Soundcloud

To celebrate the milestone, SoundCloud has created ‘Story Wheel’, a new SoundCloud Labs project that allows anyone to record their own narrative around a series of images to tell a personal story. Co-founders Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss have today launched this new feature by sharing an intimate conversation with the SoundCloud community, reflecting on their journey to date.

Launched in October 2008, SoundCloud was born of the realization that sound is an untapped territory on the Web compared to images, video, and text. The key to SoundCloud’s rapid growth has been the understanding of the simplicity, breadth and potential of sound:

• Sound is mobile: Over five million official SoundCloud apps have been downloaded.
• Sound is developing: Over 10,000 apps being developed on SoundCloud’s open platform. Recent additions include integrations with professional music creation software Pro Tools and Cakewalk.
• Sound is more than music: Over 3.3 million different tags show the breadth of sounds on the platform, which now includes everything from journalists & bloggers (Robert Scoble), to publishing (Penguin Books UK), to education (Stanford).

SoundCloud’s Storywheel showcase can be viewed at this location.

Facebook, the largest social network; Google, the best search engine; and Apple, the best technology for tablets, phones, and music players. All three are learning from each other, and, whether they like to admit it or not, are in direct competition with each other. Facebook and Google have battled to become the Internet” as we know it for some time. And, under the radar, Google has come out with the Chromebook, while both Facebook and Google have launched successful application platforms to compete with Apple. So, what is next for these companies?

For Apple there are some interesting routes available. The company already has an advantage in having the means to offer web browsing. This is something Facebook does not have at all, while Google has had moderate success with the Chromebook and the Google phone. Still, these companies are nowhere near Apple in terms of users and design. This is why Google is trying to make computers that have the sole functionality of the Internet. This means that all of your apps, programs, files, etc are online. Apple better pay attention to this unless they want to be uprooted, especially with Steve Jobs’ recent resignation. Google and Facebook have a way integrating everything into one, and if Apple is not careful it could find the future passing them by.

Apple

So what can Apple do? For Apple at this point one thing, and one thing only makes sense, and that it to offer a search engine. In case I lost you here, just bear with me. With recent firing of Yahoo‘s CEO, I had a spark of an idea. Firstly, why did Yahoo fail? I think due to the fact that their website looks like a news site other than a search engine. Secondly, how could someone turn Yahoo around? I instantly thought of Apple. Yahoo is worth around $15-20 billion. Apple is sitting on third quarter profits of $7.31 billion and stocks are selling around $399 per share. This is a great time to expand the company’s capacities by revamping Yahoo. Of course Apple would drastically change Yahoo, probably by renaming the company’s famous search engine, but we’ll leave that task to the marketing experts.

The really interesting thing is thinking about what Apple could do with a great search engine. Applying Apple’s finishing touch to what Yahoo already has in place could be an amazing thing for the Internet, not to mention the millions of Apple users turning away from Google. What a thought, right? Applications could be infused with your search home page. Your Apple ID could be an Apple email address, and everything would be done in Apple style; which is what all of us Mac heads love.

As far-fetched as this idea may sound, it is something that could viably happen in the future. It may never involve acquisition of another search engine, but, as long as the competition is present, we can assume Apple, Google, and Facebook will be fighting for tech domination. If Google continues to push Chromebooks and Google phones while trying to take a bite out of Apple, then don’t be surprised if Apple fires shots back. I can’t wait to see the future and what the big three have to offer; it will be quite a ride.

This article was written by Thomas Rudy. Thomas is an Apple product enthusiast, music lover, and freelance web designer. He currently works with www.inetzeal.com, providing White Hat SEO link building services.

MySpace, bought by News Corp six years ago for $580 million and sold in June this year for $35 million, lost over half its users just this year – but it’s still 70 million people worldwide. And with a team of Mr. Dejewski, veteran of PepsiCo, and two unrevealed branding agencies, as well as Justin Timberlake in the role of a creative director, the company could finally offer something worthwhile to the musicians community.

Do you think MySpace has a chance to be resurrected?

Not much, according to results of this poll.

41% of those who voted think that the social network will never fix the damaged reputation, and 32% says although it might start making sense again, the website will never beat the likes of Soundcloud or Bandcamp. 22% of readers still think that it has chances to be properly resurrected and become huge, and 2% agrees that MySpace needs to fire Justin (ok, that was a silly joke).

What do you think about the potential of MySpace 3.0?

