creative deconstruction

Music and Tech Recap – April 2010 Edition

Posted on 10. May, 2010 by Gabriel Nijmeh in NEWS, TECHNOLOGY

Digital music services - big updates to Spotify, Lala, and more.

There certainly was a lot of news and announcements in April even though it seemed to me that things got off to a slow start. Ultimately it turned into a Spring awakening as the month rolled on that it became a challenge to keep up with the avalanche of news, stories and announcements.

Some of the bigger stories? Facebook announces their new Open Graph protocol with Pandora as one of the first companies to partner with Facebook. It’s a start but will FB ever make music a spotlight of their service or do they consider music like any other social activity that makes up just another part of your life?

Spotify releases the first significant update in awhile with a heavy focus on sharing and social networking while Lala is finally being shuttered by Apple on May 31st.

Let the Apple game of speculation begin: iTunes in the cloud? Nope not anytime soon because Apple has something even bigger brewing and it has nothing to do with a streaming music service but maybe, just maybe given the timing of Lala’s shutdown, Apple will launch a music subscription service as early June? My guess is Apple will take it slow because of concerns from the labels and they will milk the a la carte market for as long as possible. Apple, as well, does a good job conditioning their users and fan boys so whatever they ultimately release will be carefully planned to stir maximum hype and ensure maximized revenue. I’m not really convinced that Apple cares much for the social aspects of music, seeing it more of a nuisance to achieving their media domination plans.

Let’s jump right in and see what April had for us to think, discuss and debate.

Investments and Funding

April was a very strong month for investment activity. A couple of notes: I have included some hardware/networking related investments which have a music component to them and as per my usual disclaimer, this isn’t a comprehensive list and the numbers have been pulled from public sources but it still gives us a sense of general investment activity in the music tech space. If I missed any investments, please don’t hesitate to comment below.

Total 2010 Investments as of May 10th, 2010

Q1/10: $99.6m

Q2/10 (to-date): $58.72m

2010 total to-date: $158.32m

• Zenverge, Fabless Semiconductor Company Building Digital Media Solutions for Content Storage, Playback, Mobility and Networking Closes $30 Million Series C Financing
• MXP4, the Leading Interactive Music Technology Platform, Closes $4 Million Investment to Accelerate the MXP4 Everywhere Strategy
• News Corp. raises bet on digital music as part of $10m series B investment in Beyond Oblivion
• Stitcher Secures $6 Million in Series B Venture Funding to Help Transform the Way We Listen to Talk Radio
• MusicMatic buys Mangrove’s share in Jamendo, intends to raise more funds
• Thumbplay, provider of mobile entertainment including music, videos and games raises $2.5m in funding
• Nimbit, provider of career management solutions for independent artists and labels receives $2.56m in new, unattributed funding.
• Yangaroo, a B2B digital delivery solution provider for music and advertising industries received $666k in Debt funding
• FameCast, an artist discovery engine received $2.71M in unattributed funding.
• Sleek Audio, raises $285k in debt financing

A couple of interesting funding articles you might find interesting…

• Help Fund Music Technology Startups via Musicians for Music 2.0
• Good News: There’s A Little More Funding Floating Around…

Music Services and Apps

Bandsintown a concert ticket aggregator, event recommendation and notification platform announced an API partnership up with Shazam, EMI and Reverbnation which will now expose concert date to 50 million people via these partner networks. I love that I can integrate my LastFM account (or Pandaro) with Bandsintown where they will track and notify me when my favourite bands are playing in town.

Senzoo.me – A simple and customizable fan-funding widget that encourages fans/consumers to pay back value creators like artists, developers, educators and musicians. Compared to similar platforms like Flattr and PaySwarm, Senzoo is extremely lightweight and does not require any technical skills to implement. Integrates with major blogging platforms (WordPress, Typepad, Drupal etc) and payments are handled through well established payment gateways like PayPal, Google Checkout and Amazon Flex Payment Services.

Beyond Oblivion – As mentioned above, this startup just received $10m in funding and is looking at an October 2010 launch date. What are they planning on doing? Well, in hyperbolic style, they plan to… “combine the stickiness of a social network with unlimited life-of-device access to the largest music library on Earth, within a vast ecosystem where content owners are paid per-play no matter if the original music file was ripped, bootlegged or legally or illegally downloaded.”

Indaba Music releases Mantis, a web-based Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) enabling anyone, from anywhere in the world, to record, edit and mix high-quality audio.

Headliner.FM – I really like this concept. Headliner is a social media cross promotion exchange that connects bands and artists to new fans. Fans will be more open to receiving recommendations from their favourite band to other similar/complementary artists. A great way for bands to leverage existing and well-connected networks and to share fan bases.

Mixtape for You – Based on Andrew Dubber’s “I Made You a Tape” idea, this new web service lets you create mixtape MP3s. Very simple site and limited in features, it’s a throwback to those days where you deliberated carefully to create the perfect mixtapes on cassette tapes for your friends, girl/boyfriend, spouse etc. My wife still has three or four mixtapes I put together many years ago which she still relishes today and I have a few hanging around in a box somewhere that I received from friends.

Songr – Another day, another music mash-up. Like a Digg for music, users submit song title/artist they are listening to and visitors to the site can bump a song up or down. The sites uses the YouTube API to pull the song in to listen/view the video.

AirKast – Digital content delivery platform and mobile app framework used by radio, television broadcasters and content publishers to distribute multimedia-rich content to mobile and connected consumer electronics devices.

WaTunes Launches Music Store Application on Facebook Platform – Pretty good launch timing in light of the Pandora and Spotify integration with Facebook. If users are already spending a lot of time on Facebook, they don’t need to leave the site to buy music (using Facebook currency perhaps?) that they may already be sharing and discussing with their Facebook friends.

