SoundCtrl » discovery

Announcing the 2013 FlashFWD Nominees – Vote For Your Favorites Now

SoundCtrl — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:00:39 +0000

SoundCtrl is proud to announce our nominees for the 4th Annual FlashFWD Awards – honoring excellence and innovation in music technology.

Every year, we’re excited by the steady and explosive growth of technology that is changing the ways we create, perform, discover and listen to music. Since the inception of FlashFWD in 2010, we’ve seen the industry shift, adjust and evolve many times over.

This year, there are simply too many companies and individuals we wanted to recognize. We feel compelled open up the conversation to you – the artist, the fan, the influencer – who do you think deserves a 2013 FlashFWD Award?

Submit your vote for each of our six categories through our 2013 ballot hosted right HERE on SoundCtrl!

Best in Discovery | Best in Live | Best in Mobile & Tablet

Best in Artist Support | Best in Gaming | SoundWAV Influencer Award

See if your favorites make the cut on Wednesday, May 22nd at the Gramercy Theatre where we will welcome nominees, artists, entrepreneurs, and industry elite to celebrate our 2013 honorees, with special performances by guests TBA.

The voting period ends in two weeks and honorees will be announced in May. Congratulations to all our nominees and looking forward to another amazing FlashFWD season!

To check out what went down in 2012, visit our recap HERE and check out what past winners think about FlashFWD HERE.

If you’d like to receive a press pass and/or interview the SoundCtrl board about the event, please email [email protected].

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Best in Discovery: Past honorees include Spotify (2012), The Echo Nest (2011), Hype Machine (2010)

Recognizing a product or service that has most significantly impacted and improved the way fans discover and share recorded music

1) Songza 2) NPR Music 3) YouTube 4) Mixify 5) Rap Genius

Best in Live: Past honorees include Square (2012), The Creator’s Project (2011)

Recognizing a product, service or organization that has most significantly improved the live concert experience from either a fan or artist perspective

1) Boiler Room 2) V Squared Labs 3) Superfly Presents 4) ID&T

Best in Mobile & Tablet: Past honorees include Snibbe Interactive for Biophilia (2012), SoundTracking (2011)

Recognizing a product or service that is breaking new ground in mobile technology and expanding upon traditional fan engagement

1) Pheed 2) Groovebug 3) Biobeats 4) Instagram

Best in Artist Support: Past honorees include BandPage (2012), SoundCloud (2011), Indaba Music (2010)

Recognizing a product or service that focuses on giving artists more options in creating and promoting their music independently

1) Tumblr 2) Jamplify 3) PledgeMusic 4) (New) Myspace

Best in Gaming: A Brand New Category

Recognizing a game, creator or organization that demonstrates innovation in music integration with a gaming platform, be it through soundtrack, virtual marketplace, or unique partnership.

1) Video Star App 2) SoundPlay by Pitchfork 3) Kinect for XBOX 360 4) Virgin Gaming

SoundWAV Influencer Award: Past honorees include Scooter Braun (2012), Troy Carter (2011)

Recognizing an individual who has significantly impacted digital music culture through the early adoption or creation of new technology and is seen as a visionary and voice in the music tech industry

1) Bill Werde 2) Jimmy Iovine 3) Amanda Palmer 4) Guy Oseary 5) Questlove

Insider Interview: Soundwave Founder, Brendan O’Driscoll

SoundCtrl — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:00:28 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

Find the full review of Soundwave here.

Soundwave is a brand new music discovery and sharing app, developed by a team of creative people based in Dublin, Ireland. The app’s active use has been a long time in coming, as the company began its work in February 2012.

Recently having attended the South by Southwest Festival in Austin this past March, and having shown their hard work in action, Soundwave is now signing up users for its newest beta version and working furiously to make the app better everyday. Brendan O’Driscoll, Founder of Soundwave, chatted with me about the app inspiration, its global potential and even gave a peek into the next “wave” to come:

SoundCtrl: First of all, congratulations on the beta launch. It’s been really neat watching you and the rest of the Soundwave team evolve, even in the short time I’ve been following along prior to SXSW. Music blogger Damien Joyce deserves a nod here, as he was responsible for introducing us to one another!

While this might be one of the most obvious starting questions, I think it presents a worthwhile level of intrigue: Why is Soundwave here today? Where did this concept come from? Considering that in recent times, music discovery apps have seemed to multiply faster than users can download them, the desire to push through with something you are convinced has its own character must mean your source of inspiration is something really striking…

Brendan: We always thought that finding new music was a chore and were constantly looking for simple new ways to find new music. Apps, websites and clever recommendation engines weren’t keeping our attention either so we spent most of the time asking each other and our friends about what new songs we had recently found.

Then one day when I was working in Sweden, I was coming home from work and saw a tall, blonde Swedish girl almost walk into a tree because she was so engrossed in the song she was listening to. I immediately wondered if there was a way for me to find out what the song was- and I looked around for apps that could give me this info- but there were none.

That week, I Skyped with my cousin Aidan and discussed the idea further. After some initial validation of the idea from musicians and friends, we applied to the NDRC LaunchPad Programme in last spring with the Soundwave idea and a hunch that we were on to something quite unique in the crowded space of music discovery.

There are apps that help you identify a song playing in a club (Shazam), record your own song (SoundCloud), listen to a song on the radio (Pandora), and music subscription services (Spotify and Rdio) where you can listen to a full song. But, if you are looking to find new music based off of what your friends listen to, your current location, or even discover what the most popular hip/hop songs in Brooklyn are right now, there was no efficient method in the space.

Soundwave’s objective is to make it easy and fun to find new music in a way that provides highly relevant content to you. Its your app that shows what your friends, family and favorites (musicians, athletes ,celebs) listen to which gives you inspiration when your finding new music!

SoundCtrl: Continuing with this theme about your inspiration: The “Music Map” feature has to be my favorite aspect of Soundwave’s interface, as well one of the strongest factors to set the app apart. Are you, or the rest of the team, heavy travelers and is that what brought this feature into being?

Brendan: Yes, travel did influence the ‘Music Map’ feature. When I lived abroad in Sweden I was exposed to entirely different tastes in music, and I shared my song discoveries with friends in Ireland via Facebook and Twitter. And likewise, they kept me in the loop with music trends in Dublin. Now, with the Soundwave app, I can simply draw a circle over Texas, Amsterdam, or Sweden and see what songs are actually playing in real-time. With Soundwave, I can instantly learn what is trending in that location. No other app out there combines social, location and music discovery in such a hyper-local and relevant way- it’s the new SoLoMo- it’s SoLoMu!!

SoundCtrl: Might you share with us some thoughts on your trip to SXSW? How was the reception to Soundwave as a new service and concept?

Brendan: SXSW is the dream for a music start-up- it is the place where you literally run into the key movers and shakers in the tech/music scene- from Robert Scoble to the founders of Foursquare and SoundCloud. We are based outside of the US, so we were looking to make some headway in the US- and SXSW provided us with the perfect forum to show off the app and build a number of strategic partnerships.

SXSW was also great for trialing a marketing stunt- we asked a local dance crew to preform on 6^th street with no audible music- just with headphones on. Curious spectators could only find out what songs they were dancing to by checking out our #SXDancingGuy Twitter feed or by signing up for the app beta.

After SXSW, we rented an RV and drove across the US to Las Vegas and San Francisco for some very productive follow-up meetings. All in all, our trip to the US was quite the adventure! As you can see from the pin drops attached, it was also a great way to test the location aspect of the app. On our next trip over, we want to curate the top plays for Route 66 – how cool would that be!

SoundCtrl: As I alluded to in my full review of the app, do you think Soundwave has the potential to help reduce some of the homogeneity of music in the western world, knowing that playlists of anyone, in any part of the globe, are only a sound circle drawing away?

Brendan: Soundwave gives you the ability to ‘explore the latest music trends in New York while on the bus in London’. Music began as a community based and tribal event. Even today, each community has it’s own unique vibe and music taste. With Soundwave, you can tap into that from anywhere in the world.

SoundCtrl: Regarding some of the technical factors involved in using Soundwave: I noticed that when the app cannot retrieve a song’s metadata in order to play it back, users get routed to an internal version of YouTube to cue up an available version of that same track for listening. However, it seems international content barriers are blocking the way when it comes to hearing some of these songs in other countries. Does Soundwave plan on mitigating this issue with future releases or is this more of a deep rooted legal battle with global PROs and access limitations, with which you are not wanting to tamper?

