Trebel was founded in 2014 by
Gary Mekikian, who was previously the co-founder of answerFriend, Inc., which commercialized web based question-answering technologies and merged with Electric Knowledge, forming
InQuira. This company was eventually acquired by
Oracle Corporation in 2011. His co-founders at Trebel include
Stanford classmates Corey Jones and Luis Soto Durazo, as well as his daughters Grace and Juliette. Mekikian envisioned Trebel as an alternative to music piracy after a high school classmate of his daughters was targeted by cyberattackers while illegally downloading music online. In its original incarnation, the service planned to target students at 3,000 universities and 30,000 high schools in the United States. A beta version of the app was introduced in 2016 with content from
Universal Music Group and
Warner Music Group. Trebel launched commercially in the United States and Mexico in 2018. In May 2020, during the early months of the
COVID-19 pandemic, Trebel was a digital broadcast partner for
Se Agradece, a concert produced in Mexico by
Televisa to honor frontline COVID workers that featured artists such as
Rosalia,
J Balvin,
Maluma and
Ricky Martin. In June 2021, Trebel reached 3 million monthly active users. In January 2022, Trebel announced a strategic alliance with
MNC Corporation, an Indonesian media conglomerate, which also became a minority backer of the company. On April 18, 2022, Trebel launched in
Indonesia during the finale of the music competition show
X Factor Indonesia. Trebel also signed a deal that month with Soccer Media Solutions, a sports and entertainment marketing agency in Mexico, to sell Trebel’s premium advertising inventory through Soccer Media. In May 2022,
Guillermo Ochoa,
goalkeeper for the
Mexican national soccer team, invested in Trebel and became an ambassador for the company. On October 2, 2022, Trebel collaborated with
Musica Studios, one of the largest music companies in Indonesia, on the production of a music festival in
Jakarta titled Trebel Music Fest. The event featured performances by top Indonesian music artists such as
Noah,
Nidji, and
d'Masiv. In October 2022, Trebel launched in
Colombia. The service reached 1.2 million monthly active users in Colombia six months after launching. In December 2022, Trebel collaborated with
KFC in Indonesia on the release of a KFC digital music program using a product called Trebel Max. As part of the program, KFC customers who bought the Crazy Superstar Combo package at KFC received a subscription to Trebel Max for 30 days. Trebel announced the launch of Trebel AI in May 2023. Trebel AI uses
ChatGPT-powered technology to generate playlists based on natural language queries from users. In July 2023, Trebel reached more than 13 million monthly active users. In November 2023, Trebel became a featured app on the
Discord app directory. Discord users that add the Trebel bot to their servers have access to Trebel's on-demand music library and have the exclusive privilege of being DJ's during server sessions with up to 150 concurrent listeners. == Platform ==