With revenue in 2014 predicted to be more than $25 billion, we decided to take a closer look at some of the most successful mobile music apps to understand the secret of their success – and why they’re making so much money.

Spotify

Music streaming aways seemed like a distant, implausible concept before it arrived.

Spotify app's Playlists screen

Those in doubt said consumers wanted to personally own anything they paid for. Of course, the same people were saying that digital music stores like iTunes wouldn’t take off either, because consumers wanted to touch and feel products they paid for.

Today, music streaming is a reality – and in the era of smartphones, music streaming is not only a reality, but a solution to having lower storage in mobile devices than our desktop computers.

Spotify was already the grand master of music streaming in Europe, and in July it finally launched in the US. According to All Things D, they’ve already racked up over 1 million US users, with 175,000 paying $5 for ad-free desktop use or $10 to stream on mobiles.

The company say that 90% of these users are paying the higher tier, earning a tidy $245,000 per month from the US alone. And that’s after only one month of limited invite-only access.

The current European user base is unclear, but last September they passed the 10 million user mark, with around 750,000 subscribers.

Mobile operators are keen to tap in to Spotify’s obvious appeal. With a long term exclusive partnership, Swedish mobile network Teliasonera offer Spotify Premium for around €3/month – a 71% discount from a regular subscription – encouraging customers to sign up for longer 24 month contracts.

Teliasonera say this has brought them more than half of their new customer base, with just as many saying they’re less likely to leave the company because of the Spotify deal.

Soundcloud

Soundcloud has become the de facto platform for sharing and storing audio online.

Soundcloud app

Speaking to Ultimate Guitar, Soundcloud business developer David Adams said their mobile app helps bring people outside of traditional audio circles into the recording arena, thanks to their instant record-and-upload button: “It’s a great tool to lower the barrier for anyone to willing to record, and opens a new world of personal expression and collaboration.” He says that both their iOS and Android apps have over 1 million users each.

The mobile record button is a powerful feature, but it’s when the creative folk in the wild get their hands on it that the app becomes particularly interesting. UK comedian Richard Herring has been recording a daily audio blog, people are documenting the sounds of their cities as seen on Sounds of Tampa Bay, and the musician Imogen Heap took audio submissions recorded on the app by fans (including the heartbeat of a baby, and eggs dropping into a pan), before mixing them into her own music.

In a similar example, electronic artist Tim Exile remixed fan submissions live, with clips coming in from around the world mid-performance:

Besides the ability to record on location, you can instantly stream any tracks shared by your friends and favourite musicians, or search their mammoth archive of online audio.

Soundcloud is free until you store more than two hours of audio, and a series of premium accounts from Lite (€29/$42) to to Pro Plus (€500/$439) unlock features like better audio widgets, more storage, and detailed stats.

Even their free package is a game-changing service, and with their mobile app they help build an audio community who depend on and appreciate their service. This helps build their subscription base, because the amateur musicians on a free package need more space eventually, bigger labels can’t ignore the growing soundcloud listenership, and news sites love posting new music streams found on Soundcloud because of their pretty embeddable widgets.

Last.fm

In some ways, Last.fm was ahead of its time. It began as the open-source Audioscrobbler, which tagged any music you played to the last.fm website, allowing you to browse your listening history and see a personal ‘chart’ of your favourite music.

Once it knew what music you liked, it could recommend similar artists, and even notify you when your favourite bands were touring nearby. Their automated ‘recommendation radio’ remains one of the best ways to find great music.

But when the innovative Last.fm founders Martin Stiksel, Felix Miller and Richard Jones left in 2009, the site appeared to lose its innovative core and was left behind in the mobile app revolution.

Last.fm app

Today, the mobile version of Last.fm offers the same radio and gig list functionality as the website, albeit in a smoother interface. Having their recommendation radio for free seemed too good to be true – which is probably why they eventually slapped a subscription price of $3/month on it in February.

In our humble opinion, their automated radio is far superior to Spotify, and much cheaper – but you can’t browse their catalog and make playlists to save for the future.

Next time we’ll be looking at how Shazam gets a cut from 300,000 music sales per day, how you can build an app for your band with Mobile Roadie, how Songkick tells you what gigs you’ll love, and how FourTrack helps pros record music on the go.

Do you use a great mobile music app that we haven’t mentioned? Which are your favourites, and which convince you to part with your money?

Written by Tom Davenport. The article was originally published on Ultimate-Guitar.com.

