July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Imagine you’re Bruce Dickinson, the vocally powerful monster showman of heavy metal band Iron Maiden. You’re a legend and a god, but you need new ways to reach your concert-going fans at the show.*

You might consider using something like ProxToMe to send out a flurry of pre-show band pics right before you go onstage to get people really whipped into a total frenzy and totally ruin the opening act’s set. Or you could schedule some content to fire off to fans mid-show. Or you could send them all a mobile post-show love letter as they bask in the afterglow of your majesty and slowly file out of the arena.

Scenarios like that are what have earned proximity marketing/content company ProxToMe a nice $700,000 lump of seed funding. There are a few obstacles in the process — fans have to be using the ProxToMe app, for example. And ProxToMe is intended to broadbast messages and track users just within a 250-foot radius. But the music world is always looking for interesting new ways to use tech, and this app’s Facebook-integrated messaging system fits the bill.

“Since our launch four months ago and a strong presence at SXSW, we have received a tremendous amount of interest and feedback from live performers and, more specifically, from the music community,” said ProxToMe CEO and co-founder Carlo Capello in a statement on the funding.

“Both artists and fans see a clear value in using ProxToMe before, during, and after a show.”

In addition to the funding, ProxToMe is today announcing new iOS and Android apps as well as a web-based dashboard for tracking fan interactions with a performer’s messaging and with each other, which Capello called “a tool to easily build a stronger fans base, the key asset for every artist.”

ProxToMe was founded in the U.S., with its development team based in Italy and the head of business development in San Francisco.

*Just kidding. Bruce Dickinson needs NOTHING from you mortals.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Not much has been said about Microsoft’s Xbox Music, especially with all the attention that Apple’s newly unveiled iTunes Radio and Google’s Google Play Music All Access subscriptions are receiving.

Xbox Music is one part digital music store and one part streaming service. Windows or Xbox users can buy individual tracks or albums like on iTunes, and additionally, they can also sign up for a premium subscription that gives them on-demand streaming music that’s similar to Spotify.

Well, yesterday the company leaked screenshots of an Xbox Music Windows 8 app update that should be released along with a handful of other Windows 8.1 apps like Calculator, Scan, Reading List, Movie Moments, and Sound Recorder.

As for the Xbox Music app, the interface now has a two-column design that’s kind of similar to Google Music (except obviously black because that’s the way Xbox Music rolls). The sidebar/first column contains all the navigation for your music collection, Xbox Radio, and an Explore tab for you to discover new music. Below that, there’s an option to view all your playlists or import them from elsewhere. The second main column shows off album artwork, lists of artists, songs, and so forth. Overall, the interface is very clean and seems easier on the eyes.

Microsoft first debuted Xbox Music last year as a replacement to its now dead Zune brand. The Xbox Music service/store appeared with the release of the Windows 8 operating system.

Check out some screenshots below, and let us know what you think in the comments section.

Source: BAV0 via TheVerge

Vine is rising off the charts, growing from being on just one in 50 iPhones in January to being on more than one in 10 iPhones in May. In addition, Twitter just launched Vine on Android this month, where it already has as many as five million installs and over 25,000 reviews.

Source: Onavo

Vine is growing like a weed

But #Music is another story.

When it launched in April, #Music popped to an early high of installs on 1.77 percent of U.S. iPhones. But in May, #Music users uttered a collected “meh” at the strung-together 30-second clips of trending artists on Twitter, dumping the app in droves. As a consequence, Twitter #Music’s iPhone “market share,” the percentage of phones it is installed on, fell to .45 percent in May, according to Onavo data:

Source: Onavo

Twitter #Music is singing a sad, lonely song.

That’s a 62 percent drop in the month after its launch, which isn’t good news for Twitter. At launch, the company said that Twitter Music would “change the way people find music.” That’s not exactly what’s happening yet, although perhaps a #music station on Apple’s upcoming iTunes Radio will help, and Twitter is expanding the team of people looking to build partnerships with artists, labels, and radio stations.

In a probably unrelated but not very positive move, Kevin Thau, the Twitter executive who launched #Music for the company, left the Twitter at the end of May to join Twitter cofounder Biz Stone’s new startup, Jelly.

It’s still very early days for Twitter #Music. But unless the entertainment product starts trending in the right direction, expect more changes soon.

Image credit: John Koetsier

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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If Pandora was looking for a fight due to its purchase of a South Dakota terrestrial radio station, it’s certainly going to get one. (Or maybe several, for that matter.)

Major record label BMI is planning to sue Pandora over its attempt to grab lower music licensing fees that rival services like iHeartRadio pay, according to a Billboard report that cites unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

iHeartRadio is owned by Clear Channel, the biggest owner of terrestrial (aka traditional) radio stations in the country. Clear Channel doesn’t have to pay music license owners a fee for anything played on those terrestrial stations, but it does pay a 1.7 percent advertising rate negotiated by the Radio Music Licensing Committee (RMLC) for all music that’s streamed digitally. Pandora, on the other hand, has a 4.1 percent rate, presumably because its not a terrestrial radio business. Pandora bought the South Dakota radio station — a move it announced yesterday — in an attempt to get the same rate as its rivals.

While BMI was previously in negotiations to lower those rates, the music label has now left the table. Instead, it plans to file a lawsuit over Pandora’s claim to lower licensing fees. Although, since Pandora’s purchase is mostly symbolic and likely won’t affect its revenue in the short-term, it’s hard to say how much good a lawsuit will really do. At the very least, Pandora seems to have ruined any chance of reaching a lower licensing rate through negotiations.

Other music industry groups have expressed outrage over Pandora’s purchase. For instance, National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) chief exec David Israelite spoke out against Pandora during the organizations regular meeting in Manhattan last night.

“Pandora is going to pursue lawsuits and gimmicks,” Israelite said at the meeting. “Pandora is hoping to fraudulently sneak in the back door. Any shred of credibility that Pandora had is gone. They are at war with songwriters.”

We’re reaching out to both BMI and Pandora for further comment and will update this post with any new information we find out.

July 9-10, 2013
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Myspace is unveiling its latest version today with some new features and an iOS app designed to pull in users despite the multitude of other music-focused services already vying for their attention.

As anyone who has used the Internet in the last decade already knows, Myspace’s descent as the top social network led to it being sold off by News Corp. last year to Specific Media, which rebranded it as a destination for music artists and fans. It launched a public beta version of the site back in January with help from minority investor Justin Timberlake. Rather than competing with social giants like Facebook and Twitter, the new version of Myspace focuses on cultivating new users, providing better music discovery, and appealing to artists who seek more listener analytical data.

“What we launched in January was a good first [example] of our vision of making Myspace the best place to listen and share musical interests, but [today's launch] is us taking what we’ve learned from our users and applying it,” Myspace chief executive officer Tim Vanderhook told VentureBeat.

Essentially, that means Myspace is putting a greater emphasis on mobile usage. The company’s new iOS app basically carries over the functionality of the website and adds a few exclusive features. One of those is a tool to create and share animated GIFs, which seems interesting, but I’m unsure how it’ll further Myspace’s goal of being a music destination. And for those without an iOS device, the company is also releasing a new mobile website.