Brendan: We did not set out to become a music player like Spotify or Rdio; Soundwave works side by side with these existing music providers as an aggregated music discovery feed. The problem we found with content providers is not that they don’t have enough content. They have too much. Spotify has a library of over 20 million songs and users often freeze when faced with this amount of choice. As a result, we wanted to position ourselves as a content discovery platform and not a content provider. As you mentioned, this means we can steer clear of any licensing issues Regarding YouTube content availability – that’s all on YouTube’s side. We’re working on a smarter results system now that only returns “available content” and also chatting daily with the team at YouTube. Regarding your questions above about “Most Liked and “Most Disliked” charts, those charts in the ‘Explore’ section of the app are compiled globally –every user of Soundwave is included in this data. The ‘Explore’ section is where we plan to put interesting content we want to feature for our users –new bands to join the app, top ten charts of popular music festivals etc. But at the moment it is where the global charts live. We plan to have more specific charts searchable by genre, groups and location down the line. Right now you can see an individual user’s Top Charts, and in the next build you will be able to see location charts when you draw a sound circle on the map.

SoundCtrl: Can you tell us any new capabilities or specific features you are hoping to develop in future versions of Soundwave?

Brendan: Our development team is hard at work ensuring that we will be able to pull song listens from all music players. We currently collect song listens from Google Play, Rdio and all native smartphone music players, but we plan to expand this offering in future releases.

We are also working on a groups feature- you can organize your friends into groups- ie ‘Indie Music Fans’ and specifically recommend songs to a particular subset of followers.

We also see a strong use case developing for large events and music festivals. Next year we hope that Coachella attendees can draw a Soundwave circle over Indio and see the most liked, disliked and played songs by genre in real-time. We have big plans for the future, so stay tuned!!

Currently, we are in beta collecting feedback from a growing Irish community of users. We are optimizing on both platforms, both Android and iOS and currently work on tablets too- so readers- sign up for the beta right now at www.getsoundwave.com.

Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1

Soundwave Discovery App now in Beta

SoundCtrl — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:00:43 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

Soundwave, a fledgling company based out of Dublin, Ireland, has stepped into the digital music arena with their namesake app. They offer music listening, discovery, liking and sharing, much like any other music app out on the market already – but Soundwave has got the formula laid out in a surprisingly different and very cool way.

Much in the way that Twitter has – for better or worse – led to a greater importance of the speed of dissemination of information, Soundwave’s “Music Map” feature also emphasizes instantaneous awareness and real-time coexistence of music through the world’s digital devices. Anyone logged into and actively scrolling through Soundwave will see artists and songs in the feeds of those they follow. The songs shown are often playing at that very moment, and the rest is backlog of what one’s followers were listening to farther in the past as one scrolls downward. The map feature turns the user into that of a virtual musical jet-setter.

Want to see what’s playing, this very second, in all of Africa? Hit the “draw” button on the map and a free form tool activates, converting the drawing of a simple circle with one’s finger, into a designated search area. Soundwave refers to these as “sound circles.” If there are any Soundwave users within the hand drawn area, Google Maps-style dropped pins appear and one can either zoom in, to see exactly where the music is active, tap the pins right from the map to see the where each song is playing right off the map, or, hit the results tab and see the songs in list form for immediate perusal. Might not seem like much of an adventurous undertaking at first but, just start exploring the world –by continent, country or crowded metropolis, and it becomes very hard to pull away.

Despite the internet’s reach, the fact that it still takes a considerable amount of effort or communication simply to find out what native artists are popular in another country says a lot about how segmented the global music scene still feels –particularly when searching within the US.

Once a user has compiled a sizable feed full of likes they have put on others’ tracks, “giving back” and building one’s own library might incite a bit of frustration. “Where’s the upload button?” “Where’s the mic feature to identify and convert music playing at my local bar?” Soundwave has neither of these. This begs the question of how tracks come to be in the app at all. The answer is that there are no buttons or converters to deal with whatsoever. (It took me a little while to figure this out because I skipped the initial intro pages, believing the interface would be self-explanatory). The only requirement to build oneself up as an avid Soundwave user, is to listen to music. That’s it –really. The only catch to that is that the music has to be played on the device loaded with the Soundwave app. The app automatically detects when a user has music playing on their device’s native music app and after a song plays, the information is quickly and accurately retrieved and put in one’s Soundwave activity feed. Listening to an hour long mix during a workout at the gym? That’s an easy 9-10 tracks added to your feed by the time the playlist ends. Music you are finding and enjoying in the app from others can also be played while it is minimized and you are doing other things. Users can also access their in-phone cameras to pull different photos to use as their profile image.

The rest of Soundwave’s features are very comfortable and familiar. The usual jargon of “Like” and “Follow” have been mentioned but “Buckets” and “Humdingers” are two terms new to the scene. The former term acts like a sharing feature. Hit a song to play and if that song is something you want another user that you follow to hear, tapping the “Bucket” feature will bring up a list of one’s followers and a single tap will “drop” the currently cued up track into that person’s bucket. So long as the filter to hide bucket activity is not turned on, the next time the selected user logs in, the bucket symbol with the chosen song will be in their feed, telling them the song came as a recommendation from another user. There is also a bucket section where users can go just to see what others have left them, much like the “@” reply feature on Twitter. Humdingers represent something akin to super-favorites, as they have their own filter and can be singled out for easy access and replay, as well as being songs users can select to represent their “song of the moment” that will sit alongside their user name on their profile. Ratings are Soundwave’s version of the Like and Dislike a la Pandora, but, a large or small number of either has no bearing on a user’s ability to play their music –even if everyone were to give it a dislike. The purpose of the feature for the moment, is to help gage and determine the most liked and disliked tracks.

Seeing as Soundwave is still in beta, there’s room for devlopers compassion, as the app is going to be changing even more profusely in the coming weeks and months, to be sure. Still, this is where questions start arising. The ratings system, for example, with the “most liked” and “most disliked…” what are the grouping parameters for compiling those lists? Are they lists made up of songs from people I follow? My immediate geographical location? State? Global Soundwave users? The fact that Soundwave is intended to highlight groups to show what’s trending and popularly played in the real world… well, I would want to know which “sound circle” of people made the Top 20 what it is.

Furthermore, is there a way to delete songs from a user’s feed? Suppose one’s iPhone or Android is left playing music on the table while one’s hands are full doing something else. Unexpectedly, the music shuffle feature cues up a horribly embarrassing guilty pleasure song from 10 years ago and it syncs with Soundwave before the song can be changed. The ease with which Soundwave’s very fluidly disclosing nature could unleash “TMI” upon anyone who one might know also using Soundwave, is not the most fun thing to think about.

If alerting people to your exact location is not something you want, Soundwave might not be your socialization form of choice. (The pins themselves are anonymous but if you sign up via Facebook, any location info you have filled in there will be automatically listed in your Soundwave user information). Though spreading around favorite songs probably is not a cause for alarm.

Soundwave being at the stage it is right now, the social grouping-focused app seems to be in very sharp form. There are going through some expected growing pains of the beta world –crashing, slight lagging and such– but the system in place offers to report any or all bugs a user experiences with the app. The company plans on remaining in private beta into the near future, in order to address these minor issues and to improve the total user experience through observation and feedback, which can be provided directly from the feedback menu in the app.

The current incarnation of the private beta is full but you can sign up to be in line for the next “wave” by visiting this page.

There’s also a special bonus if you are really anxious to try the app out ASAP: The Soundwave team has uploaded a mini game onto their site and after you have landed on the waiting list, if you play the game and make it to level 12, you jump the line to the front of the digital queue. Make it four more levels up to 16 and Soundwave names you a permanent VIP!

Now Playing: Twitter #Music Launches on Browser and Mobile

SoundCtrl — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:02:31 +0000

Twitter #Music is now up and running as Twitter announced this morning on Good Morning America and via a blog post.

According to the post, which claims that the new service will “change the way people find music,” Twitter #Music will utilize twitter activity to “detect and surface the most popular tracks and emerging artists.” It also places an emphasis on what music artists themselves are listening to and follows a spiderlike web of tweets and engagement to draw connections between artists with similar tastes.

Currently, the service pulls its music from iTunes, Spotify, or Rdio. By default, previews will come direct from iTunes but Spotify and Rdio subscribers can log into their accounts to access full streams… pretty smart to engage across multiple platforms rather than creating a clear alliance with just one and cannibalizing other listener activity. Twitter also claims that it will make a concentrated effort to “explore and add other music service providers.”

The browser version is very user friendly and is reminiscent of We Are Hunted’s design, with artist’s images loaded into squares that when clicked, allow you to listen to the track, follow the artist, compose a tweet or go purchase the song. Also pulled from We Are Hunted’s interface is the ability to rearrange the checkboard based on filters like “Popular,” which sources music that is trending on Twiiter, “Emerging” which claims to find hidden talent found in tweets, “Suggested” which suggests the music your favorite artists listen to, and “Now Playing” which is music tweeted by the people you follow.

