7digital, the streaming music company that offers a direct-to-consumer service but also partners with the likes of Samsung and Pure to power respectively its Music Hub and radio music services on connected devices like smartphones, tablets and music players, today announced a significant international expansion into the emerging markets of India, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and South Africa, where… → Read More
Amazon Cloud Player, the company’s online and mobile music streaming service fueled by purchases of MP3′s, uploads and even previously bought CDs, is now going to be available in Ford SYNC AppLink-enabled vehicles. The service will allow drivers to connect their Android smartphone running the Amazon MP3 app to their SYNC system, in order to stream their Cloud Player library over the car’s stereo… → Read More
You could discover a song on Pandora, search for more by the artist on Spotify, and get context from satellite radio DJs, or do it all in one place with Slacker. After hitting 4 million monthly users and 500,000 paid subscribers, Slacker today unveils a big redesign for its site, apps, and car integrations. It wants to claw mainstream users away from competitors with a “complete music service”. → Read More
Timbre launched last September as a bootstrapped mobile iOS app to help people discover and share live music recommendations in their vicinity. The simple-but-engaging user interface and service proved to be a hit, and within two months, with no spend on media or marketing, it saw more than 100,000 downloads. That attention then brought something else: VCs, who came knocking on Boston-based… → Read More
You may not be familiar with her name, but Judy Estrin has quietly become one of Silicon Valley’s most successful serial entrepreneurs and executives. She began her career working with Vint Cerf’s research group at Stanford University — the same one that played a central role in the development of the Internet. Since the early ’80s, she has founded seven technology companies, has served as the… → Read More
Editor’s Note: Brenden Mulligan created Onesheet, a tool that enables musicians to create beautiful web presences in two minutes.
MySpace. Or is it Myspace. Or is it My______. Truth is, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that MySpace has made increasingly bad decisions for too many years to every hope that they’ll become relevant again. Their latest bad decision shows how detached they are. → Read More
If you’re not an aspiring musician, you may not be familiar with TakeLessons, but the San Diego-based startup is on a mission to change that. Today, TakeLessons announced that it has raised $4 million in follow-on series A financing, led by Palo Alto’s Triangle Peak Partners, to expand its online marketplace for music lessons into new new verticals — including tutoring and the performing arts. → Read More
Live concert notification and recommendation app Bandsintown just released a Spotify app to make it easier to query its concert database. Whenever you are listening to something interesting on Spotify, just drag the track on Bandsintown’s icon in order to get upcoming tour dates. → Read More
If you’re an independent band, or actor, or clown, or really creative of any stripe, you’re probably looking for a gig. But try as you might, finding that gig is tough. But what if there were a platform that gave creatives their very own LinkedIn or CareerBuilder? In a down economy, where millions are struggling to find regular work, any site that helps musicians connect with gigs at places like… → Read More
Another day, another vote of investor confidence for educational gaming. Today, Pluto Media, the Menlo Park-based maker of educational, tablet-based games for kids, announced that it has raised $500K in seed funding from Learn Capital’s Rob Hutter, along with individual investments from NewSchools Venture Fund’s Jennifer Carolan and Peter Relan, the co-founder of OpenFeint, WebVan, Crowdstar and… → Read More
The battle for international users continues to heat up for streaming music services. Just this morning, Deezer announced expansions into developing markets in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Brazil, and now Rdio follows with news of its own – it’s going free. The company says it’s rolling out free web access internationally to all territories where it operates, except for Germany and Brazil. → Read More
Deezer, the music streaming service which raised $130 million this fall to expand its business internationally, is today making good on those ambitions with launches in twenty-two new regions across the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Brazil. Included in the rollout are the Republic of Korea, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates, among others. The company is also touting its claim to fame as the… → Read More
Today, the streaming music startup Serendip is bringing its “lean back,” serendipitous music discovery service to mobile with the debut of the Serendip iOS application. Like the web version which launched last fall, the new app offers a continuous stream of the music popular among friends, or others you’ve dubbed your “music soulmates.” → Read More
More money for big data analytics — and a sign that, as the space matures, we will see more segmentation of what kinds of big data is getting analysed. Semetric, the UK/LA-based company behind the music data tracking service Musicmetric, has today announced £3 million ($4.7 million) in new investment, which it says that it will use to further expand its music service, as well as other big data… → Read More
Today, a Cox Media-owned radio station in Tampa Bay is shifting its entire format to listener-controlled radio, now putting its audience in control of the songs that play 24 hours a day. It’s the first station among Cox Media’s 86 U.S.-based properties to do so on both web and mobile, if not the first in the U.S. to experiment with the format. Is this what the future of terrestrial radio looks… → Read More