In terms of new features, Myspace now provides artists with a way to curate their own radio stations using the site’s library of over 50 million songs from major labels, smaller indie labels, and artists without representation. “Letting artists curate their own radio is going to give fans that extra level of access to see what inspires and shapes their own music,” Vanderhook said, adding that users can also access this functionality.

There are also new analytics tools that let artists manage their digital presence, build an audience, and upload and distribute content — all from a single location. However, the company is assuming that artists will only use a single platform and doesn’t integrate activity on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Yet Vanderhook did tell me that’s something the company may explore at a later time.

The new Myspace site is available now to all users, as is the free iOS app. Check out the gallery of screenshots below for a closer look.

July 9-10, 2013
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Just as Apple pulls the curtain back on its own streaming music service, Pandora is headed in the absolute opposite direction by buying a terrestrial (aka traditional) radio station.

It may sound like a crazy move, but the purchase actually makes sense for the popular online radio service.

Pandora assistant general counsel Christopher Harrison made the announcement in a guest post for The Hill yesterday. The company is buying KXMZ-FM located in Rapid City, South Dakota as a way to show how the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) is discriminating against Pandora and making it difficult to compete with others. Additionally, it’s filed a motion with a federal court over these ASCAP’s discriminatory actions.

Terrestrial radio stations have pretty much free rein on the music they can play, and under current licensing, they don’t get charged a performance licensing fee like digital and satellite music services. Over the last year Pandora has lobbied both Congress and the music industry to lower what the company feels are excessively high licensing fees that are preventing Pandora from turning a significant profit. Thus far, the music industry’s response has been to raise licensing fees for the rest of the radio companies to the same level that Pandora pays. (Right now satellite and cable TV providers with a music service pay lower licensing fees than digital services like Pandora. And again, terrestrial radio has no fees.)

Here’s a quote from Harrison’s post on why it’s buying an old school radio station:

“This acquisition allows us to qualify for the same RMLC license under the same terms as our competitors. While this might seem like an unexpected move for Pandora, it makes sense even beyond the licensing parity. Pandora excels in personalizing discovery and terrestrial radio is experienced in integrating with a local community. We look forward to broadcasting our personalized experience to the community in Rapid City, an area where over 42,000 residents already use Pandora. And we will apply Pandora’s insights about listening habits to program music that accurately reflects local listeners’ evolving tastes.”

Essentially, Pandora is trying to make the current rules work in its favor by actually becoming a terrestrial radio business. This is something I pointed out as a semi-serious option for Pandora back in November 2012 — albeit one that goes backwards in terms of innovation. Still, the move makes a bit more sense when you consider what Pandora’s core business strategy is: local audio advertising. And do you know who’s really good at selling local audio advertising? Terrestrial radio.

The purchase was clearly done to show the absurdity of U.S. music licensing laws, but it really wouldn’t surprise me if Pandora decides to gobble up a few more old-school radio stations while it waits for some serious changes to happen.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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One thing we overlooked during Apple’s iTunes Radio announcement was the inclusion of a Twitter #music trending station on the new service.

Apple actually plugged the new station in the company’s promotional artwork that shows off iTunes Radio on the iPhone. As you can see in the image above, In the center of a row of featured stations is the “#music” station with the familiar blue Twitter bird logo, which was first spotted by Musically’s Stuart Dredge.

Twitter #music launched back in April as a way for the social network to identify songs that were trending among users who wanted to share what they were listening to. The service itself is a music discovery platform at heart, which uses tweets and user activity to surface new artists that are gaining in popularity. While Twitter #music’s iOS app has failed to gain attention from the majority of users, it’s possible that the iTunes Radio interest could change that.

July 9-10, 2013
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Given Apple’s position as the largest seller of digital music and producer of the most popular mobile devices, the company’s decision to launch its own Internet radio service makes a lot of sense. Other companies in the smart radio space, however, don’t seem nervous about their latest competitor.

Take for instance Pandora, which is the leader in Internet Radio, with over 70 million active monthly users in the U.S. alone. Upon hearing the news about Apple’s new iTunes Radio, Pandora’s stock price actually rose slightly (even though it’s now slightly down). This could have something to do with Apple not entirely focused on taking away the audio advertising market, especially when it comes to local ads, which Pandora has targeted specifically. Still, others like Stitcher, which uses Apple’s iAds platform for display ads, welcome Apple’s entrance into the space.

iTunes Radio is of course a “Pandora Plus” streaming music service that was announced yesterday during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote. The service allows you to create custom radio stations from artists or songs within your iTunes library of purchased music, which is altered whenever you like or dislike a song that plays on the station. The service itself is somewhere in between Pandora and Google’s new Google Play Music All Access. It’s available across all Apple devices and is offered as an ad-supported free service to everyone, or ad-free to those who have signed up for Apple’s iTunes Match service.

Below is Pandora’s official statement about iTunes Radio, followed by statements from others in the industry, including Slacker, TuneIn, and Stitcher.

Pandora:

Apple’s new feature is an evolution of their iTunes offering to bring it on par with other streaming music services that have added radio into their feature sets. We have spent the last 13 years singularly focused on redefining radio and benefit from unrivaled intellectual property, deep experience in delivering personalized playlists, and ubiquitous product availability across every platform. We make it effortless for our more than 200 million registered users to connect with the music they love anytime, anywhere.

Slacker Radio CEO Jim Cady:

Apple finally jumping into the streaming music space validates the work we’ve been doing at Slacker since 2010, offering anytime, anywhere access to the world’s music library on any device. … Apple creates great products, but unless you’re in the Apple ecosystem you’re out of luck. Walled gardens don’t benefit listeners, and Slacker believes in the importance of giving users true freedom to access their content, whether they’re on  iOS, Android, Windows, a smart TV, Xbox or in-car infotainment system. Slacker also takes a uniquely human approach to content programming, mixing in news from ABC, ESPN sports, and updates from The Weather Channel for uniquely personalized entertainment that goes well beyond music.

TuneIn Radio CEO John Donham:

We welcome Apple’s entry in to the music streaming space. Apple’s announcement, coming shortly after Google announced they are also entering the music streaming space, sets the stage for a real bloodbath in the making. Tech titans like Google and Apple are now going head to head with Pandora and Spotify, all fighting for top position. We at TuneIn think Apple’s entry into music streaming is a good thing. Anytime an innovative player like Apple enters an industry, it’s a good thing for consumers. It means all the other players in the space will continue to innovate quickly in order to keep their competitive edge. TuneIn has been innovating for years in bringing the world’s radio to people, for free. Just as innovation on the radio side is good for consumers, innovation on the personal music collection side is good for consumers.

We are not worried about iRadio becoming a threat to TuneIn. People will always crave radio. All of this mislabeling of the term “radio” by players in the personal music collection space is so misleading. Personalized Radio, Internet Radio, On-Demand Radio, everyone is trying to emulate radio. But there’s no replacement for the real thing. Hundreds or even thousands of songs on shuffle is not radio; they will never replace the human curator who is able to connect on a real level with people. Furthermore, all of these so-called “radio” services only offer music. They’re missing the rich offering radio brings for sports, news, talk, and podcasts. TuneIn offers all of that.