All in all, it’s a bold move from Twitter which as long desired to enter the music space. Twitter is ripe with data that can make connections between fans, artists and music that is visible nowhere else. The app is available in the App Store and the web version is live now.

VICE Goes THUMP

SoundCtrl — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:44:40 +0000

Multi-media lifestyle powerhouse VICE tossed its hat into the electronic scene today with the launch of an online EDM channel called Thump.

The trailer below preceded the launch, describing the channel as a culture hub for everything electronic music:

“Through original videos from the most electrifying events around the globe, to weekly music video premieres, mixes from the most forward-thinking DJs, and an engaging slate of editorial and blog features, THUMP offers a unique portal into the culture of electronic music.”

Time will tell if this outlet can compete against the explosion of similar sites such as DJZ, elektro daily, and MOX.tv.

Anyone can be a curator with Flipboard 2.0

SoundCtrl — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:43:28 +0000

By David Chaitt - SoundCtrl board member

Historically speaking, a publication like Rolling Stone published editorial content by filtering through the solicited music that came their way via record labels. Consumers initially bought the magazine because they trusted Rolling Stone’s taste, tone, and ability to filter. Consumers continue to buy the magazine to make a point that they value physical magazines even as the Internet makes them debatably irrelevant.

There’s no denying that the Internet has presented a major curve ball to traditional media/publishing. It democratizes content creation to the point where people can be both a content creator and consumer. The Internet also brings to light certain styles of music and artists previously ignored by the Rolling Stones of the world. ANYONE can give their opinion and gain a following for free or cheap. You don’t need a printing press or a technical degree to tweet a link to a Spotify playlist you created or start a Tumblr blog focusing entirely on South American Metal music.

In order to stay relevant and maintain their revenue, a lot of the major media outlets began to pander to the masses and focus on site impressions as opposed to content substance. They’re not to blame though. This has been a necessary pivot for them in order to maintain mass relevance and to keep the lights on, which is their unfortunate reality.

What’s the next step in this evolution?

Flipboard 2.0 seamlessly blurs the lines even further between creator and consumer while adding in curation. Users can blend online editorial with social media to create visual appealing and easy to create and navigate social magazines.

This helps create an almost non-existent role of content curator in editorial and puts more power in the hands of the consumer. Yes, it’s correct that editors curate what goes in a magazine or on a website. They are the gatekeepers of their publication’s voice. However, Flipboard helps filter through public content and content within their network to create their own personal voice in a different way that Facebook, Twitter, and their blog could never accomplish.

In an ideal world, I can grab an album preview from NPR of The Flaming Lips, a news piece on The Black Crowes and Tedeschi Trucks Band tour, an Instagram photo of my roommate at Jamie Lidell, an amazing HD video of Pat Metheny from the 70′s, and a recent tweet from Questlove about his duo performance with Rahzel. They’ll make sense together because this is an example of content I actually consumed this week. My friends and whoever else would follow my social magazine would understand and appreciate my ability to uniquely curate from the infinite amount of content that is perpetually being created.

Flipboard is making that a reality!

Now it’s up to the consumers to take this power in their own hands and get to curation to help become a content extension of their personality and interests. Alternatively, this could be a resource for artists to collect interesting content they found online to be discovered or connect even more deeply with their fans.

Better Know a FlashFWD Nominee – Songza

SoundCtrl — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:00:54 +0000

By Carolyn Heneghan

VOTE FOR SONGZA FOR BEST IN DISCOVERY HERE

Ever sit and stare at your massive music library, wishing you could just blink in a playlist to suit what you’re doing or feeling at that moment? Maybe you’re studying for a major test or finishing up an important project for work. Or maybe you’re throwing a party, having some friends over or just want to get pumped up for the day or night. Without a program like Songza, keep staring.

Songza and their Music Concierge endeavor strive to enhance whatever you’re doing or feeling through music. They want you to study and work harder and with more focus, to relax better after a long week and to get fired up when you’re entertaining a crowd or trying to run that extra mile.

Whether you’re in front of your PC or using a mobile device, your Music Concierge will be there to serve you wherever and whenever you need him. Simplicity is the name of the game, and the team at Songza has worked hard to present specially curated playlists for all kinds of activities. They also aim to make these playlists easily and quickly accessible with as few clicks as possible.

For example, on a Tuesday afternoon, Songza will bring up selectable activities like “Boosting Your Energy,” “Working (No Lyrics)” or “Brand New Music.” On a Thursday morning, the Music Concierge might pull up activities like “Waking Up Happy,” “Singing in the Shower” or “Working Out.” When you select one of these activities, say “Working (No Lyrics),” you’ll then find suggestions for genres of your playlist, like Ambient, Jazz Masters, or Electronic. Click on any of these, and you have a selection of playlists to choose from. That’s all you have to do to find some of the best music for your exact moment, brought to you by more than 30 music pros who are all experts in their specific genres.

So who are the brains behind such a useful and innovative music platform? We caught up with Eric Davich, co-founder and Chief Content Officer of Songza, to find out more about the birth of the Music Concierge idea and the 15-person company who brought it to life.

SoundCtrl: Where did the original idea for Songza come from?

Eric Davich: In 2010, we sold our first company, Amy Street, to Amazon. We wanted to concentrate on streaming full-time. We started that by launching Songza, which was a social radio. What that meant was that, at the time, people would suggest playlist themes and anyone could add songs to the playlist. That kind of got out of hand—when you let anyone add songs, everyone might not have the same taste or follow the same rules and guidelines. If you had a playlist, you could make it open to the community or close it so no one could add songs.

The more we curated the playlists, the more people responded to them and the more we realized that in our lives, we used these playlists to enhance our daily life and activities—not just watching the screen or watching the record spin, as they say. So we were listening to these playlists while we were working out, and we created a playlist to make working out better, things like that. As we did more activities, moods, situations, eventually we decided that what we needed was a big library of playlists unlike anything that existed anywhere else on the web.

In 2011, our first mission was to build expertly curated playlists based on a record store clerk to make a really great browsing experience for when you knew what you wanted to listen to or what activities you wanted to do. And that still exists today on our website, where you can find barbecuing and scroll through a list of over two dozen playlists perfect for barbecuing.

The more we showed it to people, the more we realized that they were having a hard time finding the perfect playlist in five seconds or less, which is what we wanted to do. Thus began the concept of the Music Concierge. Basically the idea was that instead of coming to Songza and having to type search terms to tell us what you were doing or browsing, we present you with several different options based on what we knew about you, time of day, device, etc.

Since March 2012, it really caught on quickly—first with the tech scene. The more good press we had, the more tech folks got into it and the more prominent it became. In June of last year we launched the iPad app and Apple featured it on the front page of the iTunes store which took it to a whole new level in a matter of days. We had 1.5 million downloads in 10 days since we were featured on the Apple iTunes store and became the number one music app and number 32 in all categories. It was sort of a game changing occurrence for us. We’ve been growing incredibly quickly ever since.

SC: Where does all the music on the app come from, and how did you choose it amid an endless amount of music available?

ED: We have a catalog of all the music that’s been commercially released digitally, so we have a 20 million song catalog. The songs that get played are all handpicked by our team of about 30 music experts, so each playlist is curated by an individual, and that individual is usually an expert in that genre of music or lifestyle category and knows the best songs for that particular situation based on their knowledge and experience.

SC: What is your work environment like?

ED: Everyone from Songza works in our “bare bones warehouse style office.” We have a big open room that most of us work in and a couple of offices where we pop in for phone calls. It’s a very light atmosphere—there’s always music playing, and we’re always asking each other for feedback on what we’re doing. It’s very interactive, and there’s a really great community and friendly aspect to the way that we work here. And of course we’re all kind of weird people, and there’s a lot of personality and charm rather than a soho-chic-cool office with fancy furniture. Also recently we had some artwork made that have some of the icons for our Music Concierge printed on canvas. One of our users is an artist, and on his own time, he designed a picture of our mascot, the Songza monster, so we had that printed out, and we have that hanging in our office as well.

SC: What has been your favorite part about working on Songza?

ED: We have a great team, and I think that being a 15-person company competing with gargantuan multi-million/billion-dollar companies in the music space and being able to disrupt that space with a small team of quirky people has been huge for us. And that’s been the most fun. We’ve been hard at work making the best music-listening experience that you can have digitally since 2006, when we started Amy Street, so it took us a long time for each massive plan. To be the same team, same founding team throughout and being able to see our vision through has really paid off for us.

Better Know a FlashFWD Nominee – Mixify

SoundCtrl — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:00:31 +0000

By Jason Epstein

VOTE FOR MIXIFY FOR BEST IN DISCOVERY HERE

Mixify is a DJ-centric web community that is hyped as a “never-ending electronic music festival where DJs live stream from around the world while chatting with friends.” The site allows users to host their own electronic dance music (EDM) parties, make their own mixes, learn DJ techniques, socialize, check on what is currently charting and even buy and sell user-made music. SoundCtrl writer Jason Epstein spoke with Mixify CEO and Founder David Moricca about electronic dance music, Mixify’s passionate fan base and what’s coming next.

