Dancing to a different beat

Deep in the heart of Stockholm's uber-cool Sodermalm district, Sars and an office full of Sweden's best developers are working hard to bring DJing to the masses.

"People are becoming more proactive about creating their own music," explains Sars. "The iPod kicked down the door of portability, teaching us that we can take our music everywhere. We want to take things a step further."

The product Sars and his company Tonium have come up with is the Pacemaker, a handheld device that lets you create your own music wherever you are. "Pacemaker essentially packs down a full-scale, pro-DJ set-up to the size of a ham and cheese sandwich", explains Sars, who has spent the past three years honing his vision to democratise DJ culture.

The Pacemaker features 120Gb of storage for MP3s, two feeds and a crossfader, as well as a basic mixing set-up including graphic equaliser, beat counter and loop. It comes with its own Editor software, which allows aspiring DJs to import tracks from iTunes to the device's hard drive. The software then analyses each track and takes a note of its beats per minute. Crucially, this means you don't need to lock yourself away for days on end if you want to mash up Eric Prydz and The Ting Tings.

"We want to give everyone the chance to be like Pete Tong," says Sars. "Pacemaker is all about allowing the boys and girls on the street to have a go anywhere, anytime, whether it's in the train, on the beach or in the club."

The most crucial element of the Pacemaker experience is online at pacemaker.net. The social networking site allows amateur DJs who have already got their hands on the device to share the tracks they've mixed. The site is still in its infancy, but it is already full of streamed mixes and playlists uploaded by users.

"If you have a party at home and everyone loves the music, you can take the tracks you've mixed, save them on your Pacemaker, then upload them to the online community via the Editor software," explains Sars. "Then you can email everyone and tell them to go online to hear the music from Friday night."

Pick 'n' mix

This notion of connecting users and allowing them to share their creations is central to the Pacemaker philosophy. Sars believes in what he calls a "market of abundance" where all music can be accessed anytime, anywhere via any device. The next phase of the company's development will see pacemaker.net opened up to other hardware platforms, enabling both aspiring DJs and professional artists to upload tracks from any device. Users can rate the music that has been submitted by their peers and, thanks to a deal with download company Beatport, they can also purchase a selection of professionally produced tracks.

"We want to replicate the guy in the record shop who inspires consumers with new music," says Sars. "Human beings are the most effective filter, better than any algorithm. When it comes to music, the DJ is the natural example of that."

Sars, an expert in marketing and brand strategy, is planning to use the web to take Pacemaker to the world. The company has already launched a Facebook app and MySpace music player allowing social networkers to experience the mixes created on the Pacemaker device. It is also working on branded widgets that music fans can embed into their own websites, blogs and profile pages.

While Pacemaker is rooted in dance music, Sars is convinced the concept has a much wider appeal. "Genre doesn't matter any more - just mash it up," he says. "If you look at the intelligent young generation of consumers today, that's how they view music. You don't have to follow one genre; as long as you love it and go for it, you can be totally unafraid."

Clever quartet

As bright as he is, Sars didn't come up with Pacemaker on his own. His business partners are three other Swedish thirtysomethings with a shared passion for music and technology. Two of Tonium's co-founders are PhD engineers from Stockholm's Royal Institute of Technology who had something to do with the European Space Programme. The third is Martin Renck, a DJ who hit the UK charts a few years ago with Here We Go under the name Stakka Bo.

This diverse mix of talent means that Tonium is on track to become the latest in a long line of Swedish success stories that includes Skype, Kazaa and, of course, Spotify. However, it's still early days for the company, which is about to release a second-generation version of Pacemaker. Sars and his colleagues are working on new revenue streams, including moving further into downloads and opening up pacemaker.net to advertisers, but the recession means the future is uncertain for even the hottest start-ups.

Pacemaker, though, is fast catching on with clubbers worldwide, so much so that superstar DJ Richie Hawtin claims that the device "could be to dance music what the guitar is to rock music". While this might be overstating things slightly, Pacemaker's potential is huge.