Stitcher Radio VP of product Todd Pringle:

We’re excited about iRadio – as it’s music focused, and we’re talk focused, we see it as complementary to what we are doing. We’re always engaged with Apple to find ways to work together and could potentially even see augmenting iRadio down the road with talk radio content from Stitcher. We also already leverage iAd within our app so the potential for using iAd for new audio ads is a great fit for what we are doing.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Apple has just announced its long-rumored streaming music service, dubbed iTunes Radio.

The service itself functions quite a bit like Pandora, letting you create smart radio stations based on a song or artist that’s already within your music library. Apple said its already providing hundreds of smart radio stations based on genre, which is something Pandora also offers. One feature that I think merits some credit is the way Apple invites its users to see upcoming songs, and favorite the songs that it likes on a particular station. Again, nothing new (Pandora does this with thumbs up/down), but it looked very pretty in the demo shot.

Other things that were prominently displayed when new songs pop up in the station is the price for the track if you were to purchase it — obviously a main priority for Apple because it doesn’t want the streaming service to completely cannibalize digital music sales.

As for pricing, Apple is offering iTunes Radio for free to everyone as an ad-supported service, backing up rumors about how Apple will monetize the service. It’s available on all Apple devices, and users who already subscribe to the company’s music library backup service iTunes Match will get to experience iTunes Radio without advertising. Presumably, the fees Apple was paying to music labels for iTunes Match will just carry over to the new radio service as well.

The radio service debuts as part of a slick new music player user interface that’s definitely worth some attention.

Check out some screenshots of the new radio service and revised iOS music player embedded below.

July 9-10, 2013
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Scratch Music Group has closed its second round of funding to fill the world with electronic music.

Scratch is a New York-based music technology company that connects DJs with events. The network contains over 1,000 DJs from around the world who use the platform to find event opportunities. The company has provided DJs for more than 30,000 events, weddings, and music festivals to date and entertained over 12 million people. It has also facilitated 60 national tours for big brands like MTV, Vans, Bloomingdales, ESPN, Royal Caribbean, Nike, Pepsi, H&M, and W Hotels.

The group consists of three parts — Scratch Events, Scratch Weddings, and the Scratch DJ Academy. On Scratch Events, DJs post profiles with information about their background, work experience, and style. People looking to book a DJ can search through the listings and book acts through the site.

Scratch was founded in 2002 to be the definitive online marketplace for DJs, events, and brands. It established the Scratch Weddings in 2010 and raised $3.3 million in its first round of funding in 2011 to support growth of this division. The funding led to a 100 percent growth in revenue, bookings, and executions, the company said in a statement issued this morning.

The third part of the business– Scratch DJ Academy — provides a learning center for people to develop their DJ skills. People with little to no experience can take individual classes, while those looking to build a career can go through Scratch’s DJ Certification Program.

New Enterprise Associates led this round of financing, with participation from previous investor Contour Venture Partners. Nobody is saying exactly how much NEA and Contour invested in this round, however. The new money, whatever the amount is, will support the company’s continued growth into new sectors, geographical markets, and product development.

July 9-10, 2013
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Apple has reached a deal with major music label Sony for its long-rumored streaming music service nicknamed iRadio, according to an AllThingsD report today.

Sony is said to be the last of the three major record labels Apple needed to sign a deal with before it was ready to launch (or at least to announce) the service to the public. The information comes just before the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which many suspect is where Apple will announce the new service alongside new or updated versions of its iOS and OS X operating systems.

The new ad-supported music service is expected to mimic Internet radio leader Pandora with a few more bells and whistles rather than follow the path of Spotify, which allows its users to access streaming music on-demand. An Apple radio service would also face plenty of competition from other services, including Slacker Radio and the recently launched service from Google, Google Play Music “All Access.”

We still don’t know exactly how Apple’s music service will function, or the exact terms of its deal with record labels. Apple’s service was apparently stalled because it wanted labels to grant it lower licensing fees on music played through the service in exchange for a cut of the advertising revenue.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Streaming music company Pandora has released a new web application for TVs, the company announced today.

The push to bring Pandora to television screens follows the company’s efforts to grow the smart radio service by making it available in Internet-connected automobiles and mobile devices. And while Pandora is available as a native app on many Smart TVs, Blu-ray players, and a handful of set-top boxes like Roku, the service has been noticeably absent from game consoles. That’s a bit odd considering that most people are connecting their televisions to the web through the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. However, the new TV web app is built in HTML5, which makes it available to any TV streaming device (like those consoles) or smart TVs with web browsers.

It may seem silly for an audio-only radio service to worry about its presence on devices primarily used for video, but there are a few reasons why Pandora is interested. The first reason comes down to enhancing the user experience, according to Pandora CTO Tom Conrad.

“We know the best set of speakers in the house are in the living room,”  Conrad said in an interview with VentureBeat. He added that 10 million of Pandora users have already experienced the service on TVs, and about a third of the company’s 70 million monthly active users listen to Pandora in their homes.

“What the Pandora TV [app] brings is an experience built for the remote control, and built using HTML5 standards so that that experience [stays consistent across all television screens],” he added.

Conrad explained that listeners will likely prefer the HTML5 TV app because it’s more consistent than the multitude of native Pandora apps for various brands of set-top boxes and smart TVs.

“I don’t think people are really concerned with whether they access Pandora on their TVs with a dedicated application or by clicking a bookmark for the Pandora site for TVs,” he said.

The company is also hoping device manufacturers will switch to using the HTML5 app and allow Pandora to reduce resources devoted to building and maintaining those native apps, Conrad said. In other words, Pandora wants to spend less time, money, and energy building native apps for televisions so it can presumably focus on other things. (Yet, Conrad told me that doesn’t mean Pandora won’t partner with hardware manufacturers on native apps in the future, including the possibility of native apps on Xbox and PS3.)

Another big reason the company is focusing on boosting Pandora usage on TVs? Advertising.

“It’s conceivable that we could eventually sell video advertising for the new 10-foot Pandora [TV] experience,” Conrad said. Right now the company’s biggest source of revenue comes from audio advertising, and to a lesser extent display ads on desktops, smartphones, and tablets. Pandora’s ad inventory, which doesn’t include video ads, wouldn’t initially translate to the TV screen, but there’s plenty of room for growth.

Selling video ads for its TV apps make sense for Pandora, which has been under pressure from investors to generate more revenue to compensate for what the company sees as extremely high music licensing fees. Television advertising continues to be where advertisers spend the bulk of their marketing and advertising budgets, so it’s not surprising that Pandora would want a piece of it.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Timbaland is feelin’ some startup action. The rapper and producer is leading the first round of funding for Open Labs, a music startup that creates hardware and software solutions for bands and producers.

Open Labs brought its flagship product StageLight to market six months ago and has seen significant growth since then. The $10 software makes it easy to create music. The SongBuilder tool allows you to choose a genre and then guides you through a step-by-step process to select instruments and patterns. After the songs are completed, you can share them with friends. Open Labs also designs touch interfaces that professional musicians use to create songs, but StageLight brought the company into the consumer market.

“Our focus as a company is to make music creation accessible to all people,” said Cliff Mountain, CEO of Open Labs. “The greatest obstacles have been price and the amount of time to become proficient on music software. With StageLight, we have overcome both challenges with an inexpensive, easy-to-use music creation software app. The software takes advantage of the historical knowledge and professional artist’s needs while focusing on teaching new musicians how to create songs.”

