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
Back in February, we introduced you to EvntLive, a new startup backed by Silicon Valley veterans that’s on a mission to create a scalable platform for broadcasting live concerts, from arenas to small clubs, backed by a library of recorded shows, profiles and music info. Of course, a platform for live concerts isn’t exactly a new idea. In fact, it’s been floating around for years, but those… → 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
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
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
With Shazam infiltrating our TVs, showing up in Super Bowl ads, and passing 200 million users, you just might think that the market has its music-identification king. But SoundHound would beg to differ. Just three days after Shazam’s announcement, the music search and discovery app has responded by quietly releasing some numbers of its own. No official announcement, no hubbub, just a press… → Read More
As the Web is stuffed with more and more content, we’re increasingly in need of good curators to help us discover the things we’ll love amidst the noise. Flipboard, for one, rose to popularity by transforming your favorite digital news sources into a socially-curated mobile magazine. Shuffler.fm is on a mission to do the same for music discovery, combining Flipboard’s successful formula with a… → Read More
Sonos, the developers of a sexy, high-end wireless home audio system, has raised $135 million in funding led by private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. Previous investors Redpoint Ventures and Elevation Partners also contributed to the round, bringing the company’s total funding to just under $200 million.
As part of the round, KKR’s David Kerko, Elevation Managing Director Fred Anderson… → Read More
Today at the LAUNCH Education Conference in Mountain View, an Israeli startup named JoyTunes showed off the work its been doing in an exciting and active space: The convergence of music education and video games. Co-founder Yuval Kaminka tells us that 85 percent of the population wish they had learned to play an instrument but never made it past those first few frustrating lessons. JoyTunes is on… → 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… → Read More
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. → Read More
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