When we started thinking about what our company would be, it became clear that music was something that was at the very core of our minds for a long time.

Prior to this, Matt (along with our friend, Mark Cousens) had formed the Horsley Sound Recording Company (named for Captain Horsley, a character from Matt and another friend, Mark Stephenson's Chancer pilot) and later, Rob and Matt would collaborate to create the Free Culture Foundation, after a discussion on the merits of recording a large body of freely licensed works for other musicians to build upon.

Shortly before we started, Liam and Matt had been talking about building a set of tools for musicians to operate their own label. These ideas merged into Matt's idea for a free software alternative to Last.fm, which became Libre.fm in April 2009, and later we turned what we'd learnt into something for all musicians to use.