Music related startups in Ireland – Naturally with such a focus on US startups, it’s a good reminder that there is a lot of digital music startup activity happening beyond our shores. Some of these Irish startups in this list are doing some pretty cool things.

Rhapsody Adds Offline Listening To Its iPhone App – Rhapsody is giving its iPhone app some bragging rights with an update that lets subscribers listen to tracks even when they’re not online. Users will now be able to download their Rhapsody playlists to their phones and by June, Rhapsody says it will add functionality so users can download individual songs and albums as well.

Amsterdam Music Hack Day – A weekend that brings together 150 of the best music and tech geeks produces a huge array of next-gen music apps. A list of all the hacks can be found here.

How Tech is Changing the Tone of Music as We Know it – A look at four different technologies looking to change the music landscape. Hypersonic sound is really fascinating. Sound is passed through a tightly focused beam that you can only hear when the beam is pointed directly at you.

Glee fans, grab the new iPhone karaoke app and annoy your friends.

Stereomood, an emotion based Internet radio station just released a new developer API.

LastFM is in the news again having dropped their on-demand streaming, and putting a renewed focus on scrobbling and personalized internet radio. Shortly after that announcement, they introduced a new program “Play direct from artist” that lets artists post full tracks for streaming.

Opinions, Insights and Analysis

Plugged/Unplugged: How Facebook Will Change Digital Music – “Facebook already has trained more than 400 million users in how these functions work within the Facebook confines. Applying them to the broader Internet holds significant implications for the music industry. For instance, it’s no secret that music recommendation and discovery is considered the greatest digital music opportunity. More music is being created that ever before, and the digital music services that can best introduce users to the new music best suited for them in the most seamless way possible will benefit not only the music service, but the artists and labels trying desperately to reach new fans.”

Digital Music Startups: Sexy, but Smart? – Insights from Adam Wexler, a young entrepreneur building out his startup Go Rank’em. Key point in this blog post is an interesting stat by David Pakman who says that only 5 out of 109 digital music startups have led to positive returns for investors.

A Billion Taco Vending Machines = Bigger Taco Industry – “Some in the music industry may question the economic impact of cloud music, but I think it’s a great opportunity to turn every device into a vending machine. Music is such a spur-of-the-moment emotional experience that if people hear a song and can get it with one click they will (if it’s easy). If every phone is a vending machine that’s a few billion more retail outlets to take the place of the vanishing record stores,”

Black Eyed Peas Will.i.am commenting at Twitter’s Chirp Conference – “The band of the future is not going to be a singer, a guitarist and a bass player. It will be a singer, a guitarist, a bass player and a code writer – the guy who does apps, computer animation. That is a group. It is going to be about self-contained content-providers.” I’m not a fan of Black Eyed Peas but his comment is rather insightful and on the money. It’s also the same sentiment I’ve heard from a few indie artists I know.

Research: Music recommendation is *the* big opportunity – “Word of mouth recommendations from friends and family is the most powerful way of driving purchases.” Lefsetz has been writing and talking about filtering as being the next big thing.

Anatomy of a band website – Lots be honest, most band/artist websites leave a lot to be desired. Most are static, brochure-type sites that don’t engage fans and/or nurture an active and vibrant community that demands repeated frequency visits. Which bands do you think are effectively using their websites? Nine Inch Nails comes to mind. Others?

Spotting the Creators of Peer Influence – “People make over 500 billion impressions on each other about products and services every year.” In a trust-based economy, consumers are influenced by their peers, friends and family. Personal influence is the new advertising? How will this play out for artists? And how does it tie into the music filtering and personal recommendation process?

Excellent RAIN Internet Radio Summit coverage from the NAB conference in Las Vegas. A lot of insights on internet radio and mobile apps. A recommended read.

Witnessing The Atomization of Artistic Culture. – “The internet gives us far more choice than the limits imposed upon us by broadcast media. We know of more bands, we can get tour dates pushed to us, can sample music long before it is released and we can reserve tickets well before the show. But we are doing this across many more artists, spreading our limited disposable income around in ways we didn’t when we had fewer choices. Nevermind that we are offered billions of other entertainment choices from video games, YouTube, Facebook games and even Crowdreel and Bitly.TV.”

A decade of digital: 10 things for 2010 – “Digital is not a channel. It’s a suite of platforms, channels and tactics that will, ultimately subsume its parents entirely. Digital marketing is not simply a new place to disperse persuasive symbols, but the emergence of any entirely new behavioural grammar, as companies and their customer begin to engage with each other in entirely new ways in entirely new spaces, where everyone has an equal voice.”

Upcoming Events

• Digital Music LA – Los Angeles, CA, May 11th, 2010
• OpenMusicMedia Toronto – Toronto, ON, May 12th, 2010
• San Francisco Music Hack Day – San Francisco, CA, May 15th and 16th, 2010
• NARM Convention – Chicago, IL May 15th to May 17th, 2010
• SF MusicTech Summit – San Francisco, CA – May 17th, 2010
• Future of Music Coalition Presents D.C. Policy Day – Washington, DC – May 25th, 2010
• Open Music Media Montreal – Montreal, QC – May 25th, 2010
• transmitCHINA Conference – Shanghai, China, June 2nd to 4th, 2010

We spend a lot of time with our faces buried in our computers so let me end this recap by saying get out there and support live music! The best technology we have is our ears, our hearts and the magic created by artists and their instruments!

See you next month.

Gabriel Nijmeh is a software business analyst, passionate music lover and guitar player. He currently advises a couple of music startups, including Mediazoic, a real-time social DJ platform and co-founded the Toronto edition of OpenMusicMedia which brings people together to openly discuss the intersection of digital music, media and culture.

Tags: Apple, Facebook, iTunes, Lala, music, pandora, Spotify