I’m here to warn you off WhoSampled. Seriously, don’t use the website, and don’t download its iPhone or newly released Android apps. At least, not if you have some work to do.

WhoSampled is a proper rabbit-hole of a digital service: you start by looking up a sample in a song you like, and emerge blinking 10 or 20 minutes later with a head full of new (old) music.

Founded in 2008 in the UK as a website, WhoSampled has built up a database of more than 270,000 tracks and the samples they use, helping people trace back the roots of the music they love, and then disappear off down a web of interconnections.

Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda has its prominent sample of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back, which itself sampled Channel One’s Technicolor, which was also sampled in Unkle’s Celestial Annihilation, which also sampled Grace Jones’ Operattack, which was... You get the idea.

Each connection uses Vevo and YouTube videos to pinpoint the exact position of the sample in the respective tracks, while providing links to buy downloads, vinyl and CDs, and discuss the songs.

WhoSampled launched its iPhone app in June 2012, adding the ability to scan your iTunes library then explore samples used by those tracks. Now it’s on Android too: released today as a free download from the Google Play store.

It’s also been finding its audience. “Up until a year or two ago, when I met people I had to explain what WhoSampled was. Now, we find so many people who are fans. It’s no longer this obscure little thing that you have to explain,” says founder Nadav Poraz.

WhoSampled’s growth has been steady, rather than explosive: its website now attracts more than 1m unique monthly visitors. But that growth has been entirely self-funded so far, as the London startup builds its reputation, and reaches out beyond its earliest adopters.

“We have broken out of the niche of super-hardcore fans of sampling. We recently changed the title on our site too: we used to be ‘the ultimate database of sample-based music’, but it no longer mentions the word ‘database’,” says Poraz, citing the new slogan: ‘Exploring the DNA of music’.

“Of course, our database is still the core of the service, but we are much more than a glorified Excel spreadsheet. It’s an experience, with contextual recommendations, community aspects and the apps. The premise of the site was always about music discovery, and it’s great to see how that’s catching on.”

When WhoSampled released its iPhone app in 2012, it took the bold step of charging £1.99 for it rather than making it free. That policy has remained over the last two years, although it has occasionally dropped to £1.49 or £0.69 for limited periods.

“It’s done very well in terms of keeping users happy and winning various accolades from critics, but it’s a paid app, which has limited its market penetration. There’s a mainstream opportunity here that we’ve not really tapped in to yet,” says Poraz.

“The download numbers have been very strong for a paid app, but if you look proportionately at how many people use the app rather than the website, it’s a tiny proportion.”

That’s one reason why WhoSampled is taking a different approach to Android, where its app will be free, and make its money from advertising – just as the main WhoSampled website does.

“We want to go as mainstream as possible, and bring this experience to as many people as we can. If it does monetise reasonably well on Android with the ads, we’ll certainly consider it with the iPhone,” says Poraz.

The Android app may be many people’s first experience of WhoSampled, but the company is working on some intriguing partnerships to spread its net wider – and to popularise the idea of discovering music through samples.

WhoSampled already provides metadata to SoundHound, the music discovery app that’s a rival to Shazam, and it’s working on other deals with larger streaming music services.

“It goes both ways: we could integrate streaming services into the WhoSampled experience, to power streams in our apps. But it could be us powering discovery on those services too,” says Poraz.

This could be a valuable extra layer for the likes of Spotify, Deezer and Beats Music, who’d be able to point you in the direction of tracks sampled by a song as you’re playing it. Music labels would approve, too, as it would provide another route into their back catalogues.

WhoSampled has already worked with Universal Music Group on a site called Get On Up James Brown, which promotes the soundtrack to a new biopic by exploring the songs that have sampled his work. And there are a few of them, to say the least.

“The major labels sit on top of massive back catalogues that need exposure, and what we can do is take people who are listening to the latest hip-hop and electronic music back to the samples that sit in those back catalogues, and bring them new audiences and appreciation,” says Poraz.

That plays into the reasons he founded WhoSampled in the first place: reflecting his love of sample-based music and sampling as an artform, against a backdrop of not-always-positive music industry debate around sample culture and copyright.

“We think it’s very obvious that sample-based music creates new value both to the sampling and sampled artist, as long as there is attribution and respect. It’s something that is very, very central to music, and creates value for everybody,” he says.

“Putting in all the legal hurdles and making the process of clearing samples convoluted hasn’t helped that culture, and there hasn’t been any proper legislation around it, although that may be changing with the review in the US of copyright law, and various initiatives in the EU.”

Poraz hopes that as legislators get to grips with sampling, and music rightsholders see it as a way to help people discover their back catalogues rather than a spur for legal action, more people will talk about sampling in terms of “the beauty of the artform rather than the lawsuits”.

WhoSampled is hoping to ride that wave, while expanding its audience through partnerships. “We think that pretty much any music fan you put our experience in front of would enjoy and appreciate it, but your average music fan is not going to do a Google search for a sample,” says Poraz.

“That’s our biggest challenge: they would engage with this content, but wouldn’t go and search for it. So we want to find even more ways to get in front of the right eyeballs.”

Having bootstrapped the company so far, will WhoSampled need more funding to realise those ambitions? Poraz says he’s constantly mulling that very question, but is loath to raise funding for the sake of it.

“It’s been a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today. You have to tough it out in the early days until you become a viable business,” he says.

“We know we can raise funding quickly if we wanted to. Is there a clear and obvious opportunity that we can’t execute on with the resources we have? If there is, we’ll go and raise funding.”

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