We’ve confirmed with Twitter that it has rolled out a new part of its #Music service for the web, charts that we were accustomed to from the company We Are Hunted, that it acquired and now powers the service. → Read More
Does my music do better on Facebook or Twitter? Where should my next tour be? Is my new song too repetitive? Musicians can get free answers to these questions and more from BeatDeck, a Y Combinator analytics company launching today. BeatDeck plans to license this data to labels and music stores to help them sign and recommend tomorrow’s superstars. Yep, BeatDeck is an enterprise music startup. → Read More
On the heels of Google wading into the music streaming waters with its Google Play Music All Access service, with a $10 fee for all-you-can-eat streamed tracks, the indie music agency Merlin has today published results of a recent survey of its 20,000-label member group, plus an analysis of 6.5 billion music streams over the last year, which spell out where the money is coming from today. → Read More
Google announced some fresh updates for Google Now today, consisting of six new types of cards that will show up in the automated, intelligent digital assistant feature for Android and iOS. The new cards include a location-based Reminder feature, public transit travel times, and information about books, music, TV shows and video games that might be of timely interest to users. → Read More
Jack Conte is an Internet musician who became an Internet sensation and now, thanks to Patreon, he’s an Internet entrepreneur. → Read More
Founded in 2010, Israeli startup JoyTunes has been on a mission to become the Rosetta Stone of music — to help those looking to learn play an instrument do so by turning practice into a mobile game, activated by playing the instrument of their choice. The startup’s first app, a free iPad app called Piano Dust Buster, enables wannabe rockstars to learn and play songs at their own pace, using a… → Read More
Soundrop, the popular social and interactive “listening room” music service that first launched as an app on Spotify, continues to branch out and become ever-more ubiquitous. The latest iteration: a new web version, now out in beta, which lets users tap into existing listening rooms based on artists, genres and moods, using Spotify’s move to the web as a way of building out part of the audio… → Read More
Asia’s fragmented music fanbase and subscription habits may stand between Spotify and its total domination of the region, or at least so its competitors hope. The music streaming service recently launched in the Asian countries of Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. When we spoke to Spotify’s head of new markets in Asia-Pacific, Sriram Krishnan, he was evasive on how extensive the… → Read More
Back in December 2012, music streaming service Spotify provided an update on how it was going to double down on social recommendations to increase music listening on its platform by launching two new features, Follow and Discover. While the Follow feature, aimed at friends, started to get rolled out in March and April, it turns out that Spotify has also been rolling out the Discover feature. → Read More
When Twitter #Music launched last week, it wasn’t a surprise at all to those following tech stories, since rumors had been kicking up about its existence for months. However, it was a surprise to the Frances Cone Band, which is popping up in the “emerging artists” section of the app. In a world where we focus so much on “big stars,” especially ones with millions of… → Read More
Last week, we told you about an open source alternative to music services such as Rdio and Spotify, called Napster.fm. The name alone got our attention, and after using it, there were a few features that were reminiscent of its predecessor, which made it even cooler. Today, the service is changing its name to Peer.fm to steer clear of legal issues, since Best Buy acquired the service and brand and… → Read More
Twitter #Music got its big public debut today, and at first blush the service is visually impressive, well-designed and features smart, opportunistic integrations. Those integrations, with Rdio and Spotify, completely change how the app works for users who have active accounts with either service, vs. those who don’t. And the biggest winners here might just be Rdio and Spotify, since the app… → Read More
Word of a standalone music service out of Twitter has been floating around for a week or so, but today the company took to the Good Morning America show to officially announce the service, comprised of both a web platform and an iOS app.