Timbaland said in a statement that he has been using Open Labs’ technology for years and wanted to invest in the vision to bring “music creation to the masses.” Open Labs has signed deals with Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Intel, and this round of $500,000 will help the company add more customers and continue growing StageLight. The company is based in Austin.

Now in addition to producer, songwriter, and rapper, Timbaland can add angel investor to his list of titles.

Photo Credit: Live at J&R/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Live music sales generate billions of dollars every year and while many areas of the music industry are struggling, there is money to be made on concerts.

Music startup Bandsintown released a significant update for its mobile applications today that puts a greater emphasis on social discovery. Bandsintown is a concert recommendation platform where people enter their favorite bands and artists and receive notifications about nearby tour dates as well as recommended events. The goal is to ensure fans “never miss a show again.”

“We conducted a study about concertgoer behavior which found that people go to concerts for two reasons,” said CEO Julien Mitelberg in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. “They go because they are a fan of the music, because their friends are going, or both. More and more, people expect to hear about concerts instead of going to search for them. Adding in this social layer will open up more opportunities to find concerts, discover new artists, and buy tickets to shows.”

Bandsintown has more than 5 million fans and processes 700,000 RSVPs a month. The latest version encourages those users to engage and communicate within the app. It has features to see your friends’ RSVPs in various orders, view which friends are attending specific events, and invite friends to shows through the app. The recommendation engine that suggests shows you may be interested in will also suggest which friends may be interested in those shows. The startup also has new features in the works where users will be able to post photos and videos, and rate the concert to share their experience of the show.

Musicians and promoters can also use the system to promote their events. Over 150,000 bands use Bandsintown’s Artist Platform to post information about tour dates across various social media channels and directly reach their fans. The platform provides a dashboard and management tools for touring artists. It automatically creates Facebook events for all upcoming tour dates, and the auto-promote feature is geotargeted to send out info about events throughout the tour. Tour dates, ticket links, and Facebook events can be synced to blogs and other websites, and there are tools for creating special offers, VIP packages, and exclusive experiences. Labels, management companies, and agencies use the Artists Platform to manage multiple artists from one dashboard.

Bandsintown is based in San Diego with headquarters in New York City. It was acquired by Cellfish Studios in 2011.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Music and TV show discovery service Shazam rolled out a new Windows Phone 8 app today, following its revamped iPad app last week.

The move comes as Shazam, one of the most popular apps on Apple iOS and Google Android, positions itself for greater growth and contemplates an initial public offering (IPO). The company recently named Rich Riley, a former top Yahoo executive, as its new CEO.

(Indeed, Shazam’s focus on “experience” is why we’ve invited Riley to speak at our MobileBeat event next month, which focuses on how to build a “winning mobile experience.”)

Shazam’s app will still allow you unlimited tagging of music and TV programs, but this version takes advantage of the Windows Phone platform. Like the iPad app, Shazam on Windows Phone allows you to see a map of what the most popular music is in different locations, and it updates every 30 minutes. You can also set this feature up as a live tile on the device as well as for tagging, too.

Shazam also allows you to integrate with Microsoft’s Xbox Music and Nokia Music digital stores to buy track that you tag from the Shazam app. For those who prefer Xbox Music to iTunes or Google Play, this is definitely a nice addition.

As for the design, Shazam on Windows Phone features larger album artwork and a crisper user interface. The app is available now for free via the Windows Phone app store.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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SAN FRANCISCO — With the old revenue models falling apart, musicians and media folk have needed to get entrepreneurial.

At yesterday’s SFMusicTech conference, attendees discussed new ways to make money for artists, particularly those with a social media presence and a loyal community of fans online.

Many of the entrepreneurs in attendance were struggling musicians. The goal is to make it easier for future generations of indie artists to make a living.

The conference invited me to give feedback on the startups who pitched their apps, and I was impressed by the caliber of the pitches. Here’s a selection of some of the most memorable startups at SFMusicTech:

Patreon: ‘Anyone can be a patron of the arts’

Conte with his Pomplamoose costar, real-life girlfriend Nataly Dawn

Bay Area musician Jack Conte [above] made his name on YouTube. Thousands of people have listened to his music — “imagine several football stadiums filled with fans,” he says — but Conte can barely afford a Big Mac with the money he makes through ad revenues.

Who are the founders? Conte is one half of the indie music act Pomplamoose and has sold over 100,000 songs online.

His desire to fix the industry’s “revenue problem” and earn a living through his music led to the creation of Patreon. His technical cofounder is Sam Yam, a former roommate from Stanford University.

How does it work? Music fans may donate as little as $1 to their favorite acts. Inspired by crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, backers or “patrons” can receive rewards, like a private Google Hangout with the artist.

What’s cool about it? The additional boost in cash helps musicians with production costs, and potentially even earns them a small income. Conte makes about $4,000 per YouTube video, and posts about one per month. “Patreon is not for people trying to get to a goal before they make something,” he says. “It’s for artists who make content regularly and want to keep doing it.”

Distrokid: Get your music on iTunes

Fandalism founder Philip Kaplan.

Entrepreneur Philip Kaplan announced a spin-off of his social network for musicians Fandalism. On new site Distrokid, musicians can get their songs on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify and Amazon in a matter of hours.

Who founded it? Kaplan is best known for Fucked Company, a site that chronicled failing companies, which he launched in 2000 after the dotcom bust. He also cofounded the social shopping site Blippy and ad network AdBrite.

How does it work? Kaplan’s presentation caused a stir at SFMusicTech, particularly among the record label execs in attendance. The idea is to cut the middle man and help artists get 100 percent of the royalties from downloads of their songs.

What’s cool about it? It’s affordable. With DistroKid, artists pay an annual fee of $19.99 and get unlimited uploads. But it’s unclear whether DistroKid will last — particularly with the lack of curation. What’s to stop someone from uploading offensive hate speech to iTunes?

Playground: The Social Pandora

Playground, the app that launched six months ago, offers a new take on music discovery. The beautifully designed free iPhone app lets you access curated playlists from your friends and professional DJ’s.

Who are the founders? The app is the brainchild of Austin Soldner [right], a designer and DJ, Vivek Agrawal [middle], a web developer who co-produced the award-winning soundtrack for hit flick Slumdog Millionaire, and Mehul Trivedi, an Apple-trained engineer [left].

How does it work? Download the app and you’re immediately prompted to log in with Facebook. You’ll then be offered a selection of music playlists created by the Playground community, such as ’90s hits or Indie Rock.

What’s cool about it? The team behind found a way to give you unlimited free music on mobile without paying those pesky royalty fees. Increasingly, they intend to support amateur and professional DJ’s, and promise to announce new music-mixing features in the coming months.

Kaplan and Conte images via Michael O’Donnell/ @photo

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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TuneIn, the terrestrial streaming radio service, has closed a new $25 million round of funding, the company announced today.

TuneIn aggregates over 70,000 live radio stations (that are available to stream online) and 2 million on-demand audio programs (podcasts, concerts, interviews, etc.) under one web service. It has over 40 million active monthly users across 230 territories and surpassed 1 billion listener hours during the first four months of the year. The service basically makes “dumb” radio, smart by aggregating all the best stations from all over the planet into one place. So, if you crave only college radio stations, you can flip between a couple hundred rather than revert to a different genre when a song comes on you don’t like.

