New Music Startups and Services

H1 2010
Music Ally
Introduction

2010 is a tough year to be a startup in many industries, given the wider economic climate. Yet that
hasn’t reduced the flow of new, innovative and interesting startups and services in the music sector,
as the 100+ featured in this report show.

Certain themes have emerged too in the first half of 2010. There is certainly no shortage of
companies looking to find new ways to bring music to people, including streaming (Rdio, Play.me),
ad-supported downloads (Guvera, FreeAllMusic) and cloud-based services (mSpot Music, Beyond
Oblivion).

There are new digital stores focused on social features (Mflow), and others with a charitable bent
(Fairsharemusic, Fundtunes). Meanwhile, brands like Intel, Paco Rabanne and Levi’s were the latest
to launch their own music sites, working to provide a showcase for emerging artists.

However, it’s been an equally interesting year so far on the B2B front, with numerous startups
focusing on services for bands, labels and managers. From analytics (BandMetrics, GigsWiz) to
general management (BandCentral) through to D2C widgets and micro-payments startups, bands
had more choice than ever of new services to help market their music and build/track relationships
with their fans.

We’ve also been keeping tabs on startups looking to build online community around live gigs, new
location-based mobile services with a musical tinge, the growing crossover between music and social
gaming, and the latest developments in filesharing technology, to name just a few areas.

This report focuses on some of the most significant startups and services covered by Music Ally in
the first half of 2010, with a comprehensive list of all the companies we’ve written about in our
Bulletin and Report.

Our aim is to offer an overview of the trends and developments in the digital music market. One
caveat: the companies listed here either launched their services in the first half of this year, or were
written about by us for the first time – meaning it includes companies who were in stealth or beta
mode before that, as well as much more established firms who launched new services this year.
About Music Ally

Music Ally is a music business information

and strategy company. We focus on the
change taking place in the industry, and
offer information and insight into every
aspect of the business.

Our publishing division provides a daily email news bulletin that’s in our subscribers’ inboxes by
9.30am every morning with the latest industry news. We also publish two fortnightly insight reports:
the Music Ally Report focuses on business analysis, while the Sandbox Report covers digital music
marketing.

Meanwhile, Music Ally’s consumer research division analyses changing behaviour and trends within
the industry, and our consultancy division works with companies ranging from blue chip retailers and
telecoms companies to digital music startups. We also run training courses in digital music
marketing, and work with a number of high-profile music events around the world.

How do we work with startups?

Music Ally has worked with a number of startups, providing strategic consultancy services, and using
our network of contacts to ensure they are best placed to build relationships with key stakeholders
in the music industry.

Together with Reed MIDEM, we run the MidemNet Lab contest for innovative music startups, which
will highlight up to 30 finalists in January 2010 at the MIDEM conference in Cannes. Entries are
welcome in three categories: Mobile applications, Industry Services, and Consumer Services.
http://www.midem.com/en/homepage/conferences-matchmaking/midemnet-lab/

Music Ally is also currently involved in a scheme called Digital Content Innovation Scheme, or DCIS
for short. Its aim: to help UK-based startups overcome the complex legal and commercial barriers to
entry for any new business looking to deal with digital music rights. The concept: bring together all
the music industry rightsholders to create a mechanism that allows for limited use of their content
and rights for early-stage testing of new technologies and service models, on a controlled basis. If
your startup may qualify, we’d love to tell you more. http://dcis.uk.com/

Key Music Ally contacts

For editorial – news and interviews: stuart@musically.com

To subscribe to our bulletin and reports: anthony@musically.com
For MidemNet Lab or DCIS enquiries: steve.mayall@musically.com or paul.brindley@musically.com
To talk about digital marketing: ryan@musically.com

Enough about us, on with the startups...

Aviary Music Creator

Aviary is one of the emerging crop of

online music creation services, and
has been designed to be as easy to
use for novices as possible.

That means a drag’n’drop interface

for positioning samples and loops
into an eight-bar grid, with 12
available tracks to play with. 50
instruments are available, from
drums, piano and guitar samples
through to harps, flutes and
hammered dulcimers. We had to
look that last one up, but we assure you it’s real.

The resulting songs can then be saved as MP3 files, embedded on blogs using Aviary’s widget, or
shared on Facebook and Twitter. The service uses a Creative Commons Attribution licence, meaning
that music created with it can be released commercially without fear of legal headaches.

In its basic form, the Aviary editor can be used by amateur music makers to flesh out an idea.
However, it could also have relevance for the music industry. When the editor was shown off during
the MidemNet Lab pitch sessions at this year’s Midem conference, it included a remix contests
engine for bands to make stems and samples available for fans to tinker with.

Fan-remix contests have become more common in the last 12-18 months, but often rely on those
fans knowing their way around fairly sophisticated music editing tools. Aviary’s editor is one of the
tools that could open this up for a wider audience – especially as its API lets artists embed the editor
in their own websites, with the content created by fans then flowing back into the Aviary system. It
also ties into the SoundCloud service, which will appeal to more professional artists.

The Aviary Music Creator sits within a stable of other creative tools – Aviary also has tools for editing
images, logos, colour palettes and screenshots. The company is privately-held and based in New
York, with its roots in a creative community called Worth1000.com, which apparently had 500,000
digital artists.

The business model is unclear – even if artists pay to use the remixing elements, it’s unlikely to cover
the costs of running the overall site if it takes off among users. However, there is potential for
upselling those users to more content like premium sample packs, or more advanced features.

More information: www.aviary.com

BandCentral

BandCentral is one of a crop of

startups focused on the B2B side of
the music business, helping artists and
managers to run their affairs from the
cloud.

That includes managing tours and

databases of fan contact details
through to merchandise sales and
financial accounts. It’s all managed
from within a central ‘BandHub’,
which enables money to be tracked
from all revenue streams.

However, the BandHub also integrates

with social networks like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook, allowing statuses to be updated from
within BandCentral. It also works with b2b service SoundCloud, focusing on the latter’s commenting
features. The key use here is to swap thoughts on in-progress songs and remixes.

Internal messageboards help bands keep in touch when not on the road, complete with the option
for SMS alerts for urgent news, and there’s a detailed contacts section to keep track of key contacts
in the industry. BandCentral also includes privacy settings with differing levels, so various members
of the band’s team can access certain areas of the BandHub, depending on their role.

Part of the pitch for BandCentral is that it was developed by a working musician, Wil Padley, who
plays in UK band The Domino State. The service also taps into the increasing number of artists
choosing to go it alone rather than seek a record deal straight away, making it easier to keep tabs on
some of the tasks that might otherwise be handled by a label.

BandCentral is available in a basic package for free, supported by ads. However, there’s an upsell to
the premium version, which costs £5.99 a month and has a fuller set of features. There is certainly a
good usage case for this kind of product at this price point, since it brings together features from a
variety of different software packages, and hosts everything in the cloud (and can thus be accessed
from anywhere.

The service was one of the MidemNet Lab finalists in January, but launched officially in May, claiming
to already have thousands of users. Direct-to-consumer music startups hog much of the attention,
but talk to investors, and you’ll find just as much excitement around B2B startups like BandCentral.
It’s certainly one to watch.

More information: www.bandcentral.com

Band Metrics

Band Metrics is another hotly-tipped B2B

music startup, which launched its private
beta in 2009, but then a public beta in
January 2010. The company capitalises
on the hunger for analytics among labels
and music marketers, styling itself as a
‘data analytics and decision support
system’.