SoundCtrl- EDM has been a hot topic in music over the past year. What inspired Mixify and what problem does it seek to solve for the EDM community?

David Moricca - As a team, we started noticing this “EDM” explosion well before the articles started flowing out. We learned it old fashioned way – through some user insights from the first product the company created called BreakoutBand (an online music creation site).

Within the EDM space, we identified the live experience as one of the more digitally unaddressed aspects of the genre. We found that many dance artists, labels, promoters and venues were looking to engage their fans in a deeper way digitally around live streaming, but the current options available to them were limited. Most of the audio streaming options were not very fan-friendly, while video streaming had a plethora of its own challenges– namely, audio quality, scalability, cost and brand control. Most importantly, video streaming created more of a passive consumption experience for the fan.

With Mixify, the idea was to innovate around live streaming and create the concept of the digital event and digital festival. As an audio streaming platform at its core, the sound quality of a Mixify stream is really high – good enough to power a real party. Additionally, the artist can bring in their own custom visuals for their events on Mixify – the very same visuals that fans would be seeing in a live environment. We tied this all together through a virtual venue with real-time chat, so fans and artists could have this shared, active social experience. The combination really works.

SC – Mixify has evolved quickly since launching in Mid-November, 2012. How do you prioritize the product development for the platform?

DM - We are really fortunate to have a passionate and growing community of up and coming DJs who use Mixify regularly and serve basically as an extension of our product team. Some of our members have even established their own forums, like the Mixify Community Group and Mixify Mafia Group on Facebook where they support each other as DJs but also provide us an ongoing product feedback and idea loop. In fact, hundreds of these types of users have been using our mobile app in beta over the last several weeks, allowing us to fine tune it. Similarly, fans who tuned into our RISE Digital Festival last month helped us identify the big opportunity for Mixify to be used as a second screen experience for parties in a physical setting. With this kind of passionate DJ and fan community, we are able to appropriately prioritize our feature development.

Our bigger partners also give us great feedback and insight into what is important to them. Oftentimes, we need to balance the needs of larger established partners with up and coming DJs…but so far, so good.

SC – What can we expect to see coming next from Mixify?

DM - From a product perspective, we are extremely excited about the new features in development that are all about widening distribution and enabling DJs, promoters, labels and venues to monetize on the platform. First, we are weeks away from launch of our Android and iPhone mobile app, which will enable to fans to tune into the livestream and chat on the go. Second, as we have seen more fans use Mixify on the second screen, we are making some interface enhancements to accommodate a wider, bigger screen experience for fans partying with Mixify in a physical space. Third, we are adding a monetization feature that enables artists to ticket their events or add a VIP tier where they offer fans something special (unreleased tracks, private digital events, tickets for upcoming tours).

From a partner perspective, you will see Mixify launching more digital festivals, recurring series and live stream events with a broad range of big-name artists, labels, venues and festival companies. Details coming!

Rdio Launches Vdio, New TV and Film Marketplace

SoundCtrl — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 20:23:10 +0000

By Glenn Peoples – via Billboard Biz

On-demand music subscription service Rdio announced the launch on Wednesday of Vdio, a video service that streams movies and TV shows. Vdio (pronounced vee-dee-oh) becomes the first video service offered by a standalone company that also offers an on-demand music subscription service.

To entice Rdio users to start using Vdio, all Rdio Unlimited subscribers have been given a $25 credit (£20 in the U.K.). The deal will be extended to anyone who subscribes to Rdio Unlimited in the next 60 days.

Read full story at Billboard.biz

SoundHound & Rdio Launch New Andriod Tablet App

SoundCtrl — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:36:14 +0000

By Josh Ong via The Next Web

“Music search company SoundHound has released a new tablet-optimized version of its Android app with a redesigned layout, improved music discovery and Rdio as a launch partner.

SoundHound, which has over 130 million users worldwide, says the app has been designed specifically with the Google’s Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets, as well as the Kindle Fire and Kindle HD in mind… ‘By utilizing the tablet’s larger screen space and leveraging new tools from Google, users can much more fluidly navigate within the app and have access to more content in one location,’ VP James Hom said in a statement.”

To check out all of the SoundHound 5.3 updates and for the rest of the story, visit www.nextweb.com

Microsoft, Spotify & The Echo Nest Launch Mixshape

SoundCtrl — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:02:32 +0000

By Josh Ong, via The Next Web

“Microsoft, Spotify and music intelligence firm The Echo Nest have joined forces to create Mixshape, a visual tool that automatically sorts playlists based on the properties and moods of individual songs.

Mixshape is built on top of The Echo Nest’s technology, which is sometimes called the “big data of music”, while Spotify provides the playlists, which maxes out at 300 tracks for the tool.The tool lets users manipulate a movable shape in order to rearrange a playlist based on tempo. You can choose from settings such as romance, party, exercise and work, choose a line that determines the pace of the playlist.”

The Echo Nest (2011) and Spotify (2012) are past SoundCtrl FlashFWD honorees… keep up with FlashFWD 2013 HERE

For the full story visit thenextweb.com

Insider Interview: Tastebuds.fm Community Manager Máriusz Bari

SoundCtrl — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:00:25 +0000

Tastebuds.fm is a dating website for music lovers, by music lovers. Your potential match’s music interests aren’t just a minor part of your profile, tucked away beneath other items; they’re the main event. SoundCtrl writer Jason Epstein had a Q&A with Tastebuds.fm Community Manager Máriusz Bari to speak about the site’s community, features, and future.

SoundCtrl: How important do you feel a couple’s musical compatibility is?

Máriusz: Fairly important, I’d say. I’ve been working with music communities for more than a decade and based on that, I’d definitely say that sharing music is a great way to make people meet or even base relationships on. It can greatly strengthen a bond if a couple can go to a gig, show or festival together – still, their tastes shouldn’t completely overlap – so that either of them can show the other something new from time to time. We’re also in the process of posting testimonial stories about couples who met on our site and got engaged or married, so I’d say musical compatibility is a great thing to have. I’ve heard a number of our female users actually saying that they often ignore messages from guys whose musical taste is completely different.

SC: Using Tastebuds.fm, will you ever be able to meet people based on the music they play, if they are artists as well as music lovers?

Máriusz: Good question! So far we only match people based on the music they listen to and not the music they play, although these would naturally overlap to a certain degree. There are lots of users within our community who are solo musicians, band members, DJ’s, etc. and they love to pimp their music on their profile pages – so if you happen to love their music, you can contact them straight away!

SC: How are you able to offer such a niche service for free?

Máriusz: We’ve recently raised a round of funding to enable us to build out the product and scale our userbase – while testing some premium features with some great results! Also – I wouldn’t say we’re a niche service, festivals and gigs throughout the world would definitely underline the fact that people loving the same music can end up in great fun together!

SC: Can you tell me a bit about Tastebuds.fm’s community?

Máriusz: Oh, sure – they’re a great bunch of music lovers! They’re madly sending messages to each other at the rate of over 10,000 messages a day. Then they’re also debating more publicly in our forum section that we call “The Soapbox”. We hit 100,000 registered users at the end of last year and we’re growing quickly. Users are contributing to our blog articles and we plan to include more of their creative outputs, ideas and products into the site to make it as much theirs as it is ours at the moment. Definitely a friendly community who are about listening to more music and finding new great stuff to live by, so I’d love to hang out there even if I wasn’t working with them.

SC: What are some of Tastebuds.fm’s newest features?

Máriusz: Hmmm let’s see…we’ve recently tweaked our search algorithm to give our users a more accurate list of people who share their music taste. Our unique radio feature lets you discover new music that people just like you are listening to, right now. Now we’re preparing for our next Hack-A-Thon around Valentine’s Day where we basically have 36 hours to add a new feature to the site, which is…well, you have to come back a little after Valentine’s Day to see what that feature is, but it’ll be fun, I promise!

SC: What’s next?

Máriusz: We’re chiseling out a new design, a new real-time messaging system, new profiles… we basically have one wall of our office filled with post-its full of ideas, so it’s more like we’re coming up with a temporal expander and then have 48-hour long days to fill with more feature-o-matic awesomeness! We want to give our users a more seamless experience of communication and new ways of finding new people based on their tastes to have fun with.

Check out our original interview with Tastebuds.fm founder Alex Parish right here.

Social Platform Music Apps: Facebook or Spotify?

SoundCtrl — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:16:40 +0000

by Carolyn Heneghan

In today’s online social landscape, apps reign king. They’re on your phone, your desktop, your tablet, and even on your social media profiles. Facebook and Spotfiy both started out as non-app platforms. But as the app technology rose in popularity, both have assimilated themselves to the trend and added its functionality to their respective services.

