By Kym McNicholas

The former head of Virgin Records, Matt Serletic, is hoping to give Apple‘s GargeBand and iTune’s a little competition. The Grammy Award-winning producer/songwriter has started his own music making business, Music Mastermind, to provide the music community a new venue to create and sell their songs. It’s called, Zya. In a game-like fashion, users can tap into the elements of popular songs and styles of famous musicians, then combine them to develop their own masterpieces to share with others. Ultimately, a user will be able to sell their music on the site as well.

It’s an uphill battle to compete with GarageBand, which is already installed on Apple computers, as well as the already established and widely-used iTunes store. But he’s betting on the PC fans to adopt Zya, to make their music, versus other music-making tools in the cloud, such as LL Cool J’s Boomdizzle. He’s already partnered with HP to have Zya pre-installed on select computers and is working on partnerships with other PC-makers. In the video above, Serletic demonstrates Zya and talks about what makes it different than any other music-making tool. Please share what you think about Zya in the comment section below and what ‘other’ features it must include in order to be successful. I expressed concern to him about whether or not serious amateur musicians would be put off by the game-like format. Obviously, hardcore singers/producers would have ‘professional’ tools. But not being a musician myself, I want to know what you think. Does Zya have a future?