music Archive

Imeem has announced the launch of their mobile advertising platform today. The new advertising platform is only available on the Android platform so I can only imagine what type of reach it will see. Imeem has signed Kia Motors America to be the first sponsor of the Imeem Android application. Imeem notes that the Kia ads will have a "display presence" — but wouldn’t you need an in-stream presence to be even remotely effective? Music applications mean that the user can keep their mobile in their pocket and so the ability to view and interact with ads has to be lower than if the ads were in-stream.

Imeem has also updated their Android application to be city-sensitive. So you can get a feeling for what music is popular in different cities as you travel. That feature seems pretty interesting for travelers. They have also added artist recommendations which allow you to see similar artists to the ones you already are interested in (e.g. Christina for Britney). Lastly they have launched an exciting seasonal music station for enjoying holiday music.

Berlin-based music recommendation service Mufin has moved into public beta today. Mufin launched in private beta in October. Check out initial Mufin reviews on VentureBeat, Download Squad and Webware. It looks like Mufin provides song previews and in my testing, many of the songs had no previews. However there are lots of links to buy the songs and/or albums.

The company notes that they have 4 million songs (previews??) in their database. Since their initial private beta launch, Mufin has added a Facebook application along with the ability to tie Mufin into an iTunes account and generate recommendations from songs in an iTunes playlist.

While their technology sounds and looks very impressive, the service just doesn’t seem ready for primetime — it feels incomplete. What good is it to recommend a song that I can’t listen to? I really like the idea of taking my iTunes library and recommending other music close to it as you know I am all about discovery. I’d like to see them tie into more music retailers and clearly if possible they need to provide the ability to listen to the entire song.

Mobile provider Nokia has announced the launch of the Nokia Music Store in Spain today. Today’s launch in Spain comes several months after Nokia launched in Ireland, Netherlands, Australia, France and Singapore.

To access the music store you need a computer or a Nokia mobile device. On the computer, the service is 10 euros a month for unlimited streaming. On the Nokia handheld devices, songs are 1.50 euros each and albums are priced at 10 euros. The streaming service is DRM-protected.

The desktop application also functions like iTunes in that you can transfer songs from computer to mobile.

Nokia notes regarding the launch, "The catalogue of the Nokia Music Store is focused on the local market, strongly associated with the consumer, as more than 70% of the music that is sold in Spain is local. To achieve this, there is a team in each country to determine more closely the tastes of each region, something completely innovative and distinctive from other digital music stores. Its search engine enables the differentiation between genres such as Flamenco, Latin music, Alternative or Electronic, to name a few." 

Related: Ever wonder how men and women differ on carrying styles for mobiles?

We initially covered Muxtape back in April and provided a video from founder Justin Ouellette. Muxtape is a MP3 sharing application that allows you to put together playlists and then share them with your friends. Last month Muxtape closed and everyone wondered if the RIAA was behind the closing.

This afternoon Ouellette has posted a lengthy article explaining the background of Muxtape, where the idea came from, the technology, his dealings with the major record labels, the RIAA, Amazon S3 and where Muxtape goes from here. Ouellette notes that they had 100,000 registered users in the first month and over a million unique visitors in that first month.

If you are considering creating any business related to music, you need to read the entire post. Ouellette concludes with the info on the next version of Muxtape:

"Muxtape is relaunching as a service exclusively for bands, offering an extremely powerful platform with unheard-of simplicity for artists to thrive on the internet. Musicians in 2008 without access to a full time web developer have few options when it comes to establishing themselves online, but their needs often revolve around a common set of problems. The new Muxtape will allow bands to upload their own music and offer an embeddable player that works anywhere on the web, in addition to the original muxtape format. Bands will be able to assemble an attractive profile with simple modules that enable optional functionality such as a calendar, photos, comments, downloads and sales, or anything else they need. The system has been built from the ground up to be extended infinitely and is wrapped in a template system that will be open to CSS designers. There will be more details soon. The beta is still private at the moment, but that will change in the coming weeks."

I think a partnership between NY-based Muxtape and NY-based AmieStreet could be a good win for both companies.

Nick O’Neill is reporting that MySpace has launched a new advertising option within the social network. The advertising option is tied into MySpace Music and is focused on musicians.

Nick notes, "The service also provides targeting by gender, age, location, and specific interest categories. The current categories are Auto, Books, Fashion, Health & Fitness, Miscellaneous, Movies, Music, Sports, Television, and Video Games. Rather than typing specific keywords, advertisers are forced to select from a pre-defined set of “Genres” within each category."

It looks like MySpace offers a basic ad creation tool to make it easy for non-designers to create an ad. There’s also a live filter which displays the potential impression counts based on the above targeting selections.

After the high rates MySpace charges for their developer gallery, my guess is that the only musicians who will be able to afford this will be those shilling for fast food burgers.

If MySpace allowed external publishers to participate it could be a win-win-win for musicians, MySpace and Web publishers.

Vienna-based Tunesbag has announced two new features in their music streaming service. Tunesbag describes their service as, "tunesBag is a platform that lets you upload your music and stream it to your flash-enabled browser. You can also upload your playlists or create new ones, recommend tracks to your friends and comment on tracks you like".

The first feature is a smart playlist creator. You can now create playlists based on genres with your songs and your friend’s songs. Tunesbag then finds songs based on popularity and also provides a discovery mechanism to help find new songs to listen to.

The other feature is a full backup service for your music. The idea is that by uploading your music to Tunesbag, you are creating a backup of all of your music so that if your computer crashes or the CDs are lost, you can recover the music. There’s a simple utility that is used to restore the music back to your hard drive.

If you would like an invite to the Tunesbag private beta, we have 100 keys so register here.

iLike has launched music sharing applications on most of the popular social networks including hi5 back in December. Today iLike is announcing the launch of their own platform which will allow developers to integrate music listed on iLike into applications across the Web. iLike has selected several partners for today’s launch including: eVite, Slide, Flixster, Blogger, Typepad and Connected Weddings.

Adam Ostrow has a good overview of the way each of the partners will integrate the new platform into their services. Adam also notes, "Similar to iLike’s website and applications, there are some restrictions on the streaming music. Each listener can stream up to 25 full tracks per month, at which point they’ll need to either upgrade to Rhapsody’s subscription service (iLike’s main digital music partner) or be restricted to 30-second previews."

iLike will generate revenue from the platform by pushing the Rhapsody upgrades. Developers won’t receive a cut of the revenue – they will likely need to work on increasing engagement and that will need to generate the additional revenue if desired.

How will iLike handle the upcoming competition from MySpace? We will need to wait and see but getting developers on your side could be a very strong start.