As a more generalized social media presence, Facebook’s apps run the gamut, but many of them are indeed geared to music—a popularly shared subject on walls across the globe. Spotify began as a free music streaming service, so its apps are all music-based. Both have partnered with developers to share the best types of music apps for their respective audiences, and both have seen certain apps and certain types of app rise above the rest.

What Can Music Apps Do for Me?

Apps for both services cover a wide range of music-related topics. The most popular apps tend to involve music discovery, connecting with artists, and creating and sharing playlists. But there are apps that help you find lyrics, create a hangout for you and like-minded listeners, stream radio stations, watch and share music videos, or receive “push” notifications for music and video releases, tour announcements, and so on. There are plenty of musician-facing apps too that allow bands and solo artists to connect with their fans in new and innovative ways.

Facebook’s Top 5 Music Apps (For Now)

The top two most-used apps are actually both band-facing, so we will skip them for the purposes of this list. They are BandPage and My Band, which both enable bands to customize a Facebook hub containing all of the information about their tours, music, pictures, Twitter and wall postings, and so on. My Band also allows fans to add and share music as well as buy tickets to a show or even music from right there in the app.

Spotify. A bit ironic, Facebook’s otherwise top used app is Spotify itself. Along with 2.2 million other users, you can connect with your Facebook friends via shared playlists that you’re currently listening to or that you’d like to share with a friend.
Music (iLike). At 1.5 million users, iLike creates a music tab on your profile that allows you to do a little of everything, including create and share playlists, receive concert notifications, discover and share new music, and even play the iLike Challenge to prove your music smarts.
Bandsintown. More than 4.2 million users use this app to keep track of when and where their favorite artists will be coming to their town, and musicians can share with their fans their tour schedule and ticket info. The service reaches over 20 million unique Facebook users per month.
YouTube Video Box. Also not a shocker, this app, used by 850,000 people, allows users to share their favorite videos to their profile and Facebook Pages. In addition to the standard YouTube share function, you can also view your friends’ favorite videos and sync your YouTube.com account. The YouTube app itself came in sixth/eighth place with 590,000 users.
iLike this Artist. In relation to the other iLike app, iLike the Artist lets musicians show off their fan count across the iLike network and add an “iLike this artist” button to their band page.

Spotify’s Top 5 Music Apps (For Now)

Spotify released its ten most popular apps of 2012 with its 2012 Spotify Review of the Year.

TuneWiki. This app allows you to sync lyrics and auto-scroll through them. You can use it to sing along to all of your favorite songs, matching the words as you listen through it.
Soundrop. Soundrop presents a series of themed chat rooms based on the genres, music, and artists you want to talk about with fellow music lovers.
We Are Hunted. This music discovery app places emphasis on “cool” and emerging artists. Based on what you listen to, the app recommends playlists in tune with what other users are listening to.
Last.fm. Last.fm offers personalized recommendations based on the music that you choose. It was Spotify before Spotify existed, but it is moving more toward being a social network for music.
Pitchfork. Brought to you by the magazine of the same name, this indie-lover’s Bible is the “Essential Guide to Independent Music & Beyond” and a companion to the Pitchfork website.

Facebook’s Top 5 vs Spotify’s Top 5

Besides Spotify and YouTube, Facebook’s top apps are generally there to link bands and fans, allowing them to share music and information between them. Facebook is the more social platform of the two and encourages sharing with friends and fans at every turn. So it should come as no surprise that this is the primary function for all of the top 5 (top 7 including the skipped two) Facebook apps.

Spotify is a bit more single user-focused, and most of the service’s top apps are geared toward that individual user’s ability to discover new music, with the exception of Soundrop. As Spotify is still a music streaming service at its core, it also comes as no surprise that its top apps would mostly deal with music discovery and personalized playlists.

Both services are free, and both offer a different selection of apps that meet different needs. Based on your personal and social preferences, either of these platforms may have just the right app to enhance your music experience.

Sound the alarm, Siren.fm is here!

SoundCtrl — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 21:23:36 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

One of the key words tossed around at midem was the term “disruptive.” It is not a bad descriptor to reference every now and again, as it keeps things from getting stale and attitudes from becoming desensitized. Thusly, the music industry is always looking for ways to shake things up; both for the people and the businesses of which the people are a part.

Music streaming might now be a hashed and rehashed mode of doing business/getting music out to the public. That being the possible case, disruptive would be the last idea one associates with a streaming service. The team that built up Siren.fm begs to differ though and is putting their money where their mouth is by launching their service, which they believe brings in a “fresh approach.”

A fresh press release reveals the unrolling of this new Texas-born platform, co-founded by Jacob Terry. Since he is already aware of the ups and downs to being in, and working on, a method of market penetration claiming to be never-before-seen, and with the recent reminder of music streaming’s potential unpleasantries floating around online, Siren sounds like it has its work cut out for it. However, Terry holds a respectable amount of confidence in the young service, taking in his consciousness of the murmurs going around the fray and still feeling Siren can carefully watch its business colleagues to “avoid the financial pitfalls of the current players in the field.”

Two of the biggest active players in the streaming market right now, Spotify and Pandora, are put at the forefront of Terry’s case to show contrast over companies’ treatments of clientele, stressing the opposite for Siren’s central objective; stepping up support on behalf of musicians who use the service –and sincerely meaning it.

“All of the competition claims to be making things fair for musicians but, really they are playing right into the same old song and dance with the labels. Indeed, many artists have voiced their concerns over royalties from Spotify, which mostly end up going to labels, and Pandora is currently lobbying Congress in an effort to pay even less than they already do.

Siren plans to work with up and coming musicians that have not yet signed their rights away to a record label, and therefore still own their own music. These musicians are free to do as they please with their music, without having to deal with pick-pocketing labels and royalty collection agencies.”

If this more ideal course of operations doesn’t seem disruptive enough, Siren is also (at least right now) set to run as a free offering; not only for the musicians who contribute their music but for the listeners who sign on to enjoy the tunes. This, of course, translates to there being ads brought into the formula and as stated in the release, artists are given payment “based on a fair percentage of these revenue streams.” Still, the fact that “[y]ou won’t find Siren asking for a monthly membership fee or capping your usage after a week or two,” is sure to at least have people flocking over to hear some new music that comes from slightly “off the path” and taking delight in not being prompted to pay money to keep listening after only a few songs.

Signing up is free and there does seem to be a decent amount of music already in place on the site. The layout and terminology used acts much like the newest version of iTunes, so most users don’t have to feel format shock. Giving some leeway because the service is still improving, overall, things are good. Getting to the play button to hear the music is quick and painless. Metadata is clear and visible for each song and album and unlike iTunes, there is an added “News” tab on the sidebar where users’ playlists and the chart tab is located. Right now there isn’t much there beyond material to introduce Siren and explain its different philosophy regarding money but if it adds more current material that can be perused while listening, that’s a plus.

Downsides with the user interface are minor and liable to be adjusted with time and through feedback. The main sticking point at hand is a lack of some buttons or clicks that would make the experience much more intuitive. For example, an initial playlist needs to be created in order to earmark a song that one likes. The songs all have buttons to do the bookmarking but without the playlist you can’t complete the action. A built in default “Like” list would help tremendously. When a song is queued up and playing on the site, clicking on any of the metadata at the top above the stream bar takes you to a page with the full info about whatever has been clicked: a plus.

However, if the song title is what gets selected and a user decides to play a different song from an artist’s same album, unlike most other players that take any click of a track’s info to translate to “play this song,” a click of track names will only bring that song up on the player and then one has to click the play button specifically, to start the music. The buttons being somewhat blended into the screen as they are currently, makes it a move less likely to be considered by the user. To be fair, the action of having to press play is somewhat of an idiosyncratic detail but, three clicks to get sound going after first seeing a name or picture that intrigues is pushing the “no more than three clicks” rule-of-thumb for users surfing the net.

Once again though, these aspects are miniscule and easily adjusted. Music being the most important feature of Siren, there is nothing to complain about there. Users might just have to spend lots of time doing good old fashioned browsing in order to get familiar with the under-the-radar repertoire of artists listed in their library and not look immediately to the search bar to pull up tracks.

You can sign up to get in on the action now, at Siren.fm.

Map Out Your Tunes with the Geotunes Spotify App

SoundCtrl — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 18:02:39 +0000

By Steven Zeisler

What happens when a map of the United States is used to list songs that represent a specific state or city? You get Geotunes, a Spotify app that allows you to “locate and listen to songs written about cities, landmarks, events and more by using a giant, interactive map as your musical playground,” according to their website.

