For a Bob Dylan song, the app shows vintage photographs of Greenwich Village, news clippings and links to related artists (like Martin Scorsese, who directed the Bob Dylan documentary “No Direction Home”). The goal is to present fans with a web of educational “rabbit holes” to explore.
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Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times
“We’re going through the prism of music,” Mr. Roswell said, “but it’s film, it’s fashion, it’s art, it’s news, it’s comedy — it’s everything that created that scene.”
The company has deals with publishers like Genesis Publications and Rock’s Backpages, a decades-deep archive of music journalism, as well as rock photographers like Jay Blakesberg; TunesMap receives a cut of any sales made through the app. (TunesMap also shows articles from The New York Times by using the paper’s programming interface.)
During its long gestation, the company secured two patents for its navigation system and raised $4.75 million from entertainment-industry veterans like Andy Summers, the guitarist for the Police, and Jerry Moss, one of the founders of A&M Records, and from the Visionary Private Equity Group.
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TunesMap
“I produced a Hank Williams film with Tom Hiddleston that took 10 years to put together,” Mr. Roswell said, referring to the 2015 biopic “I Saw the Light.” “I wouldn’t know any other way to do it. I just never let the vision die.”
The app is free, and it works when a user plays songs on Sonos from Spotify, Apple Music and other major streaming services. But in many ways, TunesMap runs counter to the trends of digital music consumption, which are moving toward simple mobile displays and programmed playlists.
Equipment costs are another potential barrier. The cheapest Sonos and Apple TV systems cost a total of $350. TunesMap said a minimal mobile version would also be available.
Reimagining liner notes for the digital age is a guiding concept, but Mr. Loyer, TunesMap’s director of user experience, said the company has tried to avoid the nostalgia of “Oh, remember when we had liner notes.”
“The real question,” Mr. Loyer said, “is how do we design the systems in such a way that values the real output of all the culture that surrounds a piece of music.”
