TastemakerX, an about-to-launch startup that will help music fans get credit for discovering the next big thing, has raised $1.2 million in Series A funding.
The company plans to launch its mobile app in early March, at South by Southwest — which seems perfect, given the event’s strong representation from both the music and tech worlds. Co-founder and CEO Marc Ruxin describes TastemakerX as “fantasy sports for music lovers,” a service where users can share their favorite music with their friends and where gaming elements encourage people to discover new musicians first. → Read More
Apple’s all-in-one physical flat-screen iTV is coming, make no mistake. And, when it does, it will represent Apple’s attempt to reinvent the television experience in much the same way it did for music. But, while media execs were hopelessly naive in Apple’s presence back then, they feel they are ready this time. They are determined not to let Apple rule the premium online video world like they did (and still do) for online music. The question is, do they have the will? → Read More
955 Dreams, the startup behind Apple’s iPhone App of the Year Runner Up “Band of the Day,” is today releasing the new tablet-optimized version of the app for the iPad. In addition, the company announced it has closed on a $3.25 million round of seed funding. Investors participating in the round included 500 Startups, m8 Capital, Kapor Capital, Felicis Ventures and CrunchFund (Disclosure: TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington is an investor in CrunchFund).
As a part of the funding, Dave McClure of 500 Startups will join the company’s board, filling the first seat held by an outside investor. → Read More
At some point, you may have found yourself bored out of your mind by your current music selection, and resisting the urge to try one of the eleventy million music discovery services out there, you think, “By God, I’m going to do it myself.” You rush home, download a music suite, start furiously clicking and recording, only to be sooner or later confronted by the reality that you have no idea what you’re doing, and reprimand yourself for turning down those music lessons in fourth grade.
The Korea-based, VC-funded MusicShake launched back at TechCrunch40 in 2007 to solve these woes, allowing users to create their own music in a fun an intuitive way. → Read More
Finnish startup PlayMySong, the crowdsourced music DJ’ing service that lets a store’s customers remotely program the stereo, has just closed a round of seed funding totaling $350,000. The round was led by Lifeline Ventures, a Helsinki-based accelerator focused on funding web and gaming startups and includes participation from Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. Though relatively small, the company says it’s enough funding to open an office in New York and head out to San Francisco for meetings and other fund-raising efforts.
PlayMySong, which is live in Heleski and a handful of U.S. locations, has also just launched its service in New York as of today. → Read More
In August, I remember seeing YouTube links for the band One Like Son, who recorded an entire song using only their iPhones and a few iPhone peripherals (in addition to their instruments and drum programs). Today, I received a press release indicating that the band have finished recording an entire 10 song album using the same setup.
Intrigued, I contacted Stephen Poff, the mastermind behind the record, to get a few more details about the impetus and methods behind the project. → Read More
Oh, you liked that band since before they were cool? Now you can prove it with Splash.FM. Launching in private beta today, the music social network lets you share songs and raise your Splash score when you help others discover them. Splash.FM lets you follow other tastemakers and listen through lists of the most popular songs across the site or your network.
Splash.FM’s biggest weakness is also a differentiator — it has no streaming licenses so major label songs only play as 30-second samples, but tunes by independent artists can be played in full and downloaded for free. → Read More
As technology continues its march toward the Singularity, transforming the way we work, socialize and play at an increasing rate, there is one very important aspect of American society that lags behind: education.
Many in Silicon Valley have strong opinions on how education should be improved, perhaps most notably Peter Thiel, who believes we are in a higher education bubble and should be encouraging kids to skip college and pursue entrepreneurship instead. I agree that Americans are placing too much emphasis on higher education, but I think the debate over Thiel’s statements misses a much deeper point. → Read More
Music streaming service MOG is today announcing partnerships with mobile, audio and video equipment manufacturer JVC as well as with Aha by HARMAN, an interactive platform that brings web content to the automobile. The companies will begin using MOG’s APIs to integrate the music service into their platforms and products. The first result of the new partnerships is MOG’s launch on Subaru vehicles.
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The question of how music will be distributed in a year, five years, or ten years, is an open one. The landscape has been altered so drastically over the last ten years that the only thing that seems sure is that major changes will continue to come.
Bandcamp hopes to be part of those changes, and they’re showing healthy growth: the site pulled in a million dollars in sales just in December. Not, of course, much of a challenge to the sudden empire of iTunes and the inverted economics of streaming services of Spotify — but the Bandcamp approach to the distribution question is building legitimacy. → Read More
Last week at Le Web, Alexia interviewed Sean Parker and Shervin Pishevar onstage in what turned out to be one of the most-buzzed about sessions. Here is the full video for your weekend watching pleasure. It’s a great discussion that ranges across the state of startups, venture capital, music, and politics .
