Parent company of music service The Filter raises $5M
The company that runs The Filter, a music recommendation service, has raised $5 million from investors including musician Peter Gabriel.
The Filter provides you a software download, which searches your library of music and then generates playlists of other music it believes you will like based on what other people with similar tastes have liked. It also takes into account music you’re listening to at the moment, to suggest music that fits your mood.
It’s similar to other recommendation companies like Last.fm, Slacker, and especially MyStrands (which has a similar download, and like The Filter, has a player that complements iTunes). The Filter’s parent company, Exabre, plans to use the money to expand the recommendation service to include film and TV, and then any other area that is digitized.
Co-founder Rhett Ryder said he wants to use recommendation engine to cross between content, for example recommending films you might like based on the music you like. The same could be done for interior decorating, wine, and dating, said a company spokesman. This would extend the sort of recommendations already offered by Amazon.com.
Another investor includes Eden Ventures, a firm that had previously joined with Gabriel to invest in On Demand Distribution, an early music download service. That company was later acquired by Loudeye, which was in turn acquired by Nokia.
The Filter works on a PC, Mac, iPod or Nokia mobile phone (Nokia licenses the technology).
The company says it has 150,000 active users, and seeing 25,000 new downloads a month.
It plans to make money from advertising.
The company earlier raised $3.6 million (1.8 million pounds).
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Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
