Hazel Savage, a prominent music-tech entrepreneur and the former CEO and co-founder of Musiio, has joined UK-based music startup Syntho as its new CEO.
Founded by DJ and producer Josh Baker in 2020, Syntho was launched with the aim of providing “high-quality” production tutorials for producers.
The platform offers over 360 hours of content and 560 production tutorials in six languages. According to the Syntho website, the courses aim to “offer a clear, structured path to mastering Ableton and producing exceptional tracks.”
The official announcement about the appointment of Syntho’s new CEO states that Josh Baker has grown the company “into a successful bootstrapped business”. MBW understands that the company generated $700,000 in revenues in 2024.
Syntho noted on Tuesday (March 4) that Hazel Savage “brings a wealth of experience in scaling music technology businesses”.
The exec started her music-tech career as an early employee at Shazam and spent time at Pandora, Universal Music, BandLab and HMV before launching artificial intelligence music curation company Musiio in 2018.
Musiio was acquired by SoundCloud in 2022 to bolster the music platform’s discovery capabilities. Following the acquisition, Hazel Savage became Music Intelligence VP at SoundCloud and exited that role in December 2024.
According to Syntho, “Savage’s previous experience building and selling a music tech company make her the perfect leader to take the company forward” as its new CEO.
Josh Baker, who claims to have founded Syntho to “revolutionize electronic music education,” is a UK-based DJ and producer. He is also the co-founder of Hide and Seek Festival, the boutique electronic music festival in the UK.
Baker remains the founder and the face of the company with his “Introduction to..” videos being the most watched on the platform.
As a DJ and producer, Baker has upcoming shows in 2025 at Miami Music Week, Amnesia’s opening party in Ibiza, as well as Hide and Seek, Parklife and Mint Festival.
“I first met Josh in April 2024 at an investing event in Leeds, we kept in touch and after exiting my role at SoundCloud, Josh approached me about joining Syntho,” said Hazel Savage.
“The Syntho product clearly resonates with its audience. Josh and the Syntho leadership team have made me feel so welcome already. I’m excited for 2025.”
Hazel Savage
Added Savage: “Syntho has yet to need to raise capital and the revenue is above and beyond what I see day in and day out as an angel investor in this space.
“The Syntho product clearly resonates with its audience. Josh and the Syntho leadership team have made me feel so welcome already. I’m excited for 2025.”
“As we grow it’s important for us to be smart and focused. Hazel has worked in Music Tech for 18 years, and has previous success building and selling a company. This makes it a great fit for the next stage of Syntho.”
Josh Baker
Commenting on the appointment, Baker said: “I started Syntho back in 2020 because I didn’t feel like the options that existed when I wanted to learn music production came from the best in the business.
“I wanted to learn from top talent, people who are out there creating hits and playing sold out venues. It didn’t exist, so I built it. I started just filming the videos myself as a producer who was getting a lot of requests to help out other producers but it grew from there as I asked other producers I knew to create videos.
“As we grow it’s important for us to be smart and focused. Hazel has worked in Music Tech for 18 years, and has previous success building and selling a company. This makes it a great fit for the next stage of Syntho.”
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