The company said it plans to use the new capital on further development of its radio streaming platform and to expand the service to more people. It also plans to spend money on advancing its advertising revenue and broadcasting partners.

The round was led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), with participation from existing investors. As part of the agreement, IVP’s Jules Maltz will join the TuneIn board of directors.

Founded in 2002, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup has 70 employees and has raised a total of $47 million in funding to date from General Catalyst Partners, Jafco Ventures, Google Ventures, and  Sequoia Capital. TuneIn faces competition from Pandora, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, and others.

Twitter’s looking for a Head of Music Partnerships to lead the team in Los Angeles.

The new position, just posted today, is to lead Twitter’s music strategy, just launched in April, which includes making Twitter valuable to the “talent” as well as “the operations and strategy of music labels.” Offering some clues about the future of #Music, the job description says that the role, which reports to Twitter’s Head of Media, will focus on building partnerships with:

• All U.S. musicians
• All U.S. music labels
• All U.S. radio stations (including satellite)
• Major digital music portals

That last one is perhaps most interesting, as it reveals that Twitter wants to work with companies such as Spotify, Soundcloud, Rdio, Pandora, and others to drive music content, music consumption, and music sharing on Twitter. The Twitter acquisition that formed the basis of Twitter #Music, We Are Hunted, already had extensive partnerships with Spotify, Winamp, and Supersonic.

Interestingly, the new job was posted just days after Kevin Thau, who launched Twitter’s #Music service, left the company to join Twitter co-founder Biz Stone’s new startup, Jelly.

If successful, this role — and Twitter’s #Music initiative — will result, Twitter says, in more musicians on Twitter, more engagement with music content by Twitter users, and more use of the Twitter API and syndication of Twitter content by music partners.

Image credit: Hani Amir/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Pandora took some heat after placing a 40-hour listening cap on its power users back in February, but the move apparently helped the company. Instead of fleeing the service for competitors, users decided to subscribe in order to keep listening to more music.

The company has added over 700,000 new subscribers to its paid Pandora One service, it revealed in its fiscal year 2014 Q1 earnings report yesterday. The company now has 2.5 million paid subscribers, and the increase for the quarter is more than it added during the entire previous year. Pandora attributes the subscriber growth largely to both the listening hour cap and Android enabling in-app purchasing of Pandora One on mobile devices.

The subscription growth is interesting because it seemed like the listening cap, which was put in place to help Pandora control its content licensing costs, would send some of its users into the arms of competitors. Slacker Radio told us it saw a huge boost in new user registrations after Pandora rolled out its cap policy. But having heard outgoing CEO Joe Kennedy’s explanation on the earnings call, I can understand Pandora’s logic for the cap: The average Pandora user listens to about 20 hours of music per week and is far more valuable from an advertising revenue standpoint than the user who consumes twice that amount of music.

Regardless of the paid subscriber boost, the company said it’s still firmly committed to focusing on its free, ad-supported service.

“We don’t look at [Pandora One] purely as a subscription service but rather as a paid option for our users that’s almost like a feature addition instead of a business line,” Kennedy said during the earnings call. “We will be thinking a lot about in-app purchasing behavior, especially on Android. It’s changed the dynamic of how people look at paid listening as a preferred option.”

Pandora also reported a record number of listener hours, which hit 4.2 billion for the quarter (a 35 percent increase over the same period last year), a 55 percent year-over-year increase in revenue to $125.5 million, and a larger share of all U.S. radio listening to 7.83 percent (compared to 5.86 percent last year). Investors responded positively to the earnings, too –  pushing the stock price up nearly 9 percent to $18.68 a share in after hours trading.

Photo by Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Media discovery startup Shazam released a new version of its iPad app today that adds a ton of new features, boosting your ability to identify music, TV shows, and advertising.

Probably the most notable of these additions is the new auto-tagging feature, which allows users to keep the “tag” button on in the background. I spent some time playing with the new app this morning and found it to be much more accurate in tagging TV shows, as well as background music, while watching television. Flipping the channels around gave me a catalog of my viewing, too.

The app also puts a much greater emphasis on TV, with a revised interface that pulls in links to a show’s IMDb, Wikipedia, a list of all the music featured, and more.. This is in line with what new Shazam CEO Rich Riley said was in the pipeline for the company, as VentureBeat reported last month.

However, just because there’s plenty of opportunity to grow Shazam’s business in the realm of TV, that doesn’t mean it’s turning a blind eye to music. The Shazam iPad app will now include auto-tuning integration with two huge streaming services Rdio and Spotify. (Spotify does require a premium membership to hook up the Shazam integration.) There’s also a new mapping tool that shows which songs are getting tagged across the world.

The app is available for free in the iTunes App Store. For a closer look at the app itself, check out the demo video embedded below.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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The world’s largest streaming music service, Pandora, is finally adding some deep integration with the world’s largest social network, Facebook, giving its users a much easier way to socialize their musical activity with friends.

Following on the heels of yesterday’s Pandora Premieres announcement, the new Facebook integration adds a helpful social layer to the streaming music service, and may help assure investors that Pandora is moving forward despite a grim business outlook ahead of tomorrow’s Q1 FY2014 earnings report. Previously, Pandora’s now former CEO Joe Kennedy testified at a congressional hearing that Pandora would be unable to sustain its business if music royalty rates weren’t lowered, (and it doesn’t appear the rates will drop). There’s also the matter of increased competition in smart radio services from giant tech companies with lots of money to burn. Google recently launched its own Google Play All Access streaming radio service, while Apple and Amazon are rumored to debut similar offerings later in the year.

As for the new Timeline app integration, Pandora isn’t following other media companies that have provided deep integration with Facebook’s Open Graph, which allows people to see all of your activity from both the Facebook news feed and from an activity ticker. Streaming services like Spotify allow friends on Facebook to see songs you’re currently listening to, which I’ve never found very compelling.

Pandora’s Facebook integration is a bit different because it focuses on adding things to your Timeline under a music section. When people are exploring your Timeline page, they’ll see a record of your songs played, favorite artists, and custom radio stations that others can then listen to. It also pops up in the Facebook news feed, but as a past event that behaves more like a news story than an activity. And determining exactly what listening activity you want people to see is pretty easy — meaning I can hide most of the random 90s slow jams that pop up. You can toggle the automatic sharing on and off as needed, which I can’t really say about the fire hose of activity offered by other music services that integrate with Facebook. Those sharing controls are also available on Pandora itself.

The new Facebook Timeline integration is available across all of Pandora’s applications and platforms (iPhone, iPad, Android devices, Pandora’s website, etc.) today. Obviously, the company is committed to a more social Pandora experience, but the more interesting observation is in how it’s not at all trying to promote an increase in listening (or consuming) activity.

Media companies like Spotify, Viddy, Vevo, Ustream, and others all saw a “Facebook bump” in new users and time spent on their respective services after integrating with Facebook’s open graph. But that sort of move could actually hinder Pandora’s overall business strategy. It’s already one of the largest streaming music service almost to a fault, with 200 million total registered users and over 1.49 billion hours of music listened to per month.

