Last night, music tech industry minds gathered at Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory to view demonstrations from several music startups. Several entrepreneurs took the floor to show off their hard work and answer questions. Here were the highlights…
Jesse Israel from Cantora Records was on hand to explain how Cantora Labs seeks to bridge the gap between startup entrepreneurs and the music industry. Cantora leverages their understanding of the music industry to consult and finance various startup enterprises they believe in. “Albums and startup betas are similar in terms of reaching consumer base and raising awareness,” Israel said.
One of Cantora’s partners, Sonic Notify, shows a lot of promise. The technology hi frequency noise which can’t be heard by humans to transfer data or unlock content on smartphone apps. Artists or venues could use the service at their live shows to give fans access to exclusive content.
Blank on Blank is a non-profit doing some important work in the field of digital interview archiving and curating. Their mission is to find lost audio interviews, transfer them to a digital format, and clean them up with a narrative. Check out BlankOnBlank.org.
Tomahawk is a media player that scours the web for the best source of a particular song, aggregates the results, and plays your song. When searching for a track, the software will first see if the file is stored locally, then if it isn’t, will go through a number of sources including but not limited to YouTube, SoundCloud, Grooveshark, and Spotify (if you are a Spotify Premium subscriber).
Tomahawk allows the user to create playlists combining all the music they have access to, whether it’s the Beatles stored locally on their computer, their friend’s band on SoundCloud, or a top 40 artist on Spotify. While the digital music service race is very much up in the air and undecided, Tomahawk is a great option for taking advantage of the best aspects of each service.
TuneSat is an audio monitoring service that gives artists and composers real-time performance data as to when their music is being used in television or internet streaming. TuneSat has connections with the major Performing Rights Organizations and will cross reference their clients’ royalty statements with their findings. When discrepancies arise, TuneSat helps their clients get their true royalty earnings.
Playmysong is a social music jukebox that venues and bars can use to allow patrons to control the space’s playlist. Anyone with a smartphone can request a song from the jukebox’s existing library, and their selection will be added to the queue. Patrons don’t even need to use the services app, soon there will be full twitter integration, so someone can tweet “@playmysongapp #location #artist #song” and their song will be added just as if they had been using the Playmysong App.
[...] briefly highlighted the Tomahawk media player earlier this month when they presented at the NY Music:Tech Meetup at [...]