Siren Music: The UF student startup making music a social connection

The Formula 1 race wasn’t the only fascinating development happening in Budapest during the summer of 2023; while at the race, Ethan Wolf (MSE ‘26) crossed paths with Karl-William Nietert (BABA ‘24, MIB ‘25) and had the first conversation that launched their idea of starting a music-sharing business. 

In January 2024, they began designing the application and brought in computer science student Jatin Verma as an additional co-founder to build their shared vision further. Initially, they wanted to create a platform where people could connect with each other through music; this idea of music connectivity grew to allow users to visualize their music data and compatibility with others.

Their vision became Siren Music. The application officially launched on April 18, 2024, at a concert Nietert was hosting. After working for months prior to the launch and emailing the founder of Spotify himself, Daniel Ek, in Swedish to extend their user count for their music data, Siren Music’s successful launch led to over 100 downloads on the first day. 

This past spring doubled the growth of Siren Music overnight. Wolf, Nietert and Verma entered their business into the 2025 Big Idea Competition and won $5,000 for “Best Leverage of Artificial Intelligence.” The four-month competition by the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center allows students to develop and pitch their business ideas to win up to $25,000 for their company.

Siren Music leverages AI through a model trained on creating a music compatibility score based on a song’s Valence-Arousal-Depth (VAD) score. Research from Cambridge and Stanford has shown that this score has a direct correlation to an individual’s personality. The AI uses the research and music data to generate a numerical score and summary of two user’s music compatibility and encourages connectivity. 

“The Big Idea Competition was definitely one of the most rewarding things I’ve done that UF has to offer,” Wolf said. “The amount of repetition and volume the participants get in knowing their business plan and learning how to pitch is why we know our numbers so well and gave us a clear path. I’d recommend any student to do it!”

In addition to the competition, the team spoke of all of the opportunities Warrington has provided to enhance their company’s development. 

“I went on an MSE trip to Silicon Valley, and we went to the headquarters of Apple, Google, LinkedIn, several venture capital firms,” Nietert said “You could feel the entrepreneurial spirit in the air. I was able to ask the product manager of Tinder ‘Siren-specific questions’ that showed the parallels between Tinder and LinkedIn and made it applicable to Siren.” 

Above all, the team placed an emphasis on engaging with the business professors and the student network throughout their time at UF. 

“I had a chance to take this class with Marty Schaffel, Jamie Kraft and Ethan Fieldman,” Wolf said. “It was definitely one of the most memorable classes I’ve taken at UF. It encouraged me to think of the best questions I could, meet new people and feel more organized and ambitious.”

As the team leverages Warrington’s resources, Siren Music recently underwent their biggest update: expanding their user base to Android users on September 26. This update also changed the visual design of many features, specifically the social feeds. With this expansion, Siren Music hopes to spread internationally and adapt the platform to different countries’ native culture. 

Siren Music keeps their users at the forefront of every update, development and design. Beyond providing a service, Siren Music strives to create a personalized experience and community for every user. 

“We are a social media platform,” Verma said. “We are trying to build a society. And the society of the community starts from us. If we don’t, as founders, build a relationship with our customers, what are we doing?”

Siren Music wants to motivate all Business Gators with an entrepreneurial spirit to take action; there’s no better time or place to jumpstart your business than at UF. Allow your peers and professors to speak into your ideas; the risk is greater when you sit by yourself and think you can do it on your own. 

Siren Music is available for free on the Apple Store and Play Store.