Tens of thousands of new songs, perhaps more, exist because Burr Settles founded February Album Writing Month in 2004. The annual monthlong challenge requires participants to write 14 songs in the 28 days of the month. People from around the world participate, sharing their new creations with each other and providing positive feedback, and building community. Burr also was among the early team that created Duolingo, the app that helps people learn new languages. In part one of our conversation, we talk about what it was like to go viral (twice!), and the technical challenges behind building a platform that songwriters make such good use of. And we talk about why he scaled back his songwriting involvement in the project for a while, and what caused him to dive back in.