Despite record growth, the company said it’s unable to generate revenue and grow long-term profitability without the aid of any “Facebook Bump” due to what it sees as unreasonably high music licensing fees. Those fees have forced Pandora to implement a 40-hour monthly music listening cap on users of its free, ad-supported service. Therefore it would appear that a large growth spurt would end up hurting the company’s bottom line, since its advertising revenue isn’t able to keep pace with Pandora’s operational growth and increasing music licensing costs. But preventing the service from growing and attempting to lower the amount of interaction spent on it from its most loyal would be a very backwards strategy — not that I think Pandora’s Facebook Timeline integration is an attempt to do either of those things; still, the addition focuses more on keeping current users than grabbing new ones.

We’ll have to wait until tomorrow’s earnings call to find out if recent developments (Kennedy’s departure back in March, the Facebook Timeline integration, and new unreleased album station Pandora Premieres) are enough to keep the company’s stock from taking a dip.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Streaming music service Pandora is launching a new radio station today that features songs from albums that aren’t available for sale yet.

The station, called Pandora Premieres, features a slew of unreleased music, interviews and other extra content from both established and emerging artists about a week before you can buy them via retail stores. You can listen to those songs as often as you’d like in any order, (so basically, its on-demand), and kicks off with music from John Fogerty and Laura Marling. The content itself receives a refresh once a week, in which case you’ll have to either buy the album to continue hearing those previously unreleased tracks or wait for them to get played on your custom smart radio stations.

The move marks an important step in Pandora’s attempt to become just as vital to the music industry as the traditional radio stations were decades earlier. I’m curious about whether Pandora is paying for its users to play these tracks, or if Pandora Premieres is primarily a promotional vehicle that music companies can pay for to help sell new albums. And given Pandora’s problems with generating enough revenue, I’m guessing they probably aren’t paying for on-demand licensing, which is far more expensive than the digital radio fees.

If Pandora is getting paid for what it plays on Pandora Premieres (at least in part) by the music industry, then it could prove to be an extremely smart move, too — and one that traditional radio has turned into a source of revenue. This is also something that Grooveshark is exploring with the launch of their new Grooveshark radio service that debuted last month.

Navigating to the new station reveals that Pandora is maximizing its advertising by pulling in a sole sponsor, as you can see from the screenshot above. Beyond that, Pandora’s Tim Westergren only had this to say about the new station in a company blog post:

“Pandora Premieres is also a new and unique vehicle for artists, both established and emerging, to reach and expand their audience. Seeing the impact of Pandora on the careers of working musicians continues to be one of the most gratifying parts of this experience.”

We’ve reached out to Pandora for clarification about its strategy for Pandora Premieres and will update this post with any new information we find out.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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After months of speculation and rumors, Google finally announced its own streaming music service called Google Play Music All Access today at its annual Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco.

“We wanted to build a music service that was focused on music where technology was in the background,” said Google’s Chris Yerga. “Choosing your music shouldn’t be such a chore.”

The new service, which is available today, will be $9.99 per month in the U.S., and will give everyone a free 30-day trial. If you sign up by June 30 you’ll be able to get it for $7.99 per month. Unlike many of its new competitors, it doesn’t look like Google will be offering a free tier of the service, which lines up with rumors that we’ve heard in the past.

The service itself will compete with on-demand music services like Rdio and Spotify as well as Pandora and other smart radio services. The company apparently was able to wrap up negotiations with all the major record labels prior to I/O, but admittedly it is a bit odd that it chose a developer-focused event to make such an announcement. The service will also face plenty of competition from other streaming music services as well as those from rival tech companies that are rumored to be launching their own offering.

“This is radio without rules,” Yerga said.

You can use Google Music All Access to create a radio station from any song you’re currently listening to. It also lets you peer into the future of what’s scheduled to play within that station — and in a move that’s not like any of the other music services, Google will let listeners get rid of music within those stations that they don’t like. The algorithm then changes to fit your revised musical tastes on that selection.

Google already has a streaming music offering in its “Google Music” service, which you can use to upload your entire library of digital songs to the web and play from anywhere (or “pinned” for offline listening on Android devices). That service is also heavily connected the Google Play store that sells music, among other things.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Over the last few months, Slacker Radio has made some big moves to step outside the shadow of rival smart radio service Pandora — and it’s doing so with some help from Pandora itself, according to Slacker Radio CEO Jim Cady.

“We’ve been able to monetize users with free accounts without placing limits on how many hours you can listen to radio content before getting capped,” said Cady in an interview with VentureBeat. He’s referring to the new restrictions Pandora implemented in late February, which limits users with free accounts to a 40-hour-a-month listening cap because the company’s copyright licensing costs are too high to maintain. It’s a curious move, as anyone who uses Pandora often enough to reach the listening cap is obviously a dedicated user, and normally, you’d want to keep such people happy so they wouldn’t venture to other competitors.

“There’s been record growth since February, and we’ve definitely seen an uptick in users around March,” Cady told me. “At a certain point, you just have to put two and two together and realize that Pandora users are leaving [for Slacker].”

Slacker provides free, ad-supported custom smart radio stations composed of over 13 million songs and talk radio programming. The company also offers two tiers of premium subscription services, which gives users ad-free listening, unlimited song skipping, access to ESPN and ABC News radio, and more for $4 or $10 per month. So basically, it’s a slightly altered streaming music service than Pandora.

But to be fair, Pandora’s listening cap isn’t the only thing that may have boosted Slacker’s growth. Slacker rolled out a massive overhaul back in February that completely revamped the music service’s user interface. Slacker got a new blue-and-off-white color scheme, clearer navigation, greater emphasis on album artwork, and a design that keeps both desktop and mobile versions looking similar. Since then, Slacker announced yesterday that it’s  added 6 million new listeners (3.5 million joining through mobile devices alone) and tripled the number of iOS app installs. It also added over 100,000 new paid subscribers since February.

“If you look at our growth, both in new users and iOS installs, we’re really focusing on improving the mobile experience because that’s where people are coming from,” Cady said. So clearly, the service’s recent overall made a big impact, too.

And as for overall usage, the company said its audience is listening to the service 25 percent longer since February. It didn’t, however, disclose the exact number of hours those listeners are spending per session or per week, which is important when gauging how it stacks up to rival music services. (For perspective, Pandora listeners spend about 20 hours per week on the service.)

But Slacker Radio might not even need to beat its main rival on obtaining more listeners or higher listener hours. Over the past several months, Pandora has stated that music licensing costs are cannibalizing its capability to turn a profit and grow the business long-term. If Slacker can continue monetizing its free audience without adding listening hour caps (despite those same expensive music licensing costs), it may have a big advantage.

Cady said the company is able to avoid listening hour restrictions through continued paid subscriber growth and through big partnerships with automobile makers and wireless carriers that the company plans to announce later in the year. He decline to specify who those partnerships would be because the operational details are still being fleshed out.

“That’s when we’ll really see some growth in our paid subscriptions,” he said of the partnerships. That said, there’s still plenty of competition among streaming music services, which is likely to heat up going forward. Apple, Google, and Amazon are all rumored to roll out their own smart radio music services, and startups like Beats Audio’s Daisy music service (with rock legend Trent Reznor as its creative lead) are plotting a big splash in late 2013. I’m also curious to see what Microsoft has under its sleeve later this month as it unveils a next-gen Xbox, which already has its own Xbox Music-branded streaming service.

