Goom channels $16M for user-generated online radio
Online radio stations have been taking a hit lately, with record companies cracking down on streaming copyrighted material. But Goom Radio, a new internet radio startup, has decided to take its chances, relying largely on user-defined playlists — much like its peer Pandora Radio. And… Continue Reading
Index Ventures infuses biotech and cleantech with $438.8M
Index Ventures just announced the closure of a $438.8 million fund intended to finance young biotechnology and cleantech portfolio companies. This is the sixth seed and early-stage fund the London-based firm has raised. Perhaps best know for its prescient investments in technologies like Skype, MySQL… Continue Reading
Sonos turns your iPhone into music player remote, streams new stations
Sonos, a company specializing in multi-room wireless music players, has launched an application that turns an average iPhone or iPod Touch into a remote control for its sound system. It also announced that its ZonePlayer product — which lets you set up wirelessly networked speakers… Continue Reading
Mufin music recommendations: Half-baked or just right?
Online music recommendation engines are nothing new. Pandora is one of the most high profile, but services that do other things such as Last.fm, Imeem and now even iTunes, all offer this functionality in some capacity. Mufin hopes to stand out by doing things a… Continue Reading
Roundup: Omaha’s Oracle bets on electric cars, web radio gets a win, a cloud computing critic, and more
In case you’re tired of reading about the markets imploding, here’s some unrelated news:
Warren Buffet invests in Chinese battery maker — He’s called the Oracle of Omaha for his ability to spot long-term trends. Take note, then, that Warren Buffet has bought almost 10… Continue Reading
Yahoo: The ultimate music search engine — for four artist tracks and 25 playbacks at least
The best features for any product tend to be the ones that work exactly how you think they should. You can add Yahoo’s newly revamped music artist shortcuts in its search results to that list — sort of. Simply do a Yahoo search for an… Continue Reading
Kings of Leon continue the trend of pre-release album streaming on Last.fm
Streaming online music services such as Last.fm, imeem and soon the new MySpace Music have one huge advantage over using services like iTunes or AmazonMP3 for music online: They’re free. Increasingly though they have another: Previewing new music early.
The rock band Kings of Leon… Continue Reading
Video: Upcoming version 1.1 of Last.fm’s iPhone app?
Last.fm, one of the truly great online music sites, has an iPhone app, but I find it somewhat lacking. It seems to have most of the features it needs, but for whatever reason the app just doesn’t flow well. Loading time seems to be a… Continue Reading
8tracks makes it easy to mix your own music play lists, and do it legally; 3,000 passes to early beta here
The music labels haven’t made it easy for unauthorized web sites to stream music on the web. But David Porter, the founder of 8tracks, has figured out a way around the copyright law obstacles to deliver a useful and legal sharing service to music fans…. Continue Reading
Mama’s got a Pandora-enabled Squeezebox, daddy never sleeps at night
The Pandora app for the iPhone and iPod Touch is simply brilliant because it takes the two great elements of the web browser-based experience, music discovery and no cost, and transfers them to a portable device. Pandora had previously been available on some other non-computer… Continue Reading
Roundup: Cleantech gets record investments, Google opens enterprise market and more
Here’s the latest action:
Cleantech investments laugh in the face of recession — Everyone knows the economy is in the dumps, right? (Heck, it even says so in The New York Times.) Well, no one told the VCs putting their money in cleantech. The Cleantech… Continue Reading
MyStrands, Last.fm competitor, raises $25 million
Updated
Less than a month after CBS’s $280 million acquisition of Last.fm, Spain’s 25 year-old media mogul, Antonio Asensio, has led a $25 million second-round investment in Corvallis, Oregon-based MyStrands, a music recommendation site that wants to join the big leagues.
MyStrands, like Last.fm, offers… Continue Reading
CBS buys music recommendation service Last.fm for $280M
Updated
CBS has bought music recommendation website Last.fm for $280 million, the extremely popular London-based company that lets users search for and listen to music based on their past preferences and recommendations of other users.
Last.fm says it has around 20 million active users each… Continue Reading
Roundup: IM mania, VCs in red, Facebook classifieds road-kill, and much more
Here’s the latest action:
Feed Crier gets bought — Feed Crier, the service that lets you subscribe to blogs or other content within your instant messenger (IM), has just been bought by IMified. That company, meanwhile, says it plans to do more on mobile front…. Continue Reading
Slacker, the real iPod killer?
Slacker is an ambitious new music service created by some industry veterans that takes aim at the iPod.
Slacker is a music player device, but it is also a music delivery service. It is path-breaking because it wants to let you take it anywhere: It… Continue Reading