Pluto Media

About

Pluto Media builds tablet-based educational music games for children, offering iPad apps that teach piano and collaborative band-style play, song customization, limited social interactions, and user-generated content.

Mission

Pluto Media is the maker of Koala Band, an iPad app that places 6–12 year-olds in a virtual world where they learn music through games and collaborative play. In Koala Band, users earn “notes” by playing musical games with others and use those notes to customize songs; melodies are drawn from children’s, folk, and classical tunes. The app enforces limited social interactions—players adopt koala identities and can only friend real-world acquaintances by exchanging handles, with communications restricted to pre-selected phrases. Pluto intends Koala Band to be stage one of a broader platform that will host additional educational apps in the future. The company previously launched Penguin Chase and Pluto Learns Piano and was originally incubated as part of Peter Relan’s YouWeb. To date Pluto Media has raised $2.2 million in seed financings from a group of early investors. Pluto Media builds tablet-based educational games for children, beginning with its flagship iOS app, Pluto Learns Piano. The free app teaches piano through game mechanics and immersion, using a penguin-and-fish interface and an approach inspired by the Suzuki method. Pluto reports strong early engagement: 13 million songs played and over 30 million minutes of playtime in 2012. The company launched the app in December 2011 and plans to expand beyond iOS to additional platforms and instruments. Its product roadmap envisions a ""learn, create, share"" platform supporting multiple instruments, 40+ classical and folk songs, multiplayer band-style play, and user-generated content so kids can create and share songs. Founder Luis Sampedro positions the platform to combine education and social/creative features to increase retention and musical progress.

Quick Facts