KUSC Interactive, a department of Classical KUSC, created the Geotunes app. Classical KUSC is actually one of the largest and most listened to non-profit public radio classical music stations in the country. Based in Los Angeles, KUSC Interactive is “dedicated to producing innovative platforms for dialogue and discovery in the global arts community,” according to their website.

At first glance, the user interface of the app is simple and clean. At the top of the app are options for Map View and Featured Tracks. The Map View takes you to the interactive map of the United States where all of the magic happens. As you track your cursor across the map, states and cities become highlighted, allowing you to select to see what is the most popular music about that specific area. You can also zoom in and out of the map using five different zoom lengths.

When a certain state or city is selected, a list is pops up with the most “popular” (as according to music about that area that can be organized by popularity or alphabetical order. For example, when I selected my home state of Ohio, the most popular three tracks were:

1)    Ohio is for Lovers by Hawthorne Heights
2)    Look at Miss Ohio by Miranda Lambert
3)    Ohio by Justice

In case you were wondering, New York City’s most popular three tracks were:

1)    Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down by Alicia Keys
2)    Hey There Delilah by Plain White T’s
3)    A-Punk by Vampire Weekend

In the top left-hand corner, there is also a category search, with random topics ranging from “poetic places” to “surburbia” to even “assassinations.” When I clicked on “bridges,” I noticed that three song titles popped up over the map itself (see image below). When this happens, the app allows you to quick select that album image right away to start playing the song. There will even be some quick facts about that specific artist that populate at the bottom of the app.

The Featured Tracks allow you to search for top songs by the same specific themes on the Map View screen. For a list of all of the themes, refer to the image below:

Usually each theme contains three or four of the most popular songs associated with that theme. Each song comes provided with a description or interesting quip about that particular artist, and at any time you can click on the artist or track title and it takes you right to their Spotify page. Very fluid.

While I like the Geotunes app and the relationship it provides with music, history, and geography, I hope to see it improve its overall list of smaller cities. I think it would also be incredible if they could somehow integrate and provide live data for the most popular music that people are listening to at any given moment in a certain geographic location.

Show the love by following them on Twitter or liking their Facebook page.

Counterpoint and Moodagent come together at Midem 2013

SoundCtrl — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 22:03:55 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

It might be the end of the average work week for most but, after today ends, this weekend signifies just the start of something both hectic and helpful in the worlds of music and business. Midem 2013 kicks off tomorrow, January 26, in Cannes, France and runs nearly non-stop until next Tuesday, January 29. This B2B-centric, multi-faceted event covers almost any area of the music business one can think of and features a highly anticipated assortment of participants every year – from CEOs to artists and inventors to marketers.

It comes as no surprise when talk starts circulating, no matter how early on, about companies deciding to collaborate to enhance each other’s resources and jointly achieve new levels of innovation. This is precisely what has brought together royalty and rights software leader, Counterpoint Systems and the emotion-driven music player/analysis system, Moodagent. Only yesterday, the new business relationship was announced in a press release (though a primary announcement and reveal will take place when Midem begins), and the two companies will be working together mainly for the benefit of the professional client segment, as opposed to energy being honed in on the consumer demographic.

Counterpoint Systems and Moodagent each fill in an ability the other lacks or never intensely used before. Counterpoint Systems heavily advocates its “Music Source Online Solution” as an easy and effective way for people to browse large catalogs of others’ music with high efficiency. This is because of the wide range of search criteria choices at a user’s disposal when designing their own version of the interface. However, as customizable as this tool is, Amos Biegun, CEO of Counterpoint Systems, explains that setup and ongoing adjustment of data leaves things in a less than ideal state, alleviated in part by giving music companies metadata tagging abilities:

The biggest challenge our customers face is filling their systems with the appropriate and accurate data required to promote their music and this can be time consuming. Moodagent makes this an automated and seamless process, leaving our clients the time and resources to do what they do best – generating sync and licensing opportunities

Aside from bringing in time-saving and data accuracy elements, where Moodagent also steps in, is from a more intuitive vantage point. How a song fits the intended setting of an ad or other non-auditory source, can often be the deciding factor in how one piece of music gets deemed best for a sync opportunity over another. Moodagent helps to center the more abstract part of a user’s discernment process, as Moodagent’s CEO, Peter Berg Steffenson points out:

Counterpoint’s excellence is unrivaled and the integration of Moodagent to provide emotional and sounds-like discovery on top of automatic listening samples and meta-data enrichment is further proof of Counterpoint’s strong commitment to their clients in sync and licensing.

Just as Moodagent’s technology is described as something “born out of the marriage of state-of-the-art digital signal processing, artificial intelligence and human musicology,” the union of itself and Counterpoint Systems connects an established manager of raw, factual data with an analysis leader who simultaneously advocates for acknowledgment of the spontaneous human variable that breeds the music both need to do business.

Interactive demonstrations for tech from both companies will be available at Midem.

New music discovery site is much “More Than Disco”

SoundCtrl — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 16:05:54 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

More Than Disco isn’t exactly a neophyte project. It has been an active and continually expanding website since 2011. Humble beginnings saw the site initially in blog form only and transitioning into the further developed online resource freshly unveiled today. The main components of the newly expanded More Than Disco bring together a variety of content, with the biggest elements being: news, interviews, free downloads and More Than Disco’s own emphasis on featuring artists that encompass the unsigned, local, global and the signed.

The founder and owner of More Than Disco is Shauna Maguire and she is not shy about mentioning what seems to be lacking in between music and the internet, thus leaving a space wide open for a site like hers to come in and take root. After all, “disparate” is not a word used lightly where any particular market’s health is concerned.

It’s probably the most disparate market the music industry has ever seen – an explosion of social media, online music streaming services, DRM, DIY band marketing and festival upsurge.

The crux of the “problem” Maguire alludes to, or basically what can be considered the void of the moment, is the idea of existence without utilization among all of what the music industry keeps creating for, and offering to, its inhabitants. There are many, and some might even say too many, choices and methods for artists to choose for themselves when they leap into the business. Despite the range of options available to artists, and even with many of them becoming irrelevant in regards to individual budget and experience levels, at the end of the day Maguire observes a potential lack of “capitalization from [artists'] hard work not [being] seen by overseas audiences.”

Because More Than Disco has its headquarters based in Melbourne, Australia, it would be considered an international operation. That said, this second overseas exposure and awareness gap that Maguire points out would be of especially high relevancy to U.S. site visitors. The U.S. exports and promotes so many artists outward to other nations but tends to not match this effort toward itself and does not proportionately bring non-U.S. acts to the attention of its own listeners. There are certainly bands and explosive hit makers that run against this trend but, they are definitely in the minority. If More Than Disco manages to fill this and similar voids, it could be primed for a permanent slice of frequently visited internet real estate.

Starting feature artists and content (plus their existing credits) are listed below:

New Interviews:

Australian female pop artists Sophie Koh (“Best Female Artist”, The Age)
Michelle Xen (LADY ELECTRONICA, The Neon Wild)

New music:

Casey Desmond (The Voice, U.S.)
Half Moon Run (“The Next Big Thing”, NOW Toronto, CAN)
The New Division (NME’S “Radar”, U.S.)
The New Highway Hymnal (“Best Act of 2012”, Boston Phoenix, U.S.)

Previously featured interviews from 2012:

Triple J bands of the minute Tigertown
Nantes and Art of Sleeping (AUS)

For more info, check out More Than Disco

Kim Dotcom’s file-hosting service Mega launches

SoundCtrl — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 17:05:44 +0000

By Keith Nelson Jr.

On January 20, 2012 the New Zealand home of eccentric Megaupload CEO Kim Dotcom was raided and he was arrested over suspicions of facilitating over $500 million of music, videos, and movies through the file-sharing site. On June 20, 2012 the U.S Department of Justice’s Internet Enemy #1 announced the new music service Megabox would “unchain” artists from the grips of traditional record label deals. The music service is rumored to be providing musicians a marketplace to attain 90% of ad revenue from their downloads whether free or paid. On January 20, 2013, a full year after Dotcom got the Pablo Escobar treatment, the successor to the Megaupload brand debuted.

Just not as Megabox.

Unveiled this weekend was the beta of the file-locker service, Mega which offers encrypted cloud storage along with 500 GBs of free space. Located at mega.co.nz (the site is based in New Zealand) the service also offers paid tiers ranging from a montly fee of $9.99 to $29.99 that offer 2TB storage/4TB bandwith or 4 TB storage/8TB bandwidth respectively. Dotcom says that he and his team of lawyers are working to restore the premium accounts from Megaupload removed due to the ongoing legal battle and appropriate them for Mega.

