Technology New » Music

More Crunchies Tix, Get ‘Em While They’re Hot! Plus, a Special Musical Guest Announcement!

ouiss — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 23:21:37 +0000

Yes, that’s right. Hide yo wife, hold your Tweets, stop your emails, and don’t even think about opening a Skype chat, because we are proud to announce that the third batch of tickets for the 2010 Crunchies Awards are on sale now. Right now

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More Crunchies Tix, Get ‘Em While They’re Hot! Plus, a Special Musical Guest Announcement!

YouTube Mobile Traffic Tripled In 2010, Android App Gets Music Videos (And Ads)

admin — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:00:11 +0000

Given how popular YouTube is on the web, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that a lot of people also enjoy watching video clips from their phones. And, given the surge in Android, iPhone, and iPad sales, that adds up to a lot of videos

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YouTube Mobile Traffic Tripled In 2010, Android App Gets Music Videos (And Ads)

Digital Audio Advertising Company TargetSpot Lands $8 Million

ouiss — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:08:00 +0000

TargetSpot , which operates a large digital audio advertising network , this morning announced that it has secured $8 million in equity financing from Union Square Ventures , Bain Capital Ventures , CBS Radio and Milestone Venture Partners .

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Digital Audio Advertising Company TargetSpot Lands $8 Million

Bump Raises $16 Million Round Led By Andreessen Horowitz

ouiss — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 05:00:03 +0000

If you’ve got an iPhone or Android device, there’s a decent chance you’re familiar with Bump , the nifty service that lets you swap contact information (and other data) by simply tapping two phones together. The service has been around since 2009, and now has 7 million active users across 25 million total installs on Android and iOS devices. And today Bump has some big news: it’s just raised $16 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Sequoia, Sherpalo (Ram Shriram), and SV Angel (Ron Conway).

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Bump Raises $16 Million Round Led By Andreessen Horowitz

Why I’m Having Second Thoughts About The Wisdom Of The Cloud

admin — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 00:49:20 +0000

I’ve always been a big advocate of storing things in the cloud. Not just emails and files, but my entire life.

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Why I’m Having Second Thoughts About The Wisdom Of The Cloud

Startup Sherpa (Kickstarter): Going Direct To The Audience For Crowdsourced Funding

ouiss — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 19:33:30 +0000

If you want to crowdsource the funding for a project—whether it is a product, album, or a film—one of the best places to find both patrons and early customers is Kickstarter . In this week’s episode of Startup Sherpa , host Chris Dixon dives deep into the crowdsourced-funding phenomenon with Kickstarter founder Perry Chen. The majority of projects on Kickstarter are creative ones involving film, art, or music

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Startup Sherpa (Kickstarter): Going Direct To The Audience For Crowdsourced Funding

Khush Lands Funding To Help Wannabe Singers Create Music On The Go

ouiss — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:00:10 +0000

Khush, a startup that develops music applications, has raised a new round of funding from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups , angel investor Yee Lee , and Georgia Tech ATDC VentureLab. The startup declined to reveal how much money was raised in the round.

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Khush Lands Funding To Help Wannabe Singers Create Music On The Go

Your Music In The Cloud No More – blueTunes Keels Over, Dies

ouiss — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 11:18:53 +0000

It took a bit longer than we thought, but the inevitable has happened: blueTunes is calling it quits . A message posted on the website reads: We have decided to pursue other opportunities and will be shutting down our service on January 31, 2011. Thanks for supporting us and for all you’ve done.

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Your Music In The Cloud No More – blueTunes Keels Over, Dies

Spotify Ties Up With Logitech

ouiss — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 08:26:53 +0000

Good news for Europeans and those U.S. users (perhaps as many as 30,000 ) of music streaming service Spotify . In a similar deal to the one signed last year with Sonos , users will soon be able to listen to streaming Spotify music through their Logitech devices

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Spotify Ties Up With Logitech

MP3 replacement proposed

admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 11:37:48 +0000

Bach Technology

A proposed file format called MusicDNA will allow content owners to ship up to 32GB of information, such as album cover art, song lyrics, and even up-to-the minute blog posts and concert listings, alongside a music file. If enough content owners and distributors sign on, it could become an alternative to the MP3, giving users a more album-like digital playback experience, and allowing artists and content owners to charge more money per download.

The proposed format was announced by Bach Technology on Sunday at MIDEM 2010, a music-industry conference under way in Cannes, France. Unlike current alternatives to the MP3, such as Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), MusicDNA is not a new audio technology, and requires no new audio codecs. Rather, as Bach CEO Stefan Kohlmeyer explains in this video interview with PaidContent, MusicDNA is an add-on to existing audio formats.

MusicDNA analyzes the audio itself for characteristics in 13 categories such as mood and tempo. This information is encoded as XML and ships with the file. Content owners can also provide data, such as album art and lyrics, to be included with the file. This data can even be updated when the user is online–for example, concert listings could be added as they’re announced, complete with links to ticket-buying sites. Bach hopes to make money by licensing the technology to software and hardware manufacturers.

Because MusicDNA isn’t a new audio technology, MusicDNA files should play on existing hardware and software–they’ll play the underlying audio file and ignore all the added data. This is how MusicDNA could escape the fate of marginalized formats like Windows Media Audio or Sony’s ATRAC.

It’s an ambitious and interesting idea, but the digital music industry right now is dominated by one player: Apple. A lot of what MusicDNA proposes to accomplish could be handled at the application level–if Apple wants to analyze the audio content in files and add more categories to describe them, it could build this technology into iTunes. Moreover, Apple’s already got its own format, iTunes LP, for shipping additional information with music files. So I don’t see a lot of incentive for Apple to spend money to license and support this new third-party format. And without Apple, I don’t see how MusicDNA can survive.