Twitter Music, as it were, is the brainchild of We Are Hunted, a startup quietly acquired by Twitter just last year. The app pulls in music from Rdio, Spotify… → Read More
BlackBerry has been hit hard by Apple and Android in the enterprise smartphone market, and now it’s making some moves to make sure that it doesn’t face the same fate in the automotive segment. QNX, BlackBerry’s operating system subsidiary that makes the new BB10 operating system, today announced that it would be adding music streaming service 7digital into its in-car entertainment and information… → Read More
Anyone who has had a computer and a connection to the Internet in 1999 quickly knew what it felt like to find any song that you wanted, and then listen to it almost immediately. Well, the immediate part wasn’t true, since you had to download the MP3s, which usually took quite a bit of time on a dialup connection. Since Napster, and it getting sued into oblivion (and then acquired for bits… → Read More
Since we have nothing much to go on other than a static landing page for Twitter #music, some folks didfurther inspection within the CSS on the login page, and certain features and integrations became apparent. We’ve reached out to Twitter to confirm what we’ve seen, and we’ll update our story once we hear back. Until then, here’s what can be taken from the styling code… → Read More
As we wait for Twitter’s music app to be launched, the company has put up a site at http://music.twitter.com giving you the chance to sign in. Some outlets reported it would launch today, but then updated to say that the weekend was the target to tie-in with Coachella. We’ll be watching. The site itself? It’s very exciting It just loops you back to the same page, so nothing… → Read More
Today, music discovery service We Are Hunted confirmed what has been rumored for quite a while, that it had been acquired by Twitter. Both We Are Hunted and Twitter are staying mum about what the team will be doing. And now we know that Twitter is working on a standalone music since Ryan Seacrest of “American Idol” just reported that he’s playing around with it, as retweeted by… → Read More
Shazam — the smartphone media discovery app that is expanding from music into TV and advert discovery with the help of chief product officer Daniel Danker poached from the BBC – today announced a partnership with Indian music service Saavn – the self-proclaimed Spotify of India – to add Shazam’s recognition engine to Saavn’s catalog of South Asian music. Although Shazam is already… → Read More
Jelli, the radio startup offering local stations tools that allow their listener base to control the music selection and playlists, has just been awarded a patent on the concept of user-controlled broadcasting. The patent (U.S. Patent No. 8,392,206) is dubbed “Social Broadcasting User Experience,” and refers to a range of methods related to audience participation with a one-to-many transmission… → Read More
A note of consolidation in the world of digital music: Rumblefish, a company that works with the likes of YouTube, Amazon, Vimeo, Facebook and Slideshare to let users add licensed soundtracks to their digital creations, is today announcing the acquisition of Catalogik, a platform to help find and monitor the use of specific digital tracks. → Read More
Swiss mobile development and design firm Clever & Son bills itself as a “maker of premium apps,” and judging by Couch Player, its latest creation, the startup lives up to its name. Couch Player is essentially a replacement for the built-in Apple Music app on the iPad, but it manages to be much more with just a few simple tweaks. → Read More
Music streaming may not be making much money right now, but that’s not stopping music streaming hopefuls from trying. The latest development comes from Deezer, which is announcing a series of new services based around its APIs to drive more users to its service. They include an affiliate marketing program; more social and gaming integration; and the ability to port apps made for the Deezer App… → Read More
The land grab for online music streaming services continues. On the heels of reports that Spotify is planning to take its web-based music player global to complement its desktop and mobile apps, competitor Rdio is extending its own browser-based music-streaming service to seven more markets. Today, the company — founded and backed in 2010 by Skype/Kazaa/Joost co-founder Janus Friis — announced… → Read More
Veteran streaming radio platform Pandora released its fourth quarter earnings today, in which it saw its fiscal 2013 revenue of $427.1 million, representing a 56 percent year-over-year increase, and fourth quarter revenue of $125.1 million, an increase of 54 percent year-over-year. In turn, mobile revenue for the fourth quarter grew 111 percent year-over-year to $80.3 million. → Read More
Over the last decade, the rise of mobile technology and the maturation of the Web as distribution and consumption channels has had a devastating effect on the music industry, among others. Yet, on the bright side, more recently these technologies have produced a litany of new ways to discover great music, empowering both fans and musicians in the process. While it seems that each day brings a new… → Read More
Is the Internet ready for live jazz? Serial entrepreneur Brian Gruber thinks it is. With his latest startup ShowGo.tv, Gruber has created an online music experience in which we can watch live jazz from “the coolest places on earth”. → Read More
Google has just announced via its official blog that Google Play is officially one year old today. The actual marketplace itself is older than that, with the Android Market debuting in 2008, but it has been a year since Google changed the store’s branding to reflect its broader purpose, which extends to media and use on platform besides its mobile OS. Google rehashed some of its previous… → Read More
YouTube plans to launch a music subscription service later this year, to allow people to listen to tracks online, and to possibly cut out the ads that precede each video for subscribers, according to Fortune. The largest storehouse of streaming video, YouTube relies on selling banner ads on the site and running short clips before each video, giving a cut back to record companies. YouTube has… → Read More
20 years ago, you discovered music on the FM dial. End of story. Now there’s an uncharted frontier of outlaw torrents, renegade bloggers, on-demand gold miners, and fur-trapping radios. The zeitgeist has splintered, and there’s no piecing it back together. And I think we’re doing just fine without the robber barons of old. → Read More
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