Photo via Slacker Radio

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Discovering new music online is a pain, more so months after I try to pull up the songs I liked across several streaming media services. (My thought process goes as follows: Did I add that song to YouTube as a favorite? Did I just “like” the song from a video I barely watched on YouTube? Or was this something I heard on Vimeo … or am I totally wrong and this was on Pandora?”)

Piki, the new music service from the creators of Turntable.fm, released a new version on the web yesterday that solves that problem even though it’s primary goal is to provide a algorithm-based smart radio experience that’s superior to Pandora.

The web version provides you with a bookmarklet that you can click whenever you hear a song you like on another site (like YouTube, SoundCloud, Rdio, Turntable.fm, or even Pandora). It then identifies the song and pulls it into Piki, essentially making it a more functional musical bookmarking service. It’s nice because that means you don’t have to keep up with your favorite songs on multiple services, and unlike a regular bookmarking site, your picks actually feeds into Piki’s musical discovery engine.

“We try our hardest to determine the song you’re listening to on other sites with our own technology,” said Piki and Turntable.fm cofounder Billy Chasen in an interview with VentureBeat. He added that not all songs can be identified due to the way each streaming service encodes their music. Still, this is a nice feature that none of the other streaming music services offer.

Piki launched an iOS app last month that provides a different spin on music discovery via algorithms. The service enables you to pick the best songs you’re listening to and then provides a smart radio station based on the “picks” of other users. Unlike Pandora, the service uses its algorithms to match you up with people who have similar music tastes instead of songs that sound the same, and it enables you to alter what gets played on a single station rather than providing you with separate stations comprised of a few genres or artists. It also has some cool features like the capability to capture/recognize songs that you hear (sort of like Shazam or SoundHound).

The web version’s bookmarket is a nice way of tying Piki’s goal of capturing music you like as you hear it — and doing so without stepping on all the other streaming music services out there. You can still enjoy all those other services and just use Piki as a bookmarking service. And the more songs you add, the better Piki’s discovery algorithms will be when you do use it as a music service.

“We’ve actually been working on a web/desktop version of Piki parallel to the iOS app for about a year and a half, and there’s been several versions of the interface,” Chasen said. “Mobile is an important portion of Piki, but there’s a lot of people working at their desks during the day that just want a lean-back listening experience that doesn’t come from their phone.”

The final version that launched today is very similar to what you’ll find on the iOS app in terms of user interface. The sidebar still presents you with controls for “tuning” the type of songs that play on your station, and the album artwork is prominently displayed as is the user who originally “picked” the song. Visiting a user’s profile on the web lets you toggle the frequency for how often you want a particular user’s picks to pop up on your station as well as sample their musical tastes.

The web version of Piki does handle importing your own music differently. You can’t just navigate to your iTunes music folder. Instead, Piki only lets you chose from songs you’ve uploaded on Turntable.fm after you’ve linked your account. There’s also a message that instructs people not to go crazy with adding every song they own, either.

“We’re really trying to get people into the habit of only picking their favorite songs of the moment … just your jams, not an entire album,” Chasen explains. “So if users pick songs only once or twice a week, that’s OK for what we’re trying to build with Piki.”

Chasen said Piki’s development team (which along with Turntable.fm is part of Stickybits) plans to launch an Android version of the service in the near future.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Streaming music service Grooveshark is throwing its hat into the radio service ring today with the debut of Broadcast, which is available to the public starting today.

Grooveshark rose to fame because it allowed people to upload and play their own music rather than investing in expensive deals with music publishers, whom didnt’ exactly like this method. (To date, all the major music companies are wrapped up in legal battles with Grooveshark.) Now, the service is trying to strike out on a new model that will hopefully make all sides happy, including fans that prefer it over more ridged music services like Pandora.

Grooveshark’s Broadcast is attempting to recreate the experience of a terrestrial (aka old school) radio’s DJ shift. A Grooveshark user will first start broadcasting their music selection, which is available to anyone who wants to listen in. From there you’ll basically just play songs from your own collection of music as well as insert 30-second recordings that can introduce songs, sets, or provide commentary about anything. When you stop DJing, you can either hand off your audience to another DJ or your station goes off line.

“This is a completely lean back experience. There are no back or forward buttons and you’re basically relying on good DJs to play music you enjoy,” said Grooveshark CEO and co-founder Sam Tarantino in an interview with VentureBeat. “What we’re hoping is to turn radio listeners into broadcast personalities.”

There’s also plenty of social interactions integrated into the Broadcast experience. The DJ can now see everyone who’s currently listening to his session on the sidebar. Those listeners can rate songs as they’re played, make comments, and make suggestions about future songs. The DJ broadcasting does have a queue  of music that can be added to, which can easily be altered depending on the mood of the listening audience.

Tarantino said the new Broadcast radio service isn’t eligible to pay music companies for usage through SoundExchange (like Pandora and other smart radio service do) because the new service is mixed usage. Grooveshark is hoping to come to an agreement with those labels to license music in a way that makes sense, but has yet to reach a lasting agreement.

Gainesville, Fla.-based Grooveshark has previously raised under $5 million in funding and has over 30 million active monthly users, according to the company. Check out some additional screenshots of the new radio service embedded below.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Last year, 44 million Americans bought at least one song or album from iTunes. This month, the digital music store that changed the way we buy music will celebrate its 10th birthday.

I guess time flies when you’re having fun.

After all those years, Apple’s iconic music service is still the largest music online music retailer, and in fact it’s the largest music retailer of any kind. As of February, the service has sold over 25 billion songs out of Apple’s 28 million-strong global catalog, and well over 435 million people have active iTunes accounts.

According to the NPD, eight out of 10 people who buy digital music have bought music from iTunes, and on an overall unit basis, iTunes owns 63 percent of the music download business.

On the cusp of a possible Apple digital streaming service, that dominance could continue for quite some time.

“Since the launch of Apple’s iTunes store, digital music downloads have become the dominant revenue source for the recorded music industry and iTunes continues to be the dominant retailer,” the NPD Group‘s Russ Crupnick said. “There’s a belief that consumers don’t need to buy music because of streaming options, when in fact streamers are much more likely than the average consumer to buy music downloads.”

The NPD surveyed 5,400 Internet users to build its digital music report, and while 38 percent of the sampling said that it is still important to own music, 41 percent of those who listen to Pandora and other free music-streaming platforms said the same thing. In addition, many of those streamers said they’ve bought songs because they discovered them on a streaming service or on the radio.

That’s important for Apple, because an iTunes streaming music service has been rumored for years, and just last week it appears that Apple and the number one music label in the world, Universal Music Group, came to terms on a streaming music payments agreement.

Though the number of American music listeners who buy music online has remained relatively unchanged, the amount they are spending has gone up about 6 percent since last year. That number could rise in 2013 if Apple does launch a streaming music service and it is well-integrated into an iTunes purchase capability.

photo credit: aagius via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Although it’s been a while since we heard anything from DJ-focused music service Turntable, the team has kept busy. Yesterday it debuted a new smart-radio service called Piki that offers yet another spin on music discovery.

