Cull.tv ushers in a new era of music television

A little bit MTV, a little Pandora, a little bit curation: new startup is music video heaven

Music television is back. But, as with many things in the 21st century, you have go online to find it.

Cull.tv, the first startup to emerge from seed accelerator Tenacity Worx, launched Monday its music television service, most easily described as Pandora for music videos.

The best way to experience Cull is to visit the site yourself, where, after an initial splash animation, you’re thrown instantly into the product: music videos, music videos and more music videos. It’s not like YouTube or Vimeo, popular sites that offer tons of video content but surround that content with metadata, user comments and a flood of links to related videos.

Think about it this way: on YouTube, videos take up only a fraction of the browser window, and when the video ends, that’s it. On Cull, the currently playing video takes up the entire browser window and an infinite queue ensures that the videos keep on coming.

“Online video sites today have solved the technical aspects,” said co-founder John Hurliman in an interview with Vator, “but there’s nothing online now that’s the equivalent of turning on your television.”

If you were around in 1981 when MTV first launched, you probably understand what’s so exciting about a product that focuses entirely on delivering music through video all day, every day.

“MTV introduced the music television format,” described co-founder and CEO Katherine de León, “and it’s not a mistake that we talk about Cull as ‘new music television.’ We have all the benefits that early MTV did not. We have technology and we have access to the best curators in the world, who are also the consumers, the viewers, the audience.”

“We really think of Cull as a curation engine: early MTV fused with Pandora-style recommendations plus curation tools so users can create their own channels.”

On Cull, any user can create their own channel by searching for videos and adding them to a playlist. Or, if you’d rather just sit and watch, you can choose from any number of curated channels, like “Paradise” for disco lovers or “FatKidOnFire” for the dubstep generation.

Cull is the first startup to publicly announce having received funding from Tenacity Worx, a seed incubator founded by Allan Teruel and Renelito Delos Santos after the two were rejected by Y Combinator.

Originally called YC Reject, Teruel and Santos’ new organization drew enough excitement (and funding) from investors to mimic the YC model. In exchange for a six to ten percent stake in the company, Tenacity is giving startups between $20,000 and $40,000 to help them get their ideas off the ground.