Operating in its beta stage, Mega’s interface is relatively intuitive with Users are allowed to upload single files or batch files in a folder with custom settings options offering the ability to adjust the number of (simultaneous uploads) at a time. Mega users can share folders between each other and with non-users (they will be prompted to join). Accessing the site was arduous in itself at times, an inconvenience Dotcom attributed to the high demand reportedly reaching 100,000 registered users within the first hour. The self-proclaimed “privacy company” employs User Controlled Encryption (UCE), a somewhat self-explanatory security measure where Mega users set the keys to access their files. Mega is optimized for all browsers; however, representatives at Mega LTD name Google Chrome the best browser for Mega utilization.

As of right now, Mega’s primary advantages over other popular cloud-based storage are the 50 GB’s of storage for free users and the UES encryption. There are promises of mobile optimization, and even the API is released to allow developers to create apps to be featured for and on Mega(after a thorough security check). Dotcom says the highly anticipated music service Megabox will be released in six months but recently sent this picture out to the official Twitter page of the Motion Picture Association of America:

Watch part of the insane MEGA Keynote below:

Keep sharing, people.

Ian Rogers Named CEO of Beats Electronics’ Music Service “Daisy”

SoundCtrl — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 18:58:45 +0000

via Billboard

Beats Electronics today announced that is new music service, project “Daisy” and the appointment of Ian Rogers as CEO. Rogers will oversee the “direction, vision and strategy” for project “Daisy” and the team developing the service, the company said in a press release.

Read full story at Billboard.biz

What 2 Billion Missing YouTube Views Says About the Music Industry

SoundCtrl — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:09:03 +0000

By Keith Nelson Jr.

You gave [Steve Jobs] your music.What’s to say you couldn’t have did that yourself? It’s just a website…

Do you know how much of a hustle that is? All he has to do is have the site running and he make money. [The artists] supply the content. The record labels gave that away to him for free.

-Gimel Androus Keaton aka Young Guru (Legendary engineer of Jay-Z) in HipHopGameTV interview

Quick history recap: In April of 2003, the iTunes Store opened. In 2005 three guys leave PayPal and start YouTube. In April of 2008, the iTunes Store surpassed Walmart as the number one music retailer in the United States. In December of 2009, Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group (with investment stake by Abu Dhabi Media) started video hosting site VEVO. In December of 2012, YouTube removed over 1.8 billion YouTube views from Sony and Universal artists’ videos.

The recent removal of views received an initial outcry of unethical view manipulation on the part of the major record labels. While labels do have a history of manipulating music charts, this move is more business than ethics and essentially boils down to not wanting to go past “fool me once.”

A YouTube spokesman informed Billboard that it has recently implemented a digital Spring cleaning, removing videos that are no longer live on the site, (deemed “dead videos). Dead videos were the overwhelming majority of the views removed with only 1.3 million of those views generated from bots. Additionally, an unnamed “senior label executive” confirmed to Billboard that such a migration has been in motion.

But in an age where digital music consumption is king, why would record labels migrate from the third most viewed site on the internet, according to Alexa?

The do-it-yourself logic of Young Guru’s headline quotes began truly manifesting in July of 2012 when Doug Morris, the head of Sony Music told LATimes.com that Google’s fees would be a catalyst to a VEVO migration. There are no official reports of the exact compensation percentage details between YouTube and VEVO’s agreement, however, it is reported that YouTube charges 40% of ad revenue as a “platform fee” to each of its partners. Interesting fact: VEVO’s YouTube channel generated over 50.6 million views in November of 2012 and was the most watched channel on YouTube for many months prior, according to Comscore.

The “machine” is learning the machine.

Record labels are further investing in the business of aggregating content to transport and reimagine the traditional advertising method. Rumors of a Facebook-VEVO partnership were sporadic throughout 2012 and attained a modicum of veracity in March when VEVO required its users to login with their Facebook accounts. In October of 2012, Facebook attracted over 160 million unique visitors yet barely over 47 million of those visitors were viewing Facebook video content. With VEVO’s recent migration developing in the middle of a Google and Facebook battle for social media supremacy, the disappearance of YouTube views is indicative of the appearance of a new dynamic in the music industry and interwebs.

Stay watching, people.

Musicplayr finally goes mobile for iOS

SoundCtrl — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:49:03 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

We have been following the exploits of German-founded music sharing startup Musicplayr, since the summer when they started to get the ball rolling on awareness in the United States. Back in October, momentum hit a big high for the company after a €500,000 funding boom came into Musicplayr’s possession. Summing things up for those who may be hearing this company name for the first time, Musicplayr is a free service centered around the idea of sharing the music one loves –via existing outlets like SoundCloud, YouTube and Vimeo– and the company doesn’t stray far from this mantra.

That focus may sound one-dimensional against the rest of the social media community and every other multi-functional platform out there, but founding partners Thorsten Lüttger and Stefan Vosskötter have made it clear for a long time, even devoting an entire blog post to explaining their stance, that they want to cut away from the excess of chatter and overstimulation so Musicplayr can stay true to what its name implies: a place to play, share, and express your favorite musical tastes.

One of the most anticipated aspects of Musicplayr’s development and march forward in the worlds of music and communication is the arrival of its iOS mobile app. Both Lüttger and Vosskötter have known when this piece of the puzzle finally got put into place, that they would become a much stronger contender in the field. Over the past few months, Musicplayr has been steadily adjusting and fine tuning its main web interface, taking user feedback –both from their initial private beta period and after going public– into constant consideration and sometimes implementing changes to the interface directly in response to an expressed concern or suggestion of something to improve user experiences.

One example, was the later addition of a bookmarking tab. Despite knowing Musicplayr had no app to this point, the founders wanted to make it as easy as possible for users to integrate Musicplayr into their everyday internet routines and not feel incumbered by having to specifically type in the web address and login for each song a person wants to share. After a person has created a profile, there is also a keyboard shortcut menu available to help streamline use even more. In this way, users were being prepped as much as possible for the mobile experience and accompanying interface that would ultimately make sharing favorite songs as easy as pushing “Like” on Facebook.

Now, for the mobile interface itself:

If a person has no Musicplayr profile prior to downloading the app, they can create one right after downloading and do so just as they would on a regular browser; via Facebook or a separate email address. If one wants to explore before signing up, there is a “Discovery” option that brings up a tile-like display of many existing profiles showing a user’s photo, their username and the first few of their listed preferred genres. One can then tap any of these profiles and see what songs a person has on their public playlists.

After signing up and getting a profile of one’s own, what one will see is an interface that is clean, runs smoothly and gives easy access to the core features of Musicplayr. At the bottom of the screen, a fixed option bar has buttons for the following:

Home screen or main music stream: Think of this like a newsfeed of the music posted by those you follow.

Individual Profile: This displays much like the web browser with one’s public playlists in view. To view a person’s profile text, tap the username and their followers and description appear.

The Discovery Menu: The same as what’s described above, tapping this will bring up others’ profiles for browsing and following or just liking individual songs to your profile that others have posted.

Tagging Screen: This seems to be the newest and most unique feature to the mobile app versus web access. Tapping this brings users to a screen with the Musicplayr mascot and a simple instruction to just give a single tap or shake of your phone to start a quick recording of whatever music that is playing around you. Following the sampling, the player will come back with the artist, title and album name of the specific track, as well as displaying videos circulating the web that feature the same artist. Having tested this element against music off a distantly playing, low volume television and active iTunes in a semi-noisy environment, the recorder and results given showed themselves to be very quick and accurate.

Overall, Musicplayr’s new app absolutely delivers, in spades, what Vosskötter and Lüttger have been working toward since they began. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Musicplayr forges ahead even faster now, than the speed it is already traveling with an app this solid. If the company continues listening to their users with such a high degree of immediate and serious response, that customer service factor can help set them apart as grounded and extremely likable, even if Musicplayr eventually rockets to the corporate stratosphere of social media.

Musicplayr can now be downloaded worldwide, free from the iTunes Store.

Myspace Music Tries To Edge In On Spotify’s Kingdom

SoundCtrl — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:11:44 +0000

By Lisa Bernier

The re-launch of Myspace Music is supposed to be the “next big thing” in music and social sharing. After all, Justin Timberlake himself has invested in it–and has been pushing it hard via the press rounds. If Mr. JT gives it the a-ok, then it must be cool, right?

Granted the espousal of an actual musician is a plus in its favor. Myspace the social network remained relevant for perhaps longer than it deserved in part due to it being a platform for new bands to let their music be heard or to connect with an audience without the help of an agent, MTV, or a major label.

So, how does the newly designed Myspace compete against giants like Spotify, Pandora, or Songza?

The HomePage is fairly simple. Clean, easy to navigate and relatively clear of ads, you can find music by genre and artist.

Once you scroll down further, you can also watch videos and see breaking music news.

Scroll down farther, and you can choose artist pages, or albums.