What that means, in a nutshell, is that

Band Metrics aggregates data on how
people are listening to and interacting
around music online, and helps artists, managers and labels make sense of it.

That includes segmenting artists’ fans into different tiers, from hardcore fans through to casual
listeners. It can even drill into measuring the influence of individual fans based on their online
activity: the idea being that bands can then reach out to these people and cultivate the relationship.

The service also tracks radio plays, as well as comments and status updates on social networks about
an artist. Band Metrics uses visual displays wherever possible for this information, including maps to
show hotspots of fan activity for a particular artist.

Band Metrics has a good reputation within the industry, thanks partly to founder Duncan Freeman,
who alongside his day job runs the Indie Music Tech blog, spotlighting other startups and services.
The company has a solid technological base too, and has been involved in initiatives like the Music
Data Exchange Format (MDEF), which aimed to create an open format for sharing social data relating
to musicians and bands.

When it launched, Band Metrics was free for artists, labels and other members of the music
industry. However, the need for useful data is such that when it does introduce charges, it will still
have strong appeal. That said, there is no shortage of competition in the analytics space, so much
will depend on how rapidly the platform evolves with new features.

More information: www.bandmetrics.com

Beyond Oblivion

The first we heard about Beyond Oblivion

was in April 2010, when it emerged that the
startup had raised a funding round of
around $10 million, including participation
from investment bank Allen & Co and –
more intriguingly – News Corporation.

At the time, the company’s own site

described it as “a radical, highly disruptive
music service that combines the stickiness
of a social network with unlimited life-of-
device access to the large music library on
Earth, within a vast ecosystem where
content owners are paid per-play no matter
if the original music file was ripped, bootlegged or legally or illegally downloaded”.

Later that month, the company’s founder Adam Kidron raised even more eyebrows with a promise
that it expects to pay out more than $100 million in royalties to music companies within five years,
but also put more flesh on the bones of how Beyond Oblivion plans to do it.

The concept is to charge device makers and ISP a per-user fee of “the price of a few CDs”, which it
then distributes to rightsholders every time tracks are played by those users.

In July, a blog post elaborated further: “Beyond Oblivion will monetize essentially all digital music
files – past, present & future – on all Beyond Licensed devices, paying copyright owners a royalty for
each and every play of a ripped, shared or downloaded digital music file no matter its origin, and in
doing so changes the paradigm: consumers are no longer our ripping, and sharing enemies but all of
our revenue activating friends.”

This is all ambitious, to say the least. The company has certainly been hiring staff ready for its debut
later this year, but there is no news as yet on licensing deals – either with labels or device makers
and ISPs.

Beyond Oblivion does tap into an idea that’s gaining supporters within the music industry – the idea
that music should be monetised by usage rather than by initial download. However, it will all depend
on how many device makers and ISPs choose to play ball: assuming Apple doesn’t, the startup will be
looking for users beyond the iTunes ecosystem.

Grand schemes to save the music industry have hit choppy waters in the past – witness SpiralFrog
and Qtrax – but Beyond Oblivion already has people talking.

More information: www.beyondoblivion.com

Conduit Labs

Savvier music industry folk have been

following the rise of social gaming with
interest for a while now. Can the music
world learn anything from the success
of Farmville and its rivals on Facebook?
Nobody’s quite sure, but they’re
interested.

Conduit Labs actually first came to our

attention in September 2009, when it
raised funding of $3 million to launch a
music-focused virtual world called
Loudcrowd. Back then, the idea was to
license songs by big-name artists to play
within the world, while selling songs and
branded virtual items.

However, the reason for including Conduit Labs in this report is the announcement in April 2010 that
the company had struck a deal with Universal Music Group to license its catalogue for a series of
Facebook social games. Tracks from the likes of Lady Gaga, Lil Wayne and Black Eyed Peas would be
sold within games including Music Pets and Super Dance, as well as within Loudcrowd – which was
now styled as a music social gaming network.

We were intrigued by Music Pets in particular, since in its first month it had signed up more than one
million players. It’s a cross between a virtual pet game and a music discovery service, where players
send their pet off to ‘find’ new songs that they might like.

That game hasn’t maintained huge momentum in the months since April – at the time of writing in
mid-July, it had just over 370,000 monthly active users, while Super Dance was just under 470,000.
However, Conduit Labs has been working to promote the licensed tracks that are available – for
example, in July it ran promotions for Snow Patrol, The Killers, Owl City and Chamillionaire.

So, even if Conduit Labs has gone a bit quiet since its (impressive) UMG deal, it won’t be the last
startup looking to blend social gaming with music content. Meanwhile, all eyes are on the giants of
the social games scene: Zynga, Playdom and Playfish (the latter now owned by Electronic Arts) to see
what plans – if any – they have for forging links with the music industry.

More information: www.conduitlabs.com

Flattr

Flattr may be seen as one of the more

controversial startups in this list, due to its
founder. Peter Sunde is best known for being
one of the co-founders of The Pirate Bay, and
was one of four men to stand trial for copyright
infringement in Sweden last year.

While Sunde is on the record as saying he has no

involvement in the day-to-day running of The Pirate Bay, his outspoken views continue to raise
hackles within the industry, most recently during his appearance at an industry debate at The O2 in
London, where he went head to head with BPI boss Geoff Taylor.

Sunde’s arguments then about artists suffering at the hands of legal music services and labels were
heckled by the predominantly industry audience, but actually his new startup Flattr follows through
on his belief that artists are better going it alone. Perhaps ironically, it’s a service designed to ensure
that creatives of all kinds get paid.

Flattr describes itself as “a social micropayment system that lets you show love for the things you
like”. Users signing up for it pay a monthly fee of at least two Euros, which gets split between
websites of content creators based on how many times that user clicks on the Flattr buttons that are
embedded on those sites. To add a Flattr button to your site, you have to sign up as a user – thus
committing funds yourself for others.

Flattr can be used by musicians, but also bloggers, video artists, illustrators and software developers,
to name a few categories. Sunde argues that it’s not as contradictory to The Pirate Bay as you might
imagine – telling the Financial Times in July this year that while TPB allowed people to share files,
Flattr is about sharing small amounts of money.

At that point, the service had signed up around 20,000 members across Europe. Flattr takes a 10%
commission on the money shared through its platform. It’s invite-only for the moment, building a
word-of-mouth effect.

Micropayments is a nut that has yet to be truly cracked on the web, although Facebook is ramping
up for a try with its Facebook Credits initiative, and Apple has rolled out in-app payments within its
iOS ecosystem. The music industry would be unwise to write off Flattr’s approach simply because of
its founder: although if Sunde is to be believed, the startup wants to benefit independent artists,
rather than labels or the industry machine.

More information: www.flattr.com

FreeAllMusic

Ad-supported free music downloads have

a chequered history, to say the least.
SpiralFrog famously crashed and burned,
while Qtrax even more famously held a
glitzy press launch at MIDEM without any
major label deals in place, and has since
faced repeated setbacks in its efforts to
launch. The industry could be forgiven for
writing the ad-supported downloads
model off.

However, FreeAllMusic, along with Guvera (see next page) is trying to resuscitate the idea. The US-
based company raised seed funding in late September 2009, and promised to offer free MP3 tracks
to users if they watched 15-30-second video advertisements before downloading each one – with
display ads shown around that process.

