Vinylmint is a Norfolk-based startup that aims to assist musicians in creating their music. It’s essentially a recording studio in the cloud. You record uncompressed audio right into the computer, the service uploads it to the cloud, and then you can listen to and edit tunes in your browser. Think of it as a mixing board with microphones all over the world.
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Social magazine Flipboard may have to think up a new tagline for itself, as tonight the company is rolling out an update which greatly expands its focus beyond text-based content to also include audio. The rollout features integrations from NPR, PRI (Public Radio International) and social sound platform, SoundCloud.
Also of note, Flipboard is launching its third localized edition with the debut of a Flipboard app for Japan, following its previous launches in China and France. And there’s an update which will matter a lot to a smaller number of users: integration of Apple’s voiceover controls to provide better access for the visually impaired. → Read More
There’s currently a heated battle being waged between three of the biggest on-demand music streaming services — MOG, Spotify, and Rdio — each of which is trying to capture our hearts and ears by offering the best mobile experience for tunes on-the-go. You can check out Josh’s in-depth comparison of the battle for mobile supremacy here.
While it wasn’t Josh’s top pick for music streaming on the tablet, Rdio is today taking a big step forward, launching a completely redesigned music listening and discovery experience, starting with the web and its desktop apps. While the company unveiled its plans at SXSW, today marks the first time the new Rdio will be available to all. → Read More
Miami-based streaming music startup Senzari, which aims to take on Pandora by targeting the markets Pandora misses (i.e., the rest of the world), has just closed an additional round of funding totaling $1 million. The round includes investors in both Miami and Silicon Valley, including, notably Dave McClure’s 500 Startups.
The company had previously raised $2 million from undisclosed angels in Silicon Valley and Boston (mainly friends and family) and a private equity group in Southern California. → Read More
Music streaming provider Deezer is one of the bigger (and older — it’s been around since 2006) services of its kind, with some 20 million registered users in 48 territories, and 15 million tracks in its catalog — but it has failed to capture mindshare in quite the same way as rival Spotify; and some might argue that this will make it harder in the long run for Deezer to keep up and grow.
Today sees the launch of the company’s latest attempt to turn that situation around: “Open Deezer,” a new set of APIs for iOS, Android and Java-based web apps, which it hopes will help it bring on a new raft of developers to create music services around its platform.
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You know what doesn’t rock? Missing a concert by your favorite band. So today Live Nation is publicly launching its Concert Calendar, a Facebook app that pulls in music and comedy gig listings from Ticketmaster (which merged with Live Nation in 2010) as well as 75 other ticketers.
The calendar offers concert recommendations based on your Facebook Likes and streaming service listening habits from Spotify and other apps, as well as the shows your friends are going to. You even earn Concert Cash for discounts on tickets and merchandise just for visiting. → Read More
Parents looking for a curated selection of music and videos that’s a little more kid-friendly than YouTube have another option now, thanks to the launch of Jitterbug.tv. The new iPad app is the first subscription-based music service for kids, and is targeting the 2-7 age range. Included in the app are videos and music from top kids artists like 23 Skidoo, The Jimmies, Laura Veirs, Milkshake Music, The Verve Pipe (yes, they’re a kids’ band now), Recess Monkey, and Gustafar Yellowgold.
I know, I know. If you don’t have kids, you’re like who the heck…wait, Verve Pipe? What? But if you are a parent of a young one, you’ll recognize at least a few of those names. (Sadly). → Read More
This is a few days old but it’s well worth revisiting if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s by English rapper Dan Bull and it’s about everyone’s favorite time-waster, TheFacebook. The best part?
He also does a Twitter one. Give it a listen and then download it for free to help Bull hit the record books.
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These days, it seems SoundCloud is the player to beat in the music platform space. It’s been called (among other things) the “Flickr for audio” or the “YouTube for audio.” Evidence of this lies in the fact that the company raised $50 million in January at a $200 million pre-money valuation — they must be doing something right.
Instead of competing with SoundCloud, Official.fm is taking things in a slightly different direction. Today Official.fm launched a new music sharing and promotion platform that aims to become the only music platform that professionals will need.
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As Spotify continues its march to becoming a $1 billion-revenue company, the music streaming service is launching a battery of new products to increase the amount of time that people spend on the site: There is an iPad app that could launch as soon as tomorrow; and there is the ability to play Spotify tracks on third-party websites, launched last week. Another development in Spotify’s stickiness has been the rise of third-party, web and mobile apps, which have been planting themselves on its platform and growing in use.
One of the more popular has been Soundrop: a jukebox-style app that lets users create playlists or listen to “rooms” of music created by others, adding their selections to the mix — similar to Turntable.fm, except that it works in more countries (everywhere that Spotify does; currently 13 markets compared to Turntable’s U.S.-only limit).
It’s not only users who are finding Soundrop popular: Inge Andre Sandvik, the co-founder and CEO, says the company is weeks away now from closing its first round of funding from “leading VCs.” → Read More
Spotify’s storming of the U.S. market last year has seen the company rack up a total of 10 million active users of its music streaming services. It is projected to have revenues of $889 million this year, up 160 percent on 2011. But with that growth also comes increasing net losses, which in 2011 doubled to the tune of around $60 million.
