When I served as the Chief Financial Officer for Combs Enterprises, a portfolio of businesses and investments built and cultivated by music legend and mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs; I oversaw finance and operations compliance for all businesses and investments, including Bad Boy Entertainment and related management and publishing companies.

Over the years, young people would approach me about careers in music as an aspiring artist, producer or manager. With the dramatic changes and challenges in the music industry, I would tell them “if you can solve the problems faced by the industry participants, you can make a lot of money. Otherwise, you should pursue a new passion.” I was just being painfully honest. I had seen first-hand how hard it was to make money in music. In reality; however, all I did was discourage them and squashed their dreams; I was a “Dream Slayer.” As I watched them walk away dejected, I felt awful.

This continued far too long with far too many young creative people. Then one day I decided instead of killing their dreams, I will facilitate their dreams. At that very moment in February 2016, I committed myself to creating a platform to do just that, a platform that initially would address some pressing questions:

In today’s digital world,

Why should aspiring artist need so much money and connections to be successful?

Why should it be so difficult to have people everywhere hear their music?

Why shouldn’t the people everywhere have greater influence in deciding who’s hot?

And so, as a seasoned business executive, I took my idea and left Combs Enterprises and Diddy to become a tech entrepreneur to launch TWEEDL. I then assembled a team of bright minded men and women with diverse experiences and backgrounds, mostly between the ages of 17 and 30, in what I call the TWEEDL Think Tank. Think Tank members brought relevant experiences and expertise: aspiring artists, engineers, A&Rs, artist managers, project managers, big data scientists, financial and business analysts, business development, marketing, digital, and social media management. I brought the problems to be solved to the Think Tank, and they helped me deliberate the issues to develop the solutions that became our TWEEDL app and a robust roadmap to a new digital music industry.

Since inception, we have raised more than $2 million in seed capital; giving us sufficient capital to create a powerful, fun and engaging app for aspiring artists and music listeners alike. We also have adequate capital to develop and execute our pre and post-launch strategies. While our initial launch targets pop culture music (R&B, Hip Hop, and Pop music), TWEEDL exists for all music genres. We invite all aspiring music artists to submit their original music to TWEEDL today and for all music lovers to join our community and boost their influence in music. All music will have the opportunity to be heard and discovered on TWEEDL.

TWEEDL's purpose is to connect and engage aspiring music artists with music lovers everywhere while empowering both. We are creating a community that provides an adventure for aspiring music artists on the one hand and music discoverers, music listeners and music tastemakers on the other. In this community, everyone can get involved based on their levels and areas of interest. Aspiring artists can upload their music, easily share their music across their social media footprint, engage and interact with their fans in many unique ways, tell their story in their bio, let music lovers vote on their music and subject their music to ranking by the people. They also will be able to enjoy premium services and real-time analytics for a more professional experience to enhance their music careers. Music listeners can easily discover new music by genre with a simple thumb scroll, vote on and share new music across their social footprint, create playlists, explore new artists profiles, and get serious about selecting the next hot artists by tracking their tastemaker status. Music lovers can also enjoy premium services to boost their influencer and tastemaker status. This status is used to help more people select the next hot artists and help their songs go viral faster.