At the bottom is an Open Player option. The Player opens up in a separate window, and is like a cleaner looking version of Spotify. You have to option to search music and create playlists. You can also create a “radio station” by typing in an artist, or go by genre. Up in the right corner allows you to share via Facebook. Once you type an artists or genre in, the Player suggests similar music, artists, and what tracks are upcoming. The Player also allows you the directly buy the music, or add it to you own playlist which you can save.

The sound from the player is clear and clean, and fortunately is not interrupted by annoying ads. Granted, there are small advertisements on the side, but for a listener, those are much less annoying than having a playlist interrupted by an audio corporate plug. Here, Myspace Music definitely has one up on Spotify. Since the player also pops up in a separate window, it is easy to navigate the rest of the site while listening to the music of your choice.

If you would rather watch a video, simply click on an artist on the hompage and the video comes up. Videos are also given the option to be shared, as well as embedded (which is great for bloggers).

The video also allows you to comment, and gives you the Top Videos in a sidebar on the right.

Unlike YouTube, whose sidebar is often distracting, it’s easy to focus on the video that’s playing rather than what you could click on next. It’s clear that the focus is on the artist and the music, rather than Internet trolling.

The News Section is separated into three main categories: Breaking, New Music, and Giveaways. Each page looks like a blog, with subcategories in a sidebar on the left. Again, distracting ads are minimal and the reader can easily browse and choose what they want to pay attention to.

The Giveaways section is probably one of the biggest assets to fans. Incorporating offers for various artists for concerts (as well as other offers for DVDs and fan packages), it is a great way to bring users to the site. Excellent for promotion for artists, it is an excellent way to integrate fans from many different genres. The page also allows viewers to Like via Facebook, or Tweet.

To be able to comment, or make playlists or an account you can sign in either via Facebook or as a new user. The sign in process seems simple, but is one of the more difficult parts of the site. Sometimes, the page refused to refresh or go through—obviously some kinks need to be worked out with that feature.

Overall, Myspace Music is a great improvement over the former site. It’s easy to find music and artists, and the social media integration is excellent. It is clearly a site designed with musicians and fan interaction in mind. Unlike Spotify, it allows continuous music without interruption and is a much easier to use and navigate. Unlike Spotify, it still has the stigma of the now obsolete “Myspace” to overcome. However, it’s clear that thought and detailed effort were put into the design and functionality of the site, and it should be on every musician’s and music fans radar. Myspace is less like a great music site, and more like an awesome music blog that just also happens to share music. In short, it seems Justin Timberlake knows what he’s doing. Darn it. Can’t the man do anything wrong?

The Next SoundCloud is here, but is it an improvement?

SoundCtrl — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:54:13 +0000

By Jason Epstein

When a new version of software or a website or just a single feature comes out there are bound to be fans just like there are bound to be nay-sayers; it’s just the nature of change. SoundCloud just updated their design last week and strangely enough, it seems like everyone (or at least everyone who has decided to be vocal about it) is against the new changes. But are their concerns valid or will it just another case of people getting upset at a website for changing their interface and then getting used to it and never speaking of it again? Let’s take a look at the new SoundCloud.

After months of private beta and a lot of user feedback, SoundCloud returns with a bevy of new features. You can now repost sounds into your own stream for others to listen to or follow your sounds as they’re spread across the SoundCloud community. You can also make entire sets of your sounds, creating new themes. Continuous play is a new option as well as an improved search and an explore function to show you what’s new and popular.

But therein may lie an issue – if it’s only showing you the most popular sounds, who’s to say that the they fit your personal tastes? Wouldn’t it be better to have access to sounds that are closer to your own interests, that can be extrapolated from your previous listens or your own uploads? SoundCloud also has improved time comments, added keyboard shortcuts and a new sound shuffle feature.

There’s also a social network inspired activity tab that helps to keep you informed about what’s happening with your content and personalized ‘who to follow’ lists for other’s content. It’s all designed to keep you engaged for a longer period of time, to share more and to follow more, just like any good social network. SoundCloud isn’t done rolling out the new features either, soon enough they’ll be unveiling work on other areas of the web as well as mobile apps to make it a cross-platform experience.

SoundCloud users have been coming out of the woodwork to complain about the new interface. One member complained that there are fewer stats on the dashboard, fewer links on profile pages to artist they’ve worked with or are inspired by, truncated bios on the artist page instead of being shown in their entirety, details removed from streams and the disappearance of the Spotlight page (this hasn’t disappeared, it’s just gotten harder to find which is ironic since it’s called the Spotlight page). SoundCloud says they took a lot of customer feedback into consideration, but so many of the users leaving comments say they were not consulted, even ones with premium paid memberships. More complaints are about the cluttered layout of the dashboard and the overall dilution of many of the original features that made SoundCloud so great.

A SoundCloud representative responds, “Thank you for your critique! To address some of your concerns now – Spotlight is still in there, but now it’s a part of user profile stream, namely it’s at the top of your Stream. We have built faster, more scalable play stats into Next, we will be also adding additional metrics to it in the future. In the meantime, you can see all the detailed stats here like before: http://soundcloud.com/you/stats. As for the user profiles, we have reduced the text information in favor of displaying more audio players. We hope that your listeners will appreciate the increased focus on your sounds. And yes, we are committed to make SoundCloud the best experience both to sound creators and listeners and we’ll continue to improve it.”

It seems like some of SoundCloud’s new features and rearrangement of old features may be misunderstood by some of their community. However, it also seems like SoundCloud is trying to fit in more with Facebook, Google and other companies that provide less niche experiences than they are know for. But is this the right audience to experiment on? Are they cheapening the experience to make it more “shareable”? Check out the new SoundCloud for yourself and feel free to comment your thoughts.

Trent Reznor is creating a new music-streaming service with Dr. Dre

SoundCtrl — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 21:23:56 +0000

By Carrie Battan – via Pitchfork Media

Reznor also gave The New Yorker details about his partnership with the Interscope/Dr. Dre-affiliated Beats by Dre enterprise. (“It’s probably not what you’re expecting!”, he said earlier this year.) He’s helping to design a new music-streaming service, which is currently being called Daisy, and is set to launch early next year.

The service “uses mathematics to offer suggestions to the listener… [but also] would present choices based partly on suggestions made by connoisseurs, making it a platform in which the machine and the human would collide more intimately.”

For the full story, visit pitchfork.com

App Review: Turntable’s Piki App for Social Music Sharing

SoundCtrl — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:49:11 +0000

by Dave Mainella

The creators of Turntable.fm are at it again, bringing us the newest addition to the online world of social music discovery. Introduced earlier this week, Piki combines several elements of online radio and powerful social features to present a platform that continues to emphasize Turntable.fm’s belief in the interpersonal component of the music listening experience.

The concept of Piki is to provide an online and mobile-based radio app that relies on human involvement and personality rather than Pandora-like algorithms. “There’s still demand to listen to music that’s powered by other people,” Billy Chasen, Piki co-founder and CEO of Turntable, explained via TechCrunch. Rather than investing users with a real-time, virtual listening space like at Turntable.fm, Piki is a simple and “laid-back” experience. Users start the app and press play without having to browse and search for music.

Upon joining the app, users are automatically following a short list of people (including the co-founder) so that hitting the play button means Piki immediately begins to stream music hand-picked by these “friends.”

The stream is impressive, browsing through songs “picked” by friends you follow. It filters out genres that you don’t want to listen to, courtesy of an easily-accessed “genres playing” feature that includes an amazing collection of musical styles – everything from Celtic Rock to Psychobilly.

Sharing a similarity with Pandora, Piki allows users to fast-forward to the next track but does not allow for the on-demand playing of specific songs. You’ll have to use a different platform for that. “If I want to listen to a single album on repeat, I’ll use Spotify,” Chasen explains.

But this doesn’t leave a listener to the mercy of the computer. Rather, it’s the collective Piki social network that determines the quality of music. The Twitter-esque social features mean that everyone contributes and shares tracks they like, either by searching and “picking” a song or by “repicking” a song that others share. Users can leave a comment with a “pick” or “repick” for others to read, and they can label a song with a “reaction” that best identifies with the music e.g. rock, fist pump, jam, love.

Piki makes it easy to “pick” songs from YouTube, Rdio, Pandora, or other music sites by offering a bookmarklet to install in your bookmarks bar. When you hear a song you like, clicking the bookmarklet automatically identifies the track, “picks” it, and posts it to your Piki profile. A user’s profile and Piki identity is made up of recently liked songs via “picks” and “repicks.”

Piki is currently only available as an invite-only beta for desktop, and co-founder Billy Chasen emphasizes that “Piki is for mobile.” Keep and eye out for the iOS app, available in the App Store in the next month or so. It’s easy to imagine this human-powered radio app catching fire in a mainstream social music marketplace.

Watch the demo video for Piki below, and head over to their website to request an invite.