European Beat: Alphasphere Maker Turns to Crowdfunding

It’s hard to get funding for business ventures these days, when banks are keener to give out bonuses to directors than to entrepreneurs.

That’s why ambitious electronic instrument designer Nu Desine is attempting to raise extra funds to help develop and market its new AlphaSphere Me product through crowdsourcing.

The quirky musical instrument made quite an impact online last year, when AlphaSphere user’s video went viral on Facebook – racking up over 10m views in less than two weeks.

This new model features the same pressure sensitive pads as the original Elite and  Nexus models, but less of them and features a simplified software user interface.

“The idea is to make music accessible to anyone,” said a spokesman for the firm, “and this is rapidly being proven through initial user testing. It is proving very popular in an educational context. The campaign itself is hosted on IndieGoGo and has a number of early-bird offers on the device so that contributors can get up to 25 per cent off the eventual retail price of $199.”

Tabla player and composer Talvin Singh described the original Elite model as:

“An incredible universe of an instrument, which gives you the feeling to tailor make tones, aesthetically and sonically, as well as allowing you the capacity to invest in more indigenous and rebellious scale systems”.

www.alphasphere.com