CEO Richard Nailling claimed then that the download model was more suitable for advertisers than
streaming services like Spotify, because downloaders would be more willing to engage with the ads.
The company did persuade some labels, signing UMG in January 2010, by which point it had
emerged that users would be restricted to five downloads a week. EMI signed on later that month.

FreeAllMusic ended its private beta in April, and released some stats from its initial batch of users.
The company claimed a 94% completion rate for its pre-roll video ads – the percentage of users who
watched them through to the end – as well as click-through rates of 0.54% for the display ads on its
site. 92% of users apparently said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the service, too.

Coca-Cola, Zappos and LG were among the brands on board for that private beta, but since then it’s
gone pretty quiet, with no news of plans for a public beta (let alone a commercial launch), or
progress on licensing deals with other majors Sony and WMG, or independent labels. “Armed with
these positive results we will be focused on securing further advertising commitments and additional
financing for our public beta launch later this year,” said an email from the company to private beta
users at the end of the trial.

Meanwhile, other experts have questioned the figures behind any startup of this nature, saying that
sky-high CPMs would be required to make the numbers add up – and particularly its licensing
payments to labels. What’s more, such a service is competing against companies like Spotify,
Pandora and we7 for advertising dollars.

Even so, the data from FreeAllMusic’s private beta will have been pored over by rightsholders to see
just how promising such a service is – and more importantly, if it looks like being able to scale its
business model. If and when it returns this year, it will certainly be followed closely.

More information: www.freeallmusic.com

Guvera

Guvera is the other high-profile ad-

supported downloads startup this year,
alongside FreeAllMusic. By the start of
this year, the company already had deals
in place with Universal Music Group and
EMI, as well as indie group IODA. Guvera
also raised a $20 million funding round in
January, bolstering the $10 million round
it took last year.

The concept is that brands fund their own

channels on Guvera, through which free
MP3 music downloads are made available,
with plans to extend this to films and TV shows in the future. Brands pay a fee when a song is
downloaded, which is then distributed to the rightsholders.

The brands get to pick which content is offered on their channels, to ensure it fits with their
corporate image. Advertisers can rule out being associated with any explicit content, nix individual
genres, or single out specific artists they don’t want to fund. For their part, artists can specify which
brands they don’t wish to be associated with their downloads.

Meanwhile, users are asked to fill in questionnaires on their preferences in categories including
music, gadgets and food, to ensure Guvera has full profiles for them. Guvera has a suitably bolshy
manifesto, promising to “completely reverse the very concept of advertising, moving away from
being something that disrupts the entertainment we consume to forming a part of the very place we
go to access entertainment”.

The service quietly launched in beta in February in its native Australia, with more than 40 advertisers
including Johnson & Johnson, Dominos Pizza, Pepsi, Activision, McDonalds, Nestle and Harley
Davidson. At that point, it was signing up thousands of users a month for its beta, and set its US
launch date for 30 March. Impressively – given the broken promises of previous companies in this
space – Guvera succeeded in hitting that deadline.

In June, the company released first stats on its performance, revealing that it had signed up more
than 75,000 users at a rate of 3,000-5,000 a week. The average time spent in one of its branded
channels was 5-7 minutes, with clickthrough rates well into the double digits. By this point, brands
including Victoria’s Secret, Mastercard, Microsoft, Sprint and H&M had joined the party.

The site still lacks licensing deals with major labels WMG and Sony, although it added indie
distributor The Orchard in July. It has made a promising start, although it will need to continue to be
transparent about its user base and usage to win over industry sceptics scarred by previous failures
in the ad-supported space.
More information: www.guvera.com

Hello Music

Hello Music emerged from stealth mode

in January this year, when the company
behind it – Wilshire Media Group –
unveiled the service and announced a $4
million round of funding from KVG
Partners.

One way of describing the service is as a

new form of A&R, since it lets artists
upload their music and biographies, then
gets a panel of experts – songwriters,
musicians, former label A&Rs and
industry advisors – to give them
feedback. However, the core of the
service is what it does for artists who are deemed to have potential.

They will be pushed what Hello Music describes as ‘opportunities’ from partners, who at launch
included Getty Images, Topspin, Slacker, Yahoo Music, Tunecore and GigMaven. As Wilshire’s Zack
Zalon explained at the launch, “technology has created infinite possibilities for musicians to
distribute and promote their music, but there are fewer gatekeepers to identify quality acts and
actually help them connect to the opportunities that power a career”.

The business model is based on artists making money from the proffered opportunities – if they do,
Hello Music takes a cut. The company makes much of the fact that it takes no money upfront from
artists, to avoid being seen as in any way scammy.

Opportunities range from discounts on services like TuneCore, which distributes digital music,
through to more exclusive offerings, like submission to online radio service Slacker. Hello Music
claimed that it was the “premier submission service” for Slacker in terms of unsigned artists.

The company provides regular updates on its site about artists who’ve made use of the
opportunities – for example getting playlisted on Yahoo Radio’s Unsigned & DIY channel. However,
Hello Music has been relatively quiet since March, indicating that while it may be building out its
platform and seeking more partners, it hasn’t had anything worth announcing.

There’s certainly a need for filters in the wide-open space of online music, and savvy artists are quick
to catch on to a company or service that can give them a leg-up. That will ultimately be the way to
judge Hello Music – how many artists use it, and more importantly, how many of them feel they
have profited from the experience.

More information: www.hellomusic.com

Ipredator

If truth be told, Ipredator is rather longer in

the tooth than most startups in this report:
it was first announced in March 2009,
before kicking off its private beta test in
June of that year. However, the fact that its full commercial launch came in January 2010 makes it
one of the services worth talking about here.

Another reason is that it’s controversial. Ipredator is the work of The Pirate Bay, and is a virtual
private network (VPN) for which users pay five Euros a month for the privilege of accessing torrents
through a secure private network, making them much harder to trace by the authorities. It was
launched in response to the Swedish IPRED law, which allows police and rightsholders to demand
the personal details of suspected copyright infringers from ISPs.

“Ipredator gives you an encrypted tunnel and changes your public IP-number to an anonymous. Click
here to sign up!” says the cheery message on the service’s English-language homepage. Just a month
after it was announced, more than 113,000 people had signed up to request an account, with more
than 80% of them being Swedes. By June, the waiting list had swelled to 180,000, as 3,000 people
began testing the service.

When it launched in January 2010, it made a big noise about its refusal to keep any logs of user
activity – a hot issue in Sweden.

There’s certainly a demand for services like this: when pro-filesharing blog TorrentFreak surveyed its
readers in June 2009, 41% said if they received a warning letter from their ISP about their use of
BitTorrent, they’d seek out a VPN service like Ipredator. However, that’s not to say that gloomy
predictions that anti-piracy legislation – the UK’s Digital Economy Act for example – is destined to
create a boom in use of VPNs.

For now, they’re likely to appeal more to hardcore filesharers. And it’s worth noting that VPNs aren’t
just about piracy – it would be dangerous and wrong to assume that anyone wishing to stay
anonymous on the internet is engaged in criminal activity.

However, when you do think about piracy, the interesting thing is that people are willing to pay five
Euros a month NOT to have to pay for music and other content. For an Ipredator, 180,000 customers
equals monthly revenues of 900,000 Euros – a tidy sum.

