Sami Halabi has been seriously obsessed with two things since he was a child — music and language.
He’s found a way to combine his passions with a startup that helps people learn new languages through song lyrics. Univoice is an app that allows people to download music and sing along in the language they want to learn. Univoice says it’s the first app of its kind.
Halabi, co-founder and CEO of Univoice, grew up speaking Arabic. He then learned French and English — in that order. He’s now fluent in Spanish and German and conversational in Italian. He learned French at a young age and has fallen out of practice over the years. Halabi has a high standard for proficiency, he said, so he doesn’t count French as a language he knows.
“My goal is to have seven languages by the age of 30,” said Halabi, who is 26.
He started playing the piano and singing at age 6. When he was 16, he began teaching himself German because he was “disillusioned by the tools out there. They were either too high in the sky or too low in the dirt,” he said.
He came across a playlist of German songs, and “when I started listening, I quite literally could not stop. Within three months’ time, I became conversational.”
Halabi asked his friends how they learned languages.
“Everyone said through music and movies,” he said. “I thought ‘How is this not a thing yet?’ ”
He incorporated learning through song when he began teaching German through instructional videos on Instagram a little more than two years ago.
“I would take Disney instrumentals and strip them of their vocals and teach German grammar steps over the instrumentals,” he explained.
His students responded well.
In 2018, he began talking to someone with Mercury Fund, a Houston-based VC firm that's active in Austin.
“I was telling him how I was using music to teach,” Halabi said, and he asked if “I had thought of making that a business. He said ‘This is a business.’ ”
Halabi agreed.
Univoice launched its alpha product in the spring of 2019 at the home of South by Southwest’s co-founder, Louis Black.
“We’ve been developing our beta over the past year,” Halabi said.
Univoice has raised $360,000 from seven angel investors — more than half of its $625,000 pre-seed goal — and $60,000 so far through a crowdfunding campaign. The rewards/equity crowdfunding campaign on Wefunder launched Aug. 7. The goal is to raise the remaining 40% of Univoice’s pre-seed fundraising round through the Wefunder campaign.
Univoice says its core team offers 30 years of startup experience, and early-stage employees have worked at three startups acquired for about $1 billion. It also touts executive advisers from Babbel, Spotify and Pandora.
Univoice has earned a nomination for the “Top 50 Tech Innovators and Influencers” award at InterCon 2020, scheduled for December, it says.
Halabi said he and the Univoice team are thrilled to expand its raise from a private to public offering.
Univoice is free to use for 30 minutes a month for up to two languages. Its premium version is $2.99 per week for any language. Users also can choose to pay $8.99 a month, $17.99 for three months or $35.99 for six months.
The app has seen 2,800 downloads and about 500 to 600 monthly active users so far, Halabi said.
Univoice works with music content owners across the world and has partnered with labels and publishers.
How it works: Users select the language they want to learn, a genre of music and then a song within that genre. They pull up a practice screen with 12 to 20 lines that have been translated.
“Once you’re familiar enough with those practice lines, you can press ‘ready to begin,’ ” Halabi said. “Throughout the song, you’re going to see those practice lines in a different color. You can either sing with the artist or without them. You can either have the line pause, perform and get immediate feedback or you can go into karaoke mode, sing with the artist and get feedback at the very end.”
Users are awarded an overall score, which they can then share on social media.
“We’ll have an option soon to challenge a friend to beat your score,” Halabi said. “If you do karaoke mode, because it’s not going to be pausing, you can do a selfie video to record yourself as you’re singing if you want.”
Univoice plans to have its V1 by the end of the year and wants to onboard 75,000 users within the first full quarter.
“So far people are like ‘We want more songs,’ ” Halabi said. “We just landed a deal with Concord Music Group, so we have tracks from Frank Sinatra, Isaac Hayes, James Taylor, Switchfoot and ‘The Sound of Music’ soundtrack. We’re getting more popular tracks.”