Daniel Ek, CEO of the music streaming company, says in a candid interview with the Swedish financial paper Dagens Industri (translation here) that the question of when Spotify will show a profit is currently irrelevant. “Our focus is entirely on growth,” he told the publication. “That is priority one, two, three, four and five.” → Read More
Music intelligence startup Echo Nest, which you might know better as the company powering Spotify Radio and Vevo’s recommendations, is announcing two new partnerships today which will give developers access to more data to build their apps with. The company is teaming up with JamBase, which provides concerts listings and tour schedules, and SongMeanings, which you’ve surely come across while Googling to find out what the eff that guy is actually singing about.
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One would guess that the big Yahoo layoff-reorganization includes a culling of some the company’s weaker properties — and yes, we’re hearing today that this includes Music and possibly Movies, popular sites that don’t monetize well.
Word has been leaking out since last week, when Digital Music News wrote a well-sourced article that didn’t make the situation sound good. “Will there be a music-dot-yahoo-dot-com?,” it quoted one person as saying. “Yes. But will it be integral to the future success to Yahoo? No. Has the traffic been good? No. Has this content been consistently interesting to advertisers? No.” → Read More
On the heels of a payout from the owners of P2P filesharing site Limewire, another claim finally settled for Merlin, the group that represents independent music labels in licensing negotiations and legal actions: the group says that Sirius Satellite Radio has settled for $1.6 million in a copyright infringement suit brought against Sirius by the agency.
The claim concerned Sirius’ Stiletto recording device, and was years in coming: Sirius had settled similar claims brought by the major record labels in 2007 and 2008. → Read More
MTV is handing musicians the new keys to a new website called Artists.MTV.
Van Toffler, president of Viacom’s Music Group, was scheduled to announce the initiative during his speech at South by Southwest this afternoon. Beforehand, I got on the phone with VP of Digital Music Strategy Shannon Connolly to talk about MTV’s plans. She said Artists.MTV comes out of a larger discussion about the role that MTV wants to play in the changing music industry. In some ways, it sounds like the music section of MySpace reinvented, but Connolly called as a “pro-artist initiative” that’s “letting artists take control of their MTV presence.” → Read More
Jelli, the user-controlled music streaming service, is releasing a specially curated SXSW-themed station today, which will feature the indie bands playing at the festival. The playlist for the station will be crowdsourced in real-time and made available on both web and mobile.
And speaking of mobile, Jelli has good news on that front, too – it’s finally available on Android. → Read More
On the surface this may seem like an unlikely interview. I mean, we’re a tech blog and Andrew Bird is a musician. But beneath the organic and strikingly analog sounds of Mr. Bird’s beautiful music there is this whole sea of technology at work — especially during live solo performances.
Andrew was kind enough to take some time out of his touring schedule on the eve of the release of his new album called Break It Yourself in order to tell me a bit more about the different gadgets and pedals he uses to achieve his unique sound and also about his vision and approach to making music. An approach where technology is involved, but is certainly not the master.
TC:
Andrew Bird, I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us here at TechCrunch. Before we get started, I thought maybe you could, in your own words, describe your music for people who may not be familiar.
AB:
Well, my main instrument is violin, but I think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin. I also play guitar. I will often times loop my violin to expand the instrument beyond its linear restrictions. So I do a lot of live looping and manipulate the instrument to get a wider set of sounds — from double bass to metallic sounds. → Read More
I had the distinct pleasure of bringing Mike Doughty, songwriter and author, into the TCTV studio to talk about his new book, The Book Of Drugs, his new album, Yes & Also Yes, and how the music business has changed during his long and tumultuous career.
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Another hefty payout for the now-defunct file-sharing P2P service LimeWire, and, perhaps more importantly, another nail in the coffin for P2p services: Merlin, a rights agency representing independent labels, says that it has reached an out-of-court settlement with LimeWire over copyright infringement — a settlement its characterizing as its first big win against a P2P company.
Merlin — which represents labels that feature artists like Adele, Grizzly Bear, The National, Arcade Fire and The National — did not disclose the value of the deal, except to say that it was “commensurate” with the settlement reached by major music labels with LimeWire in May 2011, which totaled $105 million. The suit had originally been filed in July 2011, in the wake of that settlement, with Merlin seeking at least $5 million in damages. → Read More
Miami-based streaming music startup Senzari, backed by $2 million in angel funding, is continuing its international rollout today with an entrance into its third market since its U.S. launch into private beta last December. Today, the company is announcing that it’s dropping the invite-only status as it moves into Spain, where it has signed a strategic partnership deal with MTV Spain.
The site has also been redesigned with a “mobile first” approach that will help the company transition to smartphone and tablet devices in the near future. As a part of the redesign, an “Around You” feature taps into Facebook to help users discover the music popular with those that frequent a particular location. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Senzari’s plans for social recommendations. The company is just two months away from the launch of a new algorithm which will help build stations based on data gathered from Facebook’s Open Graph, among other things. → Read More
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