Austin musician Ben Ikwuagwu didn’t know it at the time, but a night of karaoke with his fellow Dell interns back in 2017 would redirect his life and eventually lead him toward becoming a tech entrepreneur — building an app designed to organize the chaotic, gig-to-gig lives of working musicians.
Soundcheck, which officially launched November 17 with crowdfunding support largely from fellow musicians, is built as a streamlined business hub — something Ikwuagwu describes as Shopify-style platform for musicians. The app puts a booking calendar, payment process, and vendor coordination hub in one location.
The life of a musician is feast or famine, Ikwuagwu says. A working musician could make $40,000 in April and turn around and make $2,000 in August, just due to the nature of the business. Soundcheck helps guide better budget choices.
“Gigging musicians aren’t broke. They just don’t know how to manage their business,” Ikwuagwu says. “They don’t know how much money they have or how to forecast it.”
When Ikwuagwu was an intern, he expected to land a steady career in supply chain management with his business degree from Texas A&M University. But one night at a karaoke bar, he reluctantly stepped onstage with future mentor Greg Williams and his band Uptown Drive, and his one song turned into a full 45-minute set.
“When I sang with Greg’s band, that was my first time ever singing with a band,” Ikwuagwu says. “I’d always been a choir guy — I didn’t play in bands, didn’t write music, nothing like that.”
Impressed, Williams gave him his phone number and told him to reach out if he ever made it back to Austin. A couple of years later, when Ikwuagwu did return for a full-time job at Dell, he did. His side-hustle career as a wedding and event singer began. Performing as Benji Uzo, Ikwuagwu went on to work dozens of gigs with Uptown Drive, Moontower Entertainment, Dart Collective, the NightOwls, and even the Dallas String Quartet.
“In 2019, I made more money from gigging than I did at Dell, and it was supposed to be my side hustle,” he says.
Ikwuagwu on the Fox game show Don’t Forget the Lyrics with Niecy Nash in 2023Photo courtesy of Don’t Forget the Lyrics via Fox
Over the years, Ikwuagwu has performed at ACL Live, Stubb’s, Carnegie Hall, and the MGM Grand Hotel, and his corporate gig clients have included The Domain, Dell and Toyota. Two years ago, he even shared the stage with Niecy Nash on the Fox series Don’t Forget the Lyrics.
All the while, Ikwuagwu’s logistical mind kept cataloguing and mulling the headaches of the industry: wrong addresses, incomplete information, sheets, last-second updates, and inconsistent payment processes. One night he floated the idea of a musician-management app to his roommate, Steven Tran, who had recently exited a failed startup. Tran didn’t hesitate, and the two began sketching out what would become a subscription-based tool called Soundcheck.
“I couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking about this problem,” Ikwuagwu says, recalling his time working at Apple. “I literally could not stop thinking about how to fix it.”
Ikwuagwu with his Soundcheck co-founder, Steven Tran.Photo by Nicki Gell
Besides integrating with popular calendar software — basically keeping performers and event staff in sync with up-to-date gig details — the app also provides detailed invitation emails and automated reminders, pulls information from contracts for band leaders to have on hand, stores files in one centralized place, helps the user build setlists, and more.
Having some assistance on making business decisions makes it easier to be a musician, Ikwuagwu says.
“It’s so stressful as a musician when you don’t know what’s going on,” he says. “if I have a single source of truth — one place with all my gigs — I’m so much more relaxed.”