I’ve signed into Myspace using my Facebook account. They said you could use your Myspace ID, but apparently, my memory doesn’t stretch that far back. The site asks me to identify myself. Am I “curator?” A “venue?” A “brand?” Nope, but funny that all those choices are above “fan.” I decide to be more honest, and select “writer/journalist” because it’s the closest thing to “blogger.” → Read More
With nearly three million downloads and 300,000 active users, Soundtracking lets you share what you’re listening to. But when it added a Twitter Card integration to turn tweets into musical photos, referrals went up 30%, and it knew its iOS app needed a visual refocusing. Soundtracking for iOS 3.0 ditches the text-based feed for singing photos, and adds music dedications plus a trending nearby tab → Read More
Amazon is today introducing a new service called “Amazon AutoRip,” which automatically gives customers free MP3 versions of any CDs they’ve purchased from Amazon since the launch of its Music Store back in 1998, as well as a growing number of new releases. The digital music is being placed in users’ Amazon Cloud Player account, the company’s answer to Google Music, iTunes Match, Rdio, and other… → Read More
Today news broke that Spotify was halting its music download service in favor of pushing more of its streaming services — raising some questions about how well downloads are doing compared to streaming music. But whatever way you cut it, digital music, and digital music purveyors, now dominate the music business, according to new research out from Nielsen (embedded below). → Read More
Veteran music streaming service Rhapsody has been around for over a decade. It’s managed to survive in a turbulent (and oftentimes) crowded market, even as it has been eclipsed in popularity by services like Rdio and Spotify. In fact, Rhapsody was the first on-demand service to offer unlimited access to a substantial catalog of music for a flat monthly subscription fee, paving the way for startups… → Read More
Dropbox broadly hinted at its future plans yesterday, with the acquisition of Audiogalaxy, a startup allowing users to store their music files and playlists in the cloud then stream them to any device. The announcement was made via a short post on the Audiogalaxy blog, signed by company founders Michael Merhej, Tom Kleinpeter and Viraj Mody. → Read More
Last.fm, an early mover in the streaming music business, is scaling back some of its operations, and putting others behind a paywall, in a bid to cut costs and make more money out of its existing business, the company has announced. → Read More
Olive, a well established San Francisco-based audio company that makes high-end digital home audio systems, today took the somewhat unusual route of launching its latest product on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. The new Olive ONE, as it’s called, is a departure for the company in more ways than that however: it’s also a much more affordable option with a pre-order entry-level price of $399, and… → Read More
Has being blasted with “Gangnam Style” whetted your appetite for Korean pop, but you have no idea how to delve more deeply into the genre? Eumakh is an online video platform with a sleek, user-friendly interface that makes exploring and discovering new Korean music videos easy for K-pop fans that don’t speak or read the language. → Read More
When you visit a review on Google Play for an app, book, song or movie, you won’t have to worry as much about whether someone is sheepishly hiding behind a computer firing off nasty words, as Google has now flipped on the switch to display your Google+ name and profile picture with all reviews you add to the store.
I’m not so sure this is the best thing in the world, 100%, as you don’t have an… → Read More
Another startup is wading into the crowded waters of music streaming today: Radical.FM, a web-based service that combines on-demand streaming and curated radio stations with a platform for artists to create and broadcast their own public playlists. But while companies like Pandora and Spotify build out businesses based on advertising and subscription services, Radical.FM is trying something a… → Read More
Google has reached a new arrangement with European music publishing entities which will give it access to 5.5 million tracks spanning 35 countries, including artists like Lady Gaga and Rihanna. The arrangement was made with Armonia, one of the largest alliances of music publishers in the world. This should help Google expand the availability of its music content offerings. → Read More
Digital music platform Chromatik is today launching its web and iPad applications for learning, practicing, recording and collaborating on music with friends, bandmates, teachers, and others. The company has also expanded on its seed round from earlier this year, and now has just over $2 million in funding from Learn Capital, 500 Startups, Kapor Capital, Launchpad LA, MuckerLab, and Bruno… → Read More
It sucks being in a band. No, no, playing music and the groupies seem great, but updating all your web presences one by one with your new songs or videos must be a drag. BandPage Connect wants to make it as easy as Guitar Hero. The musician profile platform now lets you update your BandPage, and any site or app tapped into the Connect API auto-syncs, including WordPress and a dozen other sites. → Read More
The music streaming juggernaut that is Spotify continues to gain momentum, although today was possibly more of a gentle acceleration than a turbo charge: today the company quietly launched its service live in Ireland and Luxembourg — two markets that may not be known for being music streaming powerhouses but are significant all the same for filling out the startup’s European footprint. (And, of… → Read More
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