With consumer expenditure on Latin-based music on the rise, RhymbaLatino aims to target the demographic behind the increase.

According to the United States Census Bureau, there were 50.5 million Hispanics in the United States in 2010 – an increase of 43 percent since the millennium.

RhymbaLatino is perhaps not the most subtle attempt to target this demographic, but it represents the influence the web is having upon proceedings in the music industry.

Digital music’s ubiquity – primarily in the form of mp3s – has coincided with a corresponding demand for increasingly accurate search engine optimisation.

The hustle and bustle of the web, alongside increasing demand for ease of access, means that the days of tireless searching for music are numbered.

This trend is hardly a recent deveopment– it has been years since we could hunt down artists by searching through genres on Amazon; it has been longer, still, since we were first able to identify a song merely by typing a few of its words into Google.

What RhymbaLatino represents is confirmation of the way we hear about music online. As opposed to searching for music, Pandora recommends a new artist based on our previous listening; Amazon boosts sales by similar means, and iTunes’ Ping service has similar goals.

RhymbaLatino’s significance is in its effort to bring the music to the listener; with so much music out there, the marketing companies are seeking new ways to target markets – is RhymbaLatino too obvious?

The first lesson of music marketing is clear for all to see: know your audience.

Vervedeck does just that, paying close attention to the United States Census Bureau’s statistics, even noting them in press releases.

In fact, RhymbaLatino’s appeal to the Hispanic community is supported by Thom Russo, the winner of 11 Latin Grammys for his work in Latin music.

His role as ‘curator’ of RhymbaLatino’s song collection is a well-intentioned marketing ploy by a music marketing company.

Samuel Agini is the editor of Andrew Apanov’s Dotted Music.

VibeDeck

Having secured the investment deal in early April, VibeDeck beta was launched in May and is currently enjoying healthy web traffic statistics according to web information company, Alexa.

The concept itself is relatively straightforward and has been likened to websites such as Bandcamp. VibeDeck allows for the music artist to upload digital tracks for sale. Unlike Bandcamp, VibeDeck has pledged to provide a free service for the time being, with sales revenue to be wholly retained by the artists selling their own songs.

The company’s co-founder and CEO—Lior Shamir—significantly referred to VibeDeck’s “first iteration” being made for artists to enjoy “maximum profit margins”, while enjoying VibeDeck’s free service.

The current market trend, as demonstrated by services such as Spotify, has been to introduce incremental charges, but whether VibeDeck has the appeal to command a subscription-based service is up in the air. It is more likely that it will follow Bandcamp’s direction in taking a cut from sales revenues.

The recent example of Pandora Media Inc (NYSE) Initial Public Offering (IPO) is drawing comparisons with the original dot-com bubble for the manner in which Pandora managed to achieve a valuation of $4.2bn in its first hour of trading, before experiencing several fluctuations. One criticism levelled at companies such as these is their apparent lack of a business model. Although not listed on the stock exchange, VibeDeck must prove it has the business acumen to survive the competition.

Pandora

Intriguingly, Lior Shamir also hinted at future diversification, expressing his hope that “VibeDeck will extend beyond music to touch the careers of sole proprietors and small businesses across a variety of markets.”

This is a significant aspect of the web service, bolstered by VibeDeck’s ambiguous, flexible name. It is a brand that can be moulded to meet the needs of the intended audience, whereas a website like Bandcamp is somewhat restricted by its branding. Whether the name VibeDeck will serve to inspire musicians in the same way as Bandcamp is to be determined, with Reverbnation proving that success is not measured solely by an overt brand.

Cutting through the business side of things, VibeDeck’s service is largely impressive, with 62 per cent of websites rated as having slower loading times by Alexa. The service focuses on the simplistic. Musicians can upload their songs, link their paypal accounts, and earn revenue for every song or album downloaded. Payment is instant, and so is access. The only costs incurred at present are indeed through paypal.

In fact, VibeDeck’s greatest attribute is its instantaneous service. It can be embedded on most web pages simply by copying and pasting a bit of html, and there is a button for linking your VibeDeck page to your facebook page.

The primary problem for VibeDeck is that it does not seem to promote networking per se. The website sign up is simple enough, but once you are signed up you are somewhat trapped in a bubble, unaware of the other musicians around you. Unlike Bandcamp’s continuous and very obvious promotion of its members, VibeDeck’s is somewhat