About

It’s me, Shamal Ranasinghe. This discourse is my attempt to restore the balance with those who radiate their creative light.

Digressions and diatribes allowed.

I’m an entrepreneur in media working to empower the creative class. My career mission has been to help artists make a living. I feel very fortunate to be able to work on that mission with the team at Audius, a decentralized music service, owned and operated by its community.

Previously I was at Pandora where I led all their product development for artists, labels, curators, and the broader music industry ecosystem efforts as VP of Product, Catalog and Creators. I cofounded Fluence and Curators.com to make curators, tastemakers, and domain experts more accessible and give the rest of the world a means to connect directly to them. Before that, I cofounded Topspin Media in the Sweetspot in Santa Monica. Topspin is a direct-to-fan marketing and distribution platform for artists, managers, and labels, and it was sold to Beats Music in March 2014, which was soon after acquired by Apple.

I spent several years in London building out Topspin’s international presence and returned to San Francisco’s lovely Bay Area to start Fluence. I’ve been in the industry since 1996 working to advance music through technology. In 2001, I started an audio technology company focused on surround sound multi-channel audio called Soundiron. One my biggest projects ever was working with my friends to bring out a large-scale array of 3-D sound to Burning Man in 2003 with a camp I created called Sol System. Today I’m a board member of ENVELOP, an organization dedicated to creating immersive experiences through a multi-channel audio venue in San Francisco, a mobile sound system, and open source software. I’m an advisor to several awesome music companies including Audius, Authentic Artists, Beatclub, and Feed.fm.

A long time ago, I headed up the product team at Musicmatch, which let music fans combine all MP3 Jukebox activity with their web services: Music Store, On Demand, Artist Radio, and personalization. It was a killer integrated product that sold well in the market as a service and was acquired by Yahoo. One of my favorite creations at Musicmatch was AutoDJ. I also worked on the RealJukebox MP3 Player from RealNetworks in the summer of 1999.

My favorite time is with my family and loved ones. I cook, play guitar, help to manage and promote artists, and work with other entrepreneurs globally to keep the dream alive. I was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in the east coast outside Washington, DC, lived in Evanston, IL, New York City, Palo Alto, San Francisco, San Diego, Venice Beach California in Los Angeles, London, and am now back in the Bay Area living in Berkeley.

You can also check me out on Twitter @shamalman and LinkedIn.