketplace will be added. At launch, ToneStone will be a free download on Steam for PC and Mac.