More information: www.ipredator.se

LoKast

LoKast is described by its parent company NearVerse

somewhat wordily as an “app that allows users to create
a digital identity of themselves and discover and
exchange media in proximity to one another”.

In layman’s terms, that means it’s a mobile social

networking tool that lets people swap photos, videos,
contacts and, yes, music with other users in their current
location, over a local Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection. It
launched in March for iPhone, adding an Android version
in July.

Users search for other people nearby who have the app
installed, and can then choose to ping content between
the handsets. Which sounds like a recipe for piracy, but
there are specific rules for music: full songs aren’t shared,
but rather 30-second preview clips, which can then be
tapped through to the iTunes Store.

There’s another music angle though: NearVerse is pitching LoKast to artists and labels as a way to
legally distribute free (full) tracks to fans at events, particularly gigs. This was first trialled during the
SXSW Festival in March for a variety of independent artists.

NearVerse raised $1 million in funding in April to continue developing the app, and by May revealed
that it had more than 125,000 users, and bands like Third Eye Blind and Echo & The Bunnymen using
it to distribute tracks. NearVerse also has deals in place with The Orchard and IODA, which enables
full tracks to be shared among LoKast users, if they’re flagged as promotional. By this point, more
than 30 bands were using the application at their gigs.

Legal P2P and mobile superdistribution are concepts that have unsurprisingly worried the music
industry down the years. However, by taking a focused approach and implementing restrictions on
music sharing from the start, NearVerse has given LoKast a way to surmount those concerns. It could
become a useful tool for labels and artists. That said, it does face the challenge of securing higher
profile artists and content to attract more users, while rightsholders may want to see more users
before signing up their high-profile artists.

More information: http://www.nearverse.com/lokast

Mflow

Mflow is a UK-based startup that aims to socialise

online music sales. The simplest way to describe it
is like iTunes with Twitter bolted on. Users sign
up, follow each other, and then recommend
tracks to one another with 140-character
messages.

Every recommendation – or ‘flow’ – can be seen

by all their followers, who are then able to stream
that track once in full, before it reverts to a 30-
second preview clip. The key to the service is that
if a user’s follower buys a track based on their
recommendation, they get a commission – 20% of the retail price – credited to their account to
spend on music in the Mflow store.

The company says its service is less about people following real-world friends as it is about
identifying ‘tastemakers’ – who might be journalists, DJs or music artists. At launch, the likes of Zane
Lowe, Tim Lovejoy and Phill Jupitus were on board, along with media brands like NME, Popjustice
and Metal Hammer. Mflow also runs its own recommendation channels for genres like alternative
and electronica, to get new users started, and in June signed a deal with MTV to flow
recommendations from its channels MTV Hits, MTV Base, MTV Dance, MTV Rocks and MTV Classic.

The company is pitching itself to the industry as potentially valuable for breaking new artists, since
it’ll be able to seed a new track with key influencers, and start to build buzz. Even before its official
launch, it had a marketing deal with Island Records to promote its new artist Lauren Pritchard, who
was using Mflow herself to build a following.

Mflow launched as an iTunes-style desktop application rather than a web service, and had deals with
Universal Music Group, Sony Music and major independent labels. One challenge for the company
will be making its business model work: its revenues come from selling songs and albums, and out of
the thin margins on those will presumably come licensing fees for the full-song preview streams, as
well as the 20% commissions for users whose flows generate purchases. How lucrative will what’s
left be for Mflow?

Even so, the company’s service is certainly innovative in the way it looks to wrap social elements
around digital music retail. Indeed, perhaps the biggest threat to its future is that these ideas are
likely to be taken on by much bigger beasts – if iTunes bakes Facebook into its store, or indeed if
Facebook launches its own music offering, then a plucky startup like Mflow will lose its unique selling
point.

More information: www.mflow.com

mSpot Music

As a company, mSpot has been around for a while. It’s a familiar name in
the mobile entertainment world, where it started with a mobile music
radio service, before providing users with a way to sync their desktop
music libraries with their mobile phones. It’s also launched movie
streaming services for mobile.

However, its new big idea debuted as a private beta in May 2010, tapping
into the excitement around cloud music. mSpot Music launched with the
slogan ‘Music that follows you’, letting users upload their collections to
its server, then stream them to any desktop web browser, or a
smartphone (initially only supporting the Android OS).

mSpot keeps all the data updated according to changes on the user’s
computer – for example playlists – replicating them on other devices. At
its basic level, mSpot Music is free, offering 2GB of storage. Users pay
$2.99 a month for 10GB, $4.99 for 20GB, $9.99 for 50GB and $13.99 for 100GB. It’s a standard
model for this kind of cloud music service, as pioneered by startups like MP3tunes. mSpot Music
launched fully in June 2010.

What about the licensing side, though? At launch, mSpot told industry blog Hypebot that it believed
it was covered by the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, partly because “the service only lets you
upload music from one device, but lets you access it from five”. As the blog pointed out, this doesn’t
chime with many of the major labels’ public views on cloud locker services, although mSpot’s
previous mobile music offering means it has contacts within those labels.

mSpot has apparently been developing the playback technology used for its cloud service for four
years, so its investment in mSpot Music is significant – it claims that an important advantage is the
mobile app’s ability to automatically adapt streaming quality according to the user’s network
connection – 2.5G, 3G or Wi-Fi.

mSpot’s initial focus on Android will have to widen out quickly though, especially with Google
planning to launch its own streaming music service later this year, based on technology from its
acquisition Simplify Media.

More information: www.mspot.com

Navigaya

One of the more intriguing new

services to emerge in the first
half of 2010 was Navigaya,
which focuses on showing
music videos in a whizzy Flash
full-screen interface, pulling
the content in from other sites.

It doesn’t appear to be an
overtly commercial project – at
least for now – instead aiming
to show new concepts for
discovering and watching
videos. Music is the guinea pig, given the widespread availability of music videos on other online
video portals.

Navigaya pulls in videos from YouTube, Google Video, MetaCafe, Vimeo and MegaVideo, rooting out
HD versions of clips wherever possible, since it’s been designed to be viewed in full-screen mode,
rather than within a window. Users can create their own playlists by dragging and dropping
thumbnails, and according to tech blog TechCrunch in its launch piece on Navigaya, the site will even
support features like video chat and Twitter.

Also on the horizon for the service is the ability to white-label its service – something which may
interest labels and music brands – as well as build in e-commerce to sell music, ringtones, gig tickets
and merchandise. A customised version for iPhone and iPad would seem to be a logical development
too.

Navigaya is unlikely to be the next big music startup under its own steam, but its technology and
concepts may well be licensed (or filched) by larger sites. Tying in playlists and discovery with full-
screen television-like viewing is clearly one direction for sites like YouTube and Vevo to pursue, so
Navigaya may be seen as a key pointer for the next generation of online music video services.

More information: www.navigaya.com

Play.me

Play.me is a cross-platform music

subscription service launched in
January 2010 by Dada
Entertainment – which like mSpot,
is a familiar name from the mobile
entertainment industry, having
originally launched as a joint
venture between Dada.net and
Sony Music Entertainment to focus
on ringtones.

Play.me offers, for a monthly

subscription, a mixture of unlimited
streaming music and bundled MP3
downloads. A free trial offers users
five hours of streaming web access
to the service, before they’re urged to upgrade.