No one has quite cracked the code when it comes to finding a perfect balance of hearing music you already like and discovering new songs you probably will end up liking. Piki’s answer is to create algorithms based on what your friends are listening to rather than grouping songs together because they sound similar or belong to a particular genre. It’s structured like Pandora, rather than an on-demand music service like Spotify, and it’s iOS app is available for free. A good comparison for Piki would be a mobile version of “Twitter for Music” service Blip.fm — except with more of a focus on passive listening and discovery.

“Pandora is really good at matching songs that sound like other songs, and it creates this very narrow path of music. That works to some degree because Pandora has hundreds of millions of users,” Turntable and Piki co-founder Billy Chasen said in an interview with VentureBeat. “What we’re saying is that it can be better.”

How? Well for starters, you stop matching songs and start attempting to match up people, Chasen told me, adding, “The way I’ve always discovered new bands is when a friend will tell me, [for example] ‘look, there’s this guy out of Montreal that does crazy shit with his violin and it’s great.’”

But matching people with the same musical tastes is easier said than done.

In fact, I can name several services (Last.fm, 8tracks, Rdio, Fuzz, Playground.fm) that  made the same claim while providing dismal music discovery, at best. Chasen explained this is because other services make the social portion of their services more of an afterthought. For instance, adding social network sharing buttons and deep Facebook integration isn’t actually social, he said. I’d lump sharing playlists with strangers in the same boat.

“A lot of music apps have this idea of powering music [discovery] with just your friends, but that’s not the whole recipe,” Chasen said. “You probably have a few friends that have good taste in music, but most of them you won’t really like. It’s time to make some musical friends, which is something we saw happen on Turntable.”

And Turntable was a legitimately cool and genuinely original idea for a streaming music service when it debuted in 2011 — quickly spawning a handful of copycats that have all either hit the deadpool or pivoted. That said, Piki has my attention, especially since Turntable isn’t disappearing or transforming into Piki.

“[We were] continuing to see that there’s this opportunity to insert a social layer into music,” Chasen said. “Turntable only touched the surface of that — being in a room and playing music with people is social, but there’s room for a lean-back music service that does more with those social connections.”

When you sign up for Piki, it asks you to “pick” a favorite song, then it prompts you to connect with friends on Facebook, Twitter, Turntable, and your iOS contact list. The service is still new, and I didn’t have many real-life friends to follow, so Piki suggested users from the community with similar tastes. The service then populates a radio station based on a few things: your song picks, who you follow, and how often things are picked or played across the community. Unlike the Pandora method of creating custom smart radio stations, Piki wants you to “tune” a single station. You can mashup genres from the sidebar controls, which pulls in songs from those particular genres that were “picked” by those you’re following.

The more social side of Piki involves adding notes to songs that you pick, or dedicating a song pick to another Piki user. All your picks pop up within a feed on your profile, which others can check to see if their musical tastes match up with yours.

Initially I wasn’t impressed with Piki, but after playing with it for a while I can say it has a lot of potential to replace some of the other music services out there. In addition to “repicking,” a song played on your own personal station, you’re basically asked to add your “picks” whenever you have the urge to listen to a song. There’s even a Shazam-like listening feature that lets you identify songs when you’re out and about. And since it plugs those songs into a smart radio algorithm, I’m more likely to use Piki over Shazam, which more or less just panders to the top 10 most popular songs/albums/artists. (If I wanted that, I’d just go to the iTunes music store.)

Piki also has the benefit of learning from some of the challenges Turntable faced when launching. Chasen told me that launching Piki via mobile devices first was a conscious decision, not only because that’s where people want to listen to music, but also because it’s a lot more useful in terms of what you can do. It’s also a really smart move considering how long it took Turntable to make an appearance on mobile devices. The development team at Stickybits, (the company that produces both Turntable and Piki), has also been working on the service for well over a year and has the benefit of already having music licensing deals in place that carry over from Turntable.

That doesn’t mean Piki won’t have challenges, namely rumored competition from Twitter as well as several others trying to crack the social music discovery problem. There’s also the matter of DMCA licensing, which doesn’t allow you to play full songs from other users’ profile pages/feeds. (Doing so would make Piki an on-demand music service, which is much more costly.) You’re also limited to whatever is in Piki/Turntable’s 13-million-track music library or your own music library. So, if I hear an unsigned band’s performance on SoundCloud or YouTube, I won’t be able to add that song as a pick.

Chasen said he’d like to add support for YouTube, SoundCloud, and other services in the future, but for now the development team is focused on Piki’s initial launch. The team is planning to release a Piki web app and Android app in the near future.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Roku announced today that it has sold five million of its video and music streaming set top boxes, claiming that 25 percent of its users are using Roku as the primary way of viewing television.

In addition to having sold millions of Roku players, the company says it also has provided over eight billion streams of videos and music to date.

The company first started out with streaming service Netflix as its customers’ only option for streaming video, but quickly added more options such as HBO Go and Hulu Plus. In January, Roku rounded out its channels with PBS, Time Warner Cable, and Fox Now. On the music streaming side, it also added Vevo around the same time, and also includes Pandora among its music channels. There are now over 750 channels available on Roku.

In an earlier interview with VentureBeat, Roku chief executive Anthony Wood said that over a billion hours have been streamed as well.

According to Roku, Nielsen states that “the average American spends 34 hours per week watching live TV.” It went on to say that 25 percent of its customers use Roku 35 hours a week. Of course, anyone who buys a Roku box is going to have a predisposition to streaming content, but it does show a shift in attitudes around cable.

Roku launched its first player in 2008.

Roku image via Roku

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Apple is finalizing deals with two major record labels to launch its own streaming music service with lower royalty rates than competitors already in the space, according to a recent CNET report.

The service is expected to be a smart radio offering (as opposed to providing songs on-demand) that will be freely available across the globe and will complement Apple’s iTunes music store. If true, an Apple-branded smart radio service could also overcome one of the largest obstacles that other streaming music providers (Slacker, Pandora, and to an extent, Spotify) have: keeping content costs down.

The report indicates that Apple will be paying a lower royalty rate than other digital music services. This is a big deal because companies like Pandora have cited unreasonably high royalty rates as the reason they’re unable to generate a significant profit, despite consistent audience and revenue increases. On top of that, music industry organizations like SoundExchange (the group set up by the government that manages digital royalties for the industry) are asking Congress to revise current laws so that terrestrial (aka traditional AM/FM) and satellite radio services start paying as much as digital services do.

So how is Apple able to negotiate lower rates with the labels? According to CNET’s sources, Apple is offering those labels a cut from multiple streams of revenue, which haven’t yet been identified. I previously theorized that Apple could do this by giving people a specific number of custom stations and charging them to create more stations. Apple could also put a limit on the number of times you can listen to a song in a day and make that data obvious to the listener so they’re prompted to buy those songs. Of course, Apple can always split revenue on audio advertising that plays between songs.

But this creates a huge problem when it comes to the future of streaming music services as separate businesses. If Apple is successful, it paints the picture that you must be a huge technology corporation with an influential digital store to get royalty rates low enough to make money. That’s dangerous because the majority of streaming music services can’t offer the incentives Apple can.

Illustration by Tom Cheredar