Lucky Frame Limited
Lucky Frame Limited was founded by Yann Seznec in March of 2008, and are the makers of the famous
Loop Machine music software for the Nintendo Wii.
In March of 2007 the Wii Loop Machine v1.0 was created by Yann Seznec and released on
theamazingrolo.net.
This software made it easy for people with little music or programming experience to generate and manipulate
loop-based music using a wireless Wiimote. Despite a complete lack of advertising and marketing the software
proved enormously popular, and was discussed on Amazon, MAKE, Engadget, Joystiq, and many other popular
news and gaming websites; the software has been downloaded at least 150,000 times.
The success of the Wii
Loop Machine has shown that there is a gap in the market for music-generation software and hardware. Games
like Guitar Hero and the upcoming Nintendo Orchestra allow for users to "play along" with pre-formatted music,
but there is a large group of users looking for much more exciting and interactive musical performance tools.
Technology such as the Wiimote makes the development of those tools easier than ever, but there has not yet
been any commercial release in the style of the Wii Loop Machine.
With the support of the University of Edinburgh through the Edinburgh Pre-Incubator Scheme, The Loop
Machine 2.0 was released commercially for download at www.theamazingrolo.net/wii/ in March 2008. It is far
more powerful than version 1, offering new features such as sampling and quantization, and a free time-limited
demo is available.
A small company has been created, Lucky Frame Limited, with the help of the University of Edinburgh through EPIS. They have provided a £10,000 interest-free loan, as well as business advice,
office space, and general support throughout the university. This has proved invaluable for starting the business,
particularly since they take no interest in the intellectual property or financial aspects of the company. The
program runs until January 2008.
In addition, Lucky Frame Limited was recently awarded NESTA Starter for 6 grant of £8,800, which is earmarked
for trademarking the brand identity and software.
Lucky Frame Limited is currently raising funds to create and release a Wii console version of the Loop Machine by the end of 2008. Beyond that, the larger goal is to create a family of creative music software that uses gaming controllers, effectively bridging the gap between computer games and traditional music software.