Music
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eMusic’s new owners believe they can convince users to start buying songs again
Take a moment to consider all that has transpired in your life and the world since the last time you logged into eMusic. For me, it’s been roughly five years, I think, and among a few other slightly more consequential things, I (like much the rest of the world), have begun consuming music completely differently. But the brand, which re-launched this week with a design and rejiggered… Read More
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Music royalty collector Kobalt nabs $75M led by Hearst Entertainment at $775M valuation
As music streaming continues to grow in ubiquity, a company that’s built a platform to collect royalties on music played across billions of streams is cashing in on the opportunity. Kobalt, the European startup that has built technology and a platform to collect music royalties by tracking when even a sample of a song is played across multiple platforms, has raised another $75… Read More
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SoundCloud’s ‘The Upload’ uses machine learning to help you find new tracks
SoundCloud made a name for itself among the landscape of music streaming services as the one where creators themselves uploaded music and other sound recordings — picking up the moniker “the YouTube of audio” in the process. Now the company is launching a new discovery feature that plays on that idea and highlights what’s getting added. The Upload, as it is called… Read More
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Two new Loog guitars let your toddler shout at the devil
Loog is a New York-based guitar company run by a music teacher named Rafael Atijas. These three-string guitars are designed for kids as young as 3 years old and they make guitar easy and fun – at least according to my kids who played with them when they were much younger. The new models are called the Mini for ages 3 and older and the Pro for ages 8 and older. The Mini is a smaller… Read More
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Spotify acquires blockchain startup Mediachain to solve music’s attribution problem
Spotify has acquired the Brooklyn-based blockchain startup Mediachain Labs, whose team will join the company’s office in New York where they will work on developing better technology for connecting artists and other rights holders with the tracks hosted on Spotify’s service. Prior to its acquisition, the startup had developed several technologies that could aid in these… Read More
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New partnership makes Google Play Music the default on all Samsung devices, with double the storage capacity
Samsung and Google today announced a new partnership that will make Google Play Music the default music player and music service including on new Samsung phone and tablets worldwide, starting with the launch of the Galaxy S8 and S8+. The deal comes with an added bonus for Samsung users – they’ll be able to upload up to 100,000 of their own songs to Google Play Music for free. This… Read More
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Spotify’s half-priced student pricing expands worldwide
Hot on the heels of Pandora’s public launch of its on-demand streaming service, Pandora Premium, rival Spotify is looking to make its service more appealing to younger users by rolling out discounted student pricing to more countries around the world. The company announced today that its roughly half-priced version of its Premium service is now available to students who qualify in 33… Read More
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Spotify’s artist dashboard exits beta, offering streaming insights, profile management & more
In the battle to lure artists to its platform, Spotify has used exclusives, free advertising, the promise of more listeners, and open access to data artists care about, like number of fans and listens. On that latter front, Spotify released a data dashboard called Fan Insights in late 2015, allowing artists to see how well their music is performing on the service. Today, Spotify is taking the… Read More
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Pandora Premium opens to all, invites no longer needed
Pandora Premium, the company’s paid, on-demand service and rival to Spotify, is today available to all users. The service was technically launched in March, but required users request an invitation to join, as it ramped up to its broader, public availability. The service itself is essentially Pandora’s own spin on on-demand music, offering a combination of radio-like listening as… Read More
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Will Spotify go public without an IPO?
The Wall Street Journal wrote a story that Spotify is “seriously considering” joining the stock market without an IPO. The news was also reported by Mergermarket. The idea would be to go public without the fundraising event; instead, employees and venture capitalists would sell their shares to investors directly. Read More
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Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo is the first album to go platinum from streaming only
Kanye West’s last album has just made streaming history. The Life of Pablo, released a little over a year ago, just went Platinum with over 1.5 billion song streams in the U.S. While popular albums frequently go platinum, this is a big deal because Kanye’s album reached this milestone relying on streams alone – no paid downloads. Let me explain: An album typically goes… Read More
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Apple Music on Android catches up with iOS
Apple’s subscription streaming service, Apple Music, rolled out a major (ver. 2.0) release to Android users today, introducing a new design that largely brings the app to parity with its iOS counterpart. The update includes a visual makeover, which organizes content into a few main sections – Library, For You, Browse, and Radio – as on iOS. The Now Playing screen also… Read More
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For those about to tune, we salute you
The first Roadie tuner was a miracle in a plastic case. This little device connected to your phone and then turned the machine heads (the little tuning knobs) on your guitar to exactly the right position. It worked wonderfully. Now the Roadie 2 intends to tune your guitar all night and tune your guitar every day. The Roadie 2 and the Roadie Bass are standalone tuners with an app component… Read More
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Report: Free trials push Apple Music ahead of Pandora and Spotify on mobile usage
Spotify may be the reigning leader when it comes to the largest number of paid subscribers for a streaming music service, but it’s Apple that comes out on top when their respective audiences translate into monthly unique users, specifically on mobile. A report published this week from mobile analytics firm Verto has found that Apple Music attracted 40.7 million monthly unique users to… Read More
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Soundcloud confirms new $70M credit line, still closin $100M round
Soundcloud — the popular, but unprofitable platform that lets creators post and share music and other audio files — may have been unsuccessful (so far) in closing a new $100 million round of funding, but it’s not running out of money soon. The company has secured a $70 million round of debt funding from three new investors — Ares Capital, Kreos Capital, and… Read More
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