Björn Mathes, Welike

Björn Mathes is co-founder and active partner of welike, a social entertainment discovery network that generates audience-specific product recommendations based on personal favourites from the fields of music, films and books.

Mathes was trained as a clerical assistant, played in several bands as well as working as a singer and songwriter. He switched to music marketing at the beginning of the 1990s, where he was initially in charge of developing international business channels for trend labels. In 1999 Mathes ventured into the new economy and set up Virtual Volume, a music download platform for newcomer bands. In 2000, in collaboration with Warner Music, Virtual Volume was the first German Internet label to launch a band, the rock formation Gallery, which subsequently rose from its beginnings in the World Wide Web to the Media Control Charts.