Parker bemoans the surplus of venture capital for its effect of diluting the talent in the tech industry, a point he’s made before. “It prevents the aggregation of talent around great ideas,” he says. He emphasizes the need for a great team from the get-go. “People are the greatest asset class,” Pishevar agrees. The conversation quickly turns to Gowalla, which recently was acquired by Facebook, and why it failed to take on Foursquare. “If you don’t fail, you haven’t tried hard enough,” says Pishevar. → Read More
Audiosocket, the Music-as-a-Service platform provider, is today launching its own Music-as-a-Service Storefront. (Yep, in acronym lingo, that’s a “MaaS.”) The company already powers the backend of the Vimeo’s Music Store, allowing for the integration of appropriately licensed tunes into online videos. Now, with the new hosted service, Audiosocket aims to connect indie musicians and digital media companies, including launch partners IndieFlix, The National Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY) and a new e-learning company LearnCreate.
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There are two main complaints that always crop up whenever you mention Pandora: its music catalog is too small and it’s not available outside the U.S. That’s room enough for another startup to move into the streaming radio space, at least according to the folks at the new Miami-based streaming music startup Senzari. The service recently launched into private beta in the U.S. and Brazil, with plans to expand further into Latin America, Spain and Australia in the future.
In addition, where Pandora currently offers a catalog of 900,000 songs, Senzari has launched with over 10 million. It also includes Facebook integration, including live chat with Facebook friends. → Read More
All the world’s music and no way to figure out what to listen to next. This was the problem with Spotify until today. Its flimsy What’s New and Top Lists discovery channels showed you what’s popular, but there was no way to learn about artists or get recommendations from experts. And the radio feature? Ugh, it followed a great track by UK indie rockers The XX with a 10 year old Creed song. But during the launch of its app platform this morning in New York, Spotify unveiled new integrations that unlock the potential of its massive music catalogue. Last.FM contributes band biographies, Rolling Stone provides celebrity and editor playlists, and Songkick helps users find nearby concerts from their favorite bands. The apps could inspire longer listening sessions that expose users to more ads, get them more attached to their paid accounts, and share more links that drive referral traffic from Facebook. → Read More
The music lover’s social network Flowd, which recently arrived stateside after its European debut, just updated its mobile applications with a boatload of new features that make them worth a look. Up until now, Flowd was only mildly interesting, as it was primarily touting its 600 or so artists and DJs who had signed up for the network – a number which, in the grand scheme things, is merely a drop in the bucket of all things music.
But with the new mobile apps, Flowd is now aggregating artists’ activity from other social networks, including Twitter, YouTube, SoundCloud and Last.fm, allowing users to access artist updates, bios and gig calendars, even if the artist is not on Flowd. → Read More
As expected, the launch of iTunes Match is now upon us, with today’s release of iTunes 10.5.1, available from the iTunes website here. For those living under the proverbial rock, iTunes Match is the new service from Apple that gives you legal access to store all your music in iCloud – even those songs you didn’t originally purchase from iTunes. For $25 per year, iTunes Match will match tracks in your music collection to those in the iTunes catalog – a catalog that now includes over 20 million songs.
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Last year, Tim Heineke of Twones and Tone.fm, Marcel Corso and Diedrik Martens launched a new Amsterdam-based music startup, called Shuffler.fm, to let users listen to the tunes and artists being covered by music blogs while they read.
The startup thus began its career as a cool web app for music discovery, with the goal of aggregating music from blogs across the Internets — based on genre. Over the last year, Shuffler.fm has evolved into a service that now allows users to play continuous mixes of their favorite music blogs, browse through popular songs and artists through a nifty search function, as well as create personalized channels based on “favorite-ing” tracks and blogs. Music blogs can also create their own pages, including a “Play this blog” button that launches the blog’s own channel. (Check out Sarah’s coverage in August here.) → Read More
Dum dum dum dummmmm. Do do do dee dee dooot! The London Philharmonic Orchestra has just released “The Greatest Video Game Music” featuring full orchestrations of all of your favorite themes including Super Mario Brothers, the Legend of Zelda, and Halo. That’s right: Angry Birds finally has its own multi-part score and trilling woodwinds.
And the cover art, featuring a soldier playing a cello, is wildly goofy.
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Unlimited streaming music service MOG is expanding its footprint yet again with a new AT&T deal that will see its mobile application pre-installed on AT&T’s first new LTE smartphones: the Samsung Galaxy S Skyrocket and the HTC Vivid. The app will be pre-loaded onto these two AT&T 4G (LTE) phones, and customers will be able to try the service for free for a week. In addition, the company has integrated with AT&T’s billing system, so customers can pay for MOG via their regular phone bill.
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If rap lyrics like “Real G’s move in silence like lasagna” stump you, check out Rap Genius. The crowdsourced hip-hop lyrics explanation site will inform you that Lil Wayne is describing how skilled gangsters can assassinate someone without making a sound, like the letter ‘g’ in ‘lasagna’.
But the three-man team behind Rap Genius aren’t satisfied with their current vertical. Today they told me they’re preparing to launch a site for rock music lyrics called Stereo IQ, and one day hope to expand to sites for country music, poetry, legal documents, and religious texts. While presently focused on user growth, the network of sites could monetize through sponsorships of brands mentioned in or related to the explained texts.
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