The $4.99 Web Access plan lets them stream music ad-free on their computer, and get five ‘free’
MP3 downloads when signing up. The more expensive $9.99 All Access plan offers the streaming
music on computer and mobile, bundling in 20 MP3s when signing up. At launch, some reports
claimed that there would be free downloads every month, but Play.me specifies that they’re a bonus
for registering only.

Play.me launched with deals from two major labels (Sony and EMI) as well as independents, boasting
a catalogue of 2.5 million tracks. The service’s mobile apps are available for iPhone and Android
smartphones. The $4.99 / $9.99 pricing for web or web/mobile access falls into a wider pattern, as
shown by rival services MOG and Rdio in the US.

One interesting deal signed since the launch came in May, with developer platform Echo Nest.
People creating music services using Echo Nest’s tools can now offer music from Play.me’s catalogue
without having to sign their own separate deals with rightsholders. One restriction was the fact that
Play.me only had the two major label deals at this point, though – although in January it claimed to
be in the “latter stages of negotiations” with UMG and WMG.

The fact that its site still lists EMI, Sony and The Orchard as its partners shows how some startups
are still struggling to get a full set of music licences for this kind of service, even if as in Play.me’s
case, they are operating a purely subscription-based model.

More information: www.playme.com

Rdio

Rdio is one of the most hotly-

tipped music startups in 2010,
thanks to its founders Janus Friis
and Niklas Zennstrom. They’re
the pair behind infamous P2P
client Kazaa, who then moved on
to create Skype. More recently,
they launched online TV service
Joost. All three can fairly be
described as disruptive services
in their fields.

Rdio sees the pair coming back to

the music industry, but this time
with a legal service. Specifically,
they’re trying to rework the
streaming music model. Rdio will cost $4.99 a month for web-only access, and $9.99 a month for
web and mobile access – the latter via apps. The service plans to launch with a library of five million
songs from major labels available to stream.

However, there are some interesting twists. Rdio will access users’ iTunes libraries and compare
their collections to its own database. Where songs match, they’ll be made available for streaming –
which crucially from a licensing perspective, avoids users having to upload the actual files to Rdio’s
servers.

Rdio plans to make social features a big part of its service too, encouraging users to listen to the
songs on their friends’ playlists. The fact that its catalogue is entirely licensed means this is also
sanctioned by the labels. A similar idea has been used by Omnifone for its MusicStation service for
some time, although Rdio’s is likely to be plumbed into social networks like Facebook.

“Discover music through people, not machines. Share the stuff you like on Twitter and Facebook,”
says the blurb on the company’s site. Once users have identified their Rdio-using friends, they see
their activity as a Facebook-style stream of updates.

Even before launching, Rdio has secured deals with all four major labels, as well as independents. It’s
currently in private beta, using invites to gradually let more users onto the service – initially in the US
only. When it launches fully, it has the potential to be a major player in the market.

Meanwhile, Zennstrom and Friis continue to have their thumbs in several pies. In March 2010, they
raised $165 million for their Atomico Ventures VC firm, which aims to invest in early-stage European
startups touting disruptive technologies. Atomico is one of the investors in Rdio.

More information: www.rdio.com

Rock Band Network

MTV’s Rock Band games have generated

tens of millions of downloads of tracks
for people to play along with in the last
couple of years, through the in-game
store.

However, historically there was a

bottleneck for getting new songs onto
that store – they had to be specially
coded by a team at the game’s
developer Harmonix. This bottleneck is
what Rock Band Network aims to remove, by allowing labels and artists to create their own Rock
Band downloads and upload them to a dedicated store – or at least pay an external company to do it
for them.

In theory, the Network speeds up access to Rock Band, allowing labels to launch even full albums in
the game alongside their actual release. However, it’s a complex operation: music has to be mapped
to falling notes in the game, while also creating the animation and visuals in the background. At
launch, companies like Rhythm Authors and RockGamer Studios who were accredited to use
Harmonix’s tools were reportedly charging $500 per minute of music, while digital distributor
TuneCore offered labels a discounted rate of $999 per song.

Songs can be sold for between $0.99 and $2.99 on the Rock Band Network store, but artists only get
30% of that – Microsoft and Harmonix split the other 70%. At launch, the Network was only available
for Rock Band games on the Xbox 360 console.

Labels like Sub Pop have hailed the Rock Band Network as potentially a significant new revenue
stream for their artists. However, it’s still too early to tell just how well the store is paying off for
smaller labels and artists – and particularly whether they’re making enough on their 30% cut of
download revenues to pay for the costs of creating the content in the first place.

Even so, those costs are bound to come down over time, and if the store proves popular with Rock
Band gamers, some labels may even train their own in-house staff to use Harmonix’s development
tools. The store launched fully in March, with T-Mobile on board as a sponsor. In May, Harmonix said
that it had 700 ‘premium creators’ members, and that more than 400 songs had been created for
the store.

More information: http://creators.rockband.com/

Thumbplay Music

In 2010, it was hot to be a

streaming music startup. In 2010,
the buzzword appears to be ‘cloud’
– even if in many cases, the actual
services are the same.

The key difference – for licensing as

well as technological purposes – is
whether users are streaming music
from a service’s licensed library of
tracks, or whether they’re
uploading their own collections to
stream.

Thumbplay Music is really an on-

demand streaming service for web and mobile. It made its debut in January in invite-only beta form,
running on PCs and Macs, as well as BlackBerry smartphones. The service has its roots in
Thumbplay’s existing mobile music download store – comparable to the way Dada Entertainment
and mSpot have made similar transitions.

At launch, Thumbplay Music had licensing deals with all four major labels, as well as various
independents – a total catalogue of eight million tracks. It included online and offline access for its
mobile app, allowing users to cache their favourite tracks to listen when out of reception.

Following the template of US streaming music services with web and mobile access, it costs $9.99 a
month to use. Like Rdio, it scrapes users’ iTunes playlists and tries to recreate them for streaming.
The company launched its public beta in March, before adding Android and iPhone apps to its roster
in May. In July, it added social features, letting users ‘share’ tracks in its desktop application by
posting them to Facebook.

With numerous streaming services offering similar web/mobile access for the same price,
Thumbplay Music certainly faces a competitive marketplace. Its full roster of major label deals will
serve it well, but rightsholders will be watching with interest to see how its growth compares with
MOG, Rdio, Play.me and (in Europe) Spotify and we7, to judge its significance in the longer term.

More information: www.thumbplay.com

WiMP

WiMP is the work of Norwegian

mobile entertainment company
Aspiro, and launched in February
2010 in Norway. It’s a direct rival to
Spotify: an on-demand streaming
music service with desktop and
mobile access, and deals with all four
major labels.

However, there are some interesting

differences in approaches between
the two Scandinavian startups.
Aspiro is taking a more B2B approach
with WiMP, launching it initially with ISP Telenor and retailer Platekompaniet. At launch, it had 6.5
million songs in its catalogue.

WiMP has a strong focus on editorial recommendations, with a team serving up regular features and
picks to help users find new music to listen to. Like Spotify, it also makes playlists a big part of its
offering. Following its launch in Norway, the service also rolled out in Denmark – again via a
partnership with Telenor.

A key part of Aspiro’s offering is that WiMP is a subscription-based service. It has a free trial, but
after that users must pay – there’s no Spotify-style free option supported by ads. In Denmark, that
means paying 99 Kroner a month – around $18 – although Aspiro’s partnership with Telenor allows
discounts for customers subscribing to several of the ISP’s services – for example home and mobile
broadband.

