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Key people at We Are Hunted.
We Are Hunted was founded in 2009 by Nick Crocker (Co-Founder).
We Are Hunted developed a music discovery platform, identifying and charting trending music and emerging artists. The service employed web crawling and algorithmic analysis, interpreting online conversations and social signals. This technology surfaced new musical content in real-time, offering users a dynamic overview of popular tracks and artists.
The company was founded in 2007 by Stephen Phillips, Richard Slatter, Michael Doherty, and Nick Crocker. Insight: traditional music charts were slow to reflect genuine online trends. Founders built an immediate system to pinpoint popular new music by harnessing online behavior and social data, creating a responsive discovery engine.
We Are Hunted served music enthusiasts and early adopters seeking new sounds. The platform also aided industry professionals in identifying promising talent. Its vision focused on democratizing music discovery, enabling users to find influential new artists, enriching the music landscape via data-driven popularity insights.
Key people at We Are Hunted.
We Are Hunted was founded in 2009 by Nick Crocker (Co-Founder).
We Are Hunted was a music discovery platform that curated and recommended emerging tracks from across the web, serving music enthusiasts seeking fresh, undiscovered artists beyond mainstream charts.[1] It addressed the challenge of finding high-quality independent music in an era dominated by major label playlists by aggregating user-curated and algorithmic recommendations, building a niche community around tastemaking.[1][3] The service gained early traction but ultimately shuttered in 2012 after partnering with Twitter to enhance its music features, marking the end of its independent operations.[1]
We Are Hunted emerged from Australia's vibrant early web scene, founded in 2007 by Stephen Phillips and Richard Slatter, with Michael Doherty as a key founding partner.[1] The concept evolved from discussions among music lovers, including later contributors like Nick Crocker and Ben Johnston in 2008, who refined the idea into a platform for discovering hidden gems via blogs, labels, and user submissions.[1][2] Early momentum came from its unique blend of human curation and tech, positioning it as a go-to for tastemakers before the explosion of streaming services, though it pivoted to acquisition by Twitter as a pivotal exit.[1]
We Are Hunted rode the 2000s music discovery wave, capitalizing on the shift from physical media to digital aggregation amid Napster's fallout and pre-streaming fragmentation.[1] Its timing was ideal—post-iTunes but pre-Spotify dominance—highlighting user-generated curation as a market force that influenced giants like Twitter to integrate music features.[1] By joining Twitter, it amplified ecosystem-wide trends toward social music sharing, paving the way for modern platforms like SoundCloud and TikTok discovery, while underscoring how nimble startups shaped Big Tech's media expansions.[1][3]
Post-shutdown, We Are Hunted's DNA lives on in Twitter's (now X's) music experiments and the enduring curator model powering Spotify's Discover Weekly or Apple's algorithmic playlists.[1] Looking ahead, its legacy could resurface in AI-driven discovery tools amid Web3 music NFTs and decentralized streaming, where human taste remains a premium differentiator. As Phillips noted in 2013, true mainstream breakthrough for discovery hinges on seamless integration—watch for revivals blending its curation ethos with today's data firehoses, potentially reigniting the thrill of the hunt for the next big sound.[3] This early pioneer's pivot reminds us: in music tech, acquisition often seeds broader innovation.
