About Us
Born in the U.S.A.
MusicianLink co-founder and CEO, David Willyard, was helping his sister, an aspiring singer/songwriter, with some guitar arrangements using a speakerphone. The audio quality was poor and the sound delay rendered playing “together” at the same time impossible. Having worked at several Silicon Valley networking and computer companies, David had a good sense of what was possible as far as transporting data around the Internet with minimal delay. He assumed that someone, somewhere, had had the same idea and had created a tool for online music collaboration.
David’s search led him to the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University. A small group of researchers, led by Stanford Professor Chris Chafe, had been successful in facilitating real-time Internet music collaboration. Impressed with the research, David thought that there needed to be a commercially available, user-friendly tool for others to jam over the Internet.
David’s first attempt was a software-only solution. He soon realized that with all of the internal busses, operating system queues, various platforms, and not to mention the great variety of computer audio cards, there were going to be problems providing consistently minimized delay through each user’s computer. People familiar with computer-based recording are used to these system delays, but for real-time music collaboration across Internet distances - every millisecond counts.
David started MusicianLink with co-founder Chris Chafe to develop a real-time, Internet audio interface: a dedicated piece of hardware that consistently provides the lowest latency, highest-quality audio to other users across the Internet. Numerous prototypes and firmware versions later, the jamLink was born. In 2008, MusicianLink was awarded a National Science Foundation Award for a cooperative research project with Stanford University.
Playing In The Band
Dave Willyard, Co-founder & CEO
Prior to MusicianLink was a sales director and has also been a systems engineer for three networking and security startups. With more than 20 years as a performing musician and songwriter, Dave is a drummer and sets the tempo for MusicianLink.
Sean McKenna, Chief Marketing Officer
Sean has spent the last 10 years helping start-up companies get going. Prior to that, Sean spent a fair amount of time in product marketing. When he came across MusicianLink, he felt the overwhelming urge to join the band. He’s also a "campfire" guitar player.
Dan Meblin, Music Director
Dan has been a software developer, graphic artist, and 3D animator. He has worked in many capacities including UI design, testing, technical writing, sales engineer, software trainer, and demo artist. Dan is an accomplished musician whose professional career started in 1980, and he continues to play music professionally today.
Chris Chafe, Co-Founder & Technology Adviser
As Director of Center for Computer Research in Music & Acoustics at Stanford University, his research culminated in several published papers focusing on network music collaboration and Internet acoustics. Chris is an internationally recognized composer and cellist.
Money, It's a Hit
MusicianLink is privately funded by angel investors and professionals in the music industry. If you would like information about investment opportunities, please contact us at partners@musicianlink.com