In June, the company launched an iPhone app for WiMP, joining the Android version. The apps keep
the focus on editorial recommendations, while also offering offline modes for listening to music
when out of reception. The company is also investigating new platforms for its service, including
games consoles, set-top boxes and connected hi-fis. It’s also keen for partnerships outside
Scandinavia, to launch WiMP elsewhere in Europe.

WiMP’s ability to be launched as a B2B service with ISPs and brands may be its strong point – Spotify
does do deals with ISPs and operators, but is positioned more firmly as a D2C brand. Meanwhile,
Aspiro is also looking for other kinds of deals, for example launching a streaming music service in
Sweden for Universal Music Group that uses WiMP as its white-label technology.

More information: www.wimp.no

Other new startups and services - 2010

3outube wasn’t so much a startup as a workaround – a website that let people download YouTube
videos in MP4 or FLV formats simply by changing the ‘y’ in their YouTube.com address to a ‘3’.
Suffice to say, rightsholders won’t have been impressed.
www.3outube.com

AccuRadio was an iPhone app offering hundreds of

streaming internet radio stations, with customisation
features allowing users to tweak the mix of artists they
hear on specific channels. It also pulls in album artwork
and offers unlimited song-skips. www.accuradio.com

b@TV may have had a strange name, but it was the

result of a heavyweight sponsorship partnership
between UK retailer Phones4u and Nokia. The service
makes thousands of DJ sets available to stream to Nokia
handsets, which can then be shared via Facebook,
Twitter and email. www.be-at.tv

BigAudioAds was a service for indie labels to create

audio ads for streaming music services like Spotify and
we7. It was launched by the creator of Spotify playlist
site ShareMyPlaylists, and charges £395 and upwards to
create ads with professional voiceover artists in 5-7 days.
www.bigaudioads.com

Big Live is one of the sites mining the crossover between live music and social networking. It mixes
streaming concert vdieos with live chat, integrating people's profiles from Twitter, Facebook and
MySpace to help them connect with their friends. Several venues are signed up as partners.
www.biglive.com

Black XS Live Sound was a branded music site launched by perfume brand Paco Rabanne. Its role: to
promote the company's latest fragrance through music. That involved filming a series of gigs by up-
and-coming bands around the world, then posting video clips on its site, with a spin-off blog.
www.blackxslivesound.com

Bloson came to our attention when it acquired the domain name and mailing list of bankrupt music
search engine SeeqPod earlier this year. However, it's a different beast: a music site with a charitable
focus, donating to various causes based on the purchases and activities of its users.
www.bloson.com

Blue Beat shot to notoriety in 2009 as a music store trying to sell unlicensed Beatles tracks after
putting them through ‘psycho-acoustic simulation’. However, it returned this year as a Pandora-
esque online radio site, brandishing a compulsory US webcasting licence. www.bluebeat.com
Buskerlabel was the latest addition to the swelling ranks of fan-funding services. Launched in Italy, it
gets fans to pledge money for tracks that artists have already recorded, rather than funding the
actual recording of an album. It also had its own 'Koin' virtual currency. www.buskerlabel.com

BYO.fm was a personalised online radio service launched by Michael Robertson (of MP3tunes fame).
Standing for 'Bring Your Own', it lets people create their own web radio stations based on their
stored music, with news, weather and sports results sourced from other sites and read out by virtual
DJs. www.byo.fm

Cambio was a video site launched by

Disney stars The Jonas Brothers. It's the
new way the band will engage direct
with their fans via videochats and
programmes, while also plugging artists
signed to their label - including Demi
Lovato and Jordin Sparks.
www.cambio.com

Chartfixer was an Australian startup

that caused controversy with its
promises to fix the charts for artists. For
AU$6,000, it said it'd round up 1,000
people to buy a certain digital track and
get it into the charts, while for
AU$25,000 it would get 5,000 buyers. After industry outrage, it was quickly shut down.

Chomp was a free iPhone app that exists to recommend other apps, via real-time reviews from other
users, and recommendations based on what you’ve downloaded in the past. It connects to Facebook
to identify friends, and learns as it goes. www.chompapps.com

Eyeball.fm was a hybrid streaming music and locker service, blending personalised radio stations
with the ability for users to upload their iTunes libraries to the cloud and listen to them anywhere.
The beta service also let users peek at their friends’ collections. www.eyeball.fm

Fairsharemusic was a UK-based digital music store whose USP was that it would give 50% of its net
profits to named charities, including Amnesty, British Heart Foundation, Oxfam, Teenage Cancer
Trust and WWF. It launched with 8.5 million tracks in its catalogue. www.fairsharemusic.com

Fan.Cards was a music discovery app for iPhone launched by mobile operator Vodafone Hutchison
Australia. The free app gets users to collect virtual cards based on artists, with a mix of photos,
videos, streaming music and links to iTunes, as well as sharing features. http://tinyurl.com/32oxd9y

Fanit was a D2C music startup that lets music fans create a single account, then use it to send money
directly to their favourite artists. File this alongside Flattr, in other words, although Fanit was more
specifically designed for music artists. www.fanit.com

Fatsoma was a UK startup focusing on social ticketing, which aims to get concertgoers to flog tickets
to their friends for a commission. When someone buys a ticket from the site, they become a 'rep' for
that gig, with their own webpage to point friends to. It launched its v2.0 version this year.
www.fatsoma.com

FooFind was the brainchild of Pablo Soto - a controversial figure in Spanish rightsholder circles due
to his previous work on filesharing sites Blubster, Piolet and Manolito. FooFind is a 'media search
engine', which lets users search for torrents, Gnutella and eDonkey links, and other content.
www.foofind.com

FundTunes was a Canadian digital music store that let buyers also donate to a range of local
charities. It sells virtual gift cards for five or ten songs, with purchasers choosing a charity at the
checkout. UMG was on board for its launch. www.fundtunes.com

FuzzedOut was a US site offering free music downloads, although with a more targeted approach
than its peers. Every week, it offers five streaming songs from new artists - visitors vote for their
favourite then download it. Whichever gets the most votes is then offered as a download to all.
www.fuzzedout.com

GetGlue applied the Foursquare 'check-in' model to media, letting people check-in to the music, TV
shows, films and books that they're listening to, watching and reading. Users can earn branded
achievement badges, with non-music firms like Showtime, Warner Bros and Universal Pictures
signed up at launch. www.getglue.com

Get Your Ears Out was a gig search engine launched by Manchester startup Social Web Media. It
aimed to become the largest gig search service across web and mobile, listing concerts from a range
of venues, including tiny or obscure ones. www.getyourearsout.com

GigsWiz was a Finnish firm that launched

a beta version of its live music analytics
platform. Its widget is embedded on
artists' social network profiles, asking fans
where they should play gigs next. GigsWiz
then combines the answers with usage
stats from online music services to help
plan tours. www.gigswiz.com

Grab That File did one thing only: scraped

music files from artist profiles on
MySpace. It gets people to login with
their Facebook ID (we're not sure why)
and then enter the address of the profile they want MP3s from. Comically, it specifies that they
shouldn't use it for copyrighted tunes. Riiiight. www.grabthatfile.com

Guguchu was a B2B service aimed at artists, helping them to book gigs, update their social media
profiles, get fan analytics and sell their music D2C. The idea was to help them get a much better
sense of who their fans are, where they are, and how valuable they are as influencers.
www.guguchu.com
Headliner.fm was a site that lets bands 'trade' their fans by promoting each other on Facebook,
MySpace and Twitter. The service acts as the middleman, ensuring both sides keep to their part of
the bargain. It'd pair nicely with SplitGigs, which lets artists swap support slots at gigs.
www.headliner.fm

HitMaker was a social music game for iPhone that aimed to turn music discovery into a game.
Players have to find songs that they like and promote them to their social network, earning credit if
their friends then like them too. It was launched by developer NoiseToys. www.noisetoys.com

Hit Or Not was a Facebook game that

asked people to test their A&R skills.
Players pick a genre, then are played tracks
from artists, rating them out of 100. They
score points for matching the wider
opinion, and can even ‘sign’ bands to a
virtual label.
http://apps.facebook.com/hitornot/

Hotttnesss was a site launched by one of

the developers at music tech firm Echo
Nest. It tracks the 50 hottest artists
according to Echo Nest's analytics,
displaying them in a chart with links to
Spotify and Last.fm. Developers of other
sites and services can hook into the data
too. www.hotttnesss.com

IMHO was a desktop application launched

by former Sony Music chairman Don Ienner, offering a mix of online radio stations, games and social
networking features. It had its own virtual currency - IMHO Dollars - which users could buy, or earn
by watching ads and interacting with friends. www.imhomedia.com

Immitter was one of several startups promising to compete with Pandora, offering streaming music
with recommendations of artists that users might like. However, its business model involved getting
artists to pay to upload their songs to the service. www.immitter.com

Kapost wasn’t a music startup per se, but it has relevance to music. It lets blog owners crowdsource
posts, allowing users to write entries which can then be approved by the blog owner, and voted up
or down by readers. You can imagine it working well for bands. www.kapost.com

Kidult was an online creative community launched by N.E.R.D. mainman Pharrell Williams. It's aiming
to be "a reliable news source that speaks directly to teenagers", with a mix of edited and user-
generated videos covering everything from news, politics and science through to sports and
entertainment. www.kidult.com

KKBOX has been around for a while in Taiwan and Hong Kong, signing up six million users for its
service offering streaming Chinese-language songs – with 200,000 of them paying for the premium
version. It’s planning to launch in the US in the third quarter of 2010. www.kkbox.com
Kroogi was a site launched by Russian developer Miro Sarvaev in North America, South America and
Europe, aimed at musicians, artists, photographers and other creatives. It lets them sell their work
on a 'pay-what-you-like' basis, launching with a remix contest for Tatu. Yes, THAT Tatu.
www.kroogi.com

Library Ideas is a bookish startup that works with labels to make music available as free downloads
to registered card holders of participating US public libraries. It signed a deal with Sony Music
Entertainment this year - users get a certain amount of downloads a month, with the libraries
footing the bill. www.libraryideas.com

Max It was a new technology from interactive music firm MXP4, which promised to remix tracks in
real-time, complete with an editor for artists to apply it to their own tracks. Artists like Basement
Jaxx and Passion Pit were on board when it launched. www.mxp4.com

MediaWeava was a new service from UK firm Destar, which speeds up and simplifies the process of
converting music and video files into mobile-ready formats – all through a web interface. Its key
customers were record labels and digital distributors. www.destar.co.uk

Mimvi was announced as a music video search engine that would pull in vids from YouTube, Vevo,
DailyMotion and other sites. However, founder Kasian Franks – of SeeqPod fame – appears to have
since changed it into a search engine for mobile apps instead. www.mimvi.com

Mixlr was a UK startup described as a 'Ustream for audio', in that it lets people livestream audio to
their fans while promoting it on social networks. It's pitched at DJs and artists who want to stream
pure audio, rather than video of their performances. www.mixlr.com

Mixtape For You is a 2010 successor to Muxtape, the online mixtape site that got squashed by legal
action last year. It lets people upload MP3s to create personalised digital mixes, which can be sent as
an MP3 compilation - before the original files are deleted from the server. www.mixtapeforyou.com

Mundu Radio was an iPhone and iPad app launched by

Geodesic, blending access to internet radio stations with
personalised playlists. The app costs $2.99 to download, with no
further charges. Geodesic is also touting the Mundu Radio
platform to mobile operators on a white-label basis.
www.mundu.com

MusicDNA was the work of BACH Technology, and claimed to be

the successor to the MP3. MusicDNA files include the music, but
also an app-like player with lyrics and artwork that pulls in
tourdates, blog posts and tweets from the artists.
www.bachtechnology.com

Music Matters wasn't a startup, but a logo. Specifically, a logo to

designate legal digital music stores and services in the UK, as
opposed to illegal and unlicensed ones. Big guns like iTunes,
Amazon and Spotify were on board, along with Napster,
MySpace, we7, Vodafone and Sky Songs. www.whymusicmatters.org
MusicScout was an iPhone and Android app launched by Band Metrics, which lets people post
reviews and thoughts on gigs that they’re attending. Artist managers and venues can then tap into
this data to monitor the buzz. www.musicscout.com

Music Mastermind was launched by former Virgin Records America boss Matt Serletic, with the aim
of making music creation “fun, easy and intuitive for everyone, regardless of musical training or
ability”. How? With a series of mobile and social games. www.music-mastermind.com

MusikPitch was a US startup that aimed to connect songwriters with clients looking for custom
music. It's structured around 'contests' where clients specify their requirements, and give
songwriters 14 days to submit tracks. MusikPitch keeps the rights and then licenses the tracks.
www.musikpitch.com

MusiGames was a Brazilian mobile games firm focused on – as its name implies – music games. It
came onto our radar when it raised $1.5 million in funding to make more games for iPhone, with a
roadmap of eight this year, following Drums Challenge. www.musigames.com

Musiio was one of the many startups aiming to connect bands directly with fans, charging the
former for its role as a middleman. Artists create profiles and offer songs for streaming and paid
download, keeping 100% of the revenues from the latter, but paying for hosting. www.musiio.com

Muziic DJ was the work of streaming

music service Muziic, and let people
create music mixes from YouTube
videos, with an interface modelled on DJ
decks. It was nice, but the wind was
slightly taken out of its sails when
YouTube launched its own DISCO music
mixing feature. www.muziic.com/dj/

NME Breakthrough was a new sub-

brand for the UK music magazine, in
partnership with social media firm
Webjam. It was a bit MySpace-like,
letting artists upload music, pull in
YouTube videos and engage with fans. Artists who are rated highly by the community get featured in
the mag. http://music.nme.com

Pioneer Sessions: The Revival Recordings was a website launched by Levi's - its latest project in
branded music. It offered downloads of bespoke cover versions from established artists, starting
with Nas doing Slick Rick's Hey Young World, and The Swell Season doing Candi Staton's Young
Hearts Run Free. www.levispioneersessions.com

Pirate Date sounded like a spoof - in fact, we're still not convinced it isn't. It was an online dating site
launched by The Pirate Bay, in partnership with social dating service Meezoog. It promises to hook
people up with friends of their Facebook friends. www.piratedate.com
Platinum Life was a hip-hop themed social game on Facebook, launched by Heatwave
Entertainment. A deal with Universal Motown Republic ensured that real stars like Ludacris, DJ Skee
and Omarion feature too. www.platinumlife.com

Playdio was an innovative approach to helping DJs make money from Spotify by launching music-
focused 'podcasts'. The idea is they create Spotify playlists of songs, while recording talky bits in-
between as separate tracks. They then get paid streaming fees for the latter as people tune in.
www.playdio.com

Put.io described itself as 'online storage re-imagined', letting users upload files and then access them
from any device. However, it also let them grab files from BitTorrent and Rapidshare - a feature
guaranteed to raise hackles within rightsholders. www.put.io

Radar Music Videos has been around for a while in beta, but it launched properly this year. The idea
is to pair artists and labels with music video directors, for a more affordable way to commission
videos. It's already been involved in projects for Fatboy Slim and Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip.
www.radarmusicvideos.com

Reverb Store was the work of music marketing firm ReverbNation and e-commerce company
Audiolife. It lets artists sell music and merchandise direct to their fans online, embedding the store
within their own sites, blogs and Facebook profiles. www.reverbnation.com

Rock Control was an online reality show that promised to throw five musicians into a London house,
and let its community crowdsource their management. That includes making decisions on the band's
look and sound, as well as other business decisions. It's due to last for nine months.
www.rockcontrol.com

Rocktropia described itself as a 'theme

park for rock fans' - it was the latest
music-themed virtual world, joining the
likes of Music Mogul, Loudcrowd and
Mixm8. Its thing is branded zones for
individual artists, launching with a castle
for Motorhead mainman Lemmy.
www.rocktropia.com

Scribble:Apps was one of several new

platforms helping artists to create their
own iPhone apps. This one supports streaming music, videos and images, as well as social feed
aggregation, ticket sales and push notifications. Bands can also launch VIP Areas to give paying fans
more content and features. www.scribbleuk.com/apps

SCVNGR isn't a pure music startup: instead it's a Foursquare-esque social location app whose USP is
the ability for brands to create 'challenges' around real-world places, getting people to complete
tasks for points. It's ripe for an artist to create their own mobile treasure hunt... www.scvngr.com
Sharesong was a Facebook application launched by Irish whiskey company Bushmills. The app was a
'simple search and post service', which browses the catalogue of streaming service Grooveshark, and
lets people post songs on their friends' Facebook walls. www.facebook.com/sharesong

Shmoop was an iPhone developer that released a series of $1.99 apps focusing on individual songs,
including Livin’ On A Prayer, Heroin, Life on Mars and Fake Plastic Trees. The apps offered lyrics
analysis, literary connections, trivia and quizzes. www.shmoop.com/music

Snowtape was an iPhone app that let users listen to internet radio, but also record it to their device.
Controversially, this included the ability to 'clip' individual tracks, removing the talky bits around
them, while also downloading album artwork. The app cost $1.99. www.snowtape.com

SongVote was a playlist creation site with

a social twist. It lets people set up playlists
for specific events or themes - wedding
receptions for example - so that their
friends (or indeed strangers) can vote up
the best ones to form the final playlist.
www.songvote.com

Songza Sets was a spin-off from music

search engine Songza, offering free 12-
song playlists curated by users in
categories like Mainstream Pop, American
Roots, and Independent. The idea was to
help users discover new music, rather
than present them with a blank search
box. Now defunct.

Sound Around was one of the many services offering to create iPhone apps for bands, and claimed
to be the cheapest. It charges $14 a month to create and manage apps with music, videos, photos,
tourdates, tweets and other information, promising to be as easy to use as creating a MySpace page.
www.getsoundaround.com

Soundblab launched this year with an aim to be 'the largest community of fans, musicians, record
labels, event organisers and just about anyone remotely connected to the music industry'. So sort of
like a more B2B MySpace, with recommendation features thrown in too. www.soundblab.com

Soundtrckr was a geo-social music service – or in plain English, an iPhone app that lets users hear
music that their friends have associated with particular real-world locations. It also turns its
database of geotagged tunes into radio stations. www.soundtrckr.com

SplitGigs did what it said on the tin - it was a website that let bands exchange support slots at gigs. "I
let your band play at my gig, then you return the favour by letting my band play at your gig". The site
was global in nature, with bands in the US and UK to the fore initially. www.splitgigs.com
SRWV was a music TV channel launched by Music Choice, which has no presenters, and instead
focuses on ‘Vid-ications’ sent in by SMS and MMS, as well as a ‘Takeover’ slot where individual users
playlist 15 minutes of videos. Labels get a share of the revenues. www.musicchoice.com/swrv

Stage9 Software was a service launched by social networking firm Planetwebfoot, designed to help
bands create their own online communities. It had promotional and discography modules, media
galleries and SMS-based marketing elements, with Universal Motown artist After Midnight Project
first to sign up. www.planetwebfoot.com

Subvert and Profit caused a stir with its plans to 'sell' social media users to bands and brands. It has
25,000 users signed up to earn money by viewing, voting, fanning or rating whatever content they're
told to - $0.75 gets you a YouTube rating, while MySpace Music and Thesixtyone cost $1.
www.subvertandprofit.com

SuperGlued was an iPhone social location app focused on music

and gigs, which got a big push at the SXSW Festival. It lets people
find concerts and buy tickets, but also pulls in data from
Foursquare and Twitter, to see which gigs are bustling in near
real-time. www.superglued.com

The Creators Project was a site launched by Intel and Vice, which
aimed to showcase more than 80 artists including UNKLE, Mark
Ronson and Nick Zinner. At launch, Ronson claimed that it would
help artists who "struggle to showcase their work".
www.thecreatorsproject.com

The Funk University is our favourite music-related startup of

2010 so far. Why? "Bootsy Collins presents the world's first Funk
University for bass players of planet Earth... Because a groove is a
terrible thing to waste, this sonic learning institution will be
unlike anything before..." www.thefunkuniversity.com

Ticketfly was a US-based startup focusing on social ticketing. It raised $3 million this year for its
service, which lets people sell tickets for their gigs, and promote them on Facebook and Twitter. It
has deals with more than 50 promoters and venues already, and aims to sell one million tickets this
year. www.ticketfly.com

Tunited was Ultravox frontman Midge Ure’s online music community that aimed to “revolutionise
the music industry” by spotlighting independent and unsigned acts. It promised to offer artists 100%
of the revenues from songs sold through the service too. www.tunited.com

Turntubelist was a site that let people mix videos from YouTube, complete with cross-fades and
playlists. The theory was that users can turn up at a party with their laptop and video-mix live.
www.turntubelist.com

UJAM caused a big stir at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York earlier this year. It's a
web-based service that listens to your singing or whistling, and then generates a piano, guitar or
even full orchestra backing to match, complete with pitch-correction for duff notes. www.ujam.com
YouTube Music Discovery Project will always be known as Disco to us, thanks to its URL. It’s a music
discovery and playlist creation tool: you type in an artist name and get a selection of their videos,
with the ability to find similar artists and create video ‘Mix Tapes’. www.youtube.com/disco

Zimbalam was a digital distribution service launched by Believe Digital in the US. It supported 25
different music stores and services - including iTunes and Spotify - charging artists a one-year fee of
$29.99 then $19.98 for subsequent years, letting them keep 100% of their revenues.
www.zimbalam.com

Got a new startup or service?

We want to hear from you, so we can write about you in our Bulletin and Reports. Email
news, views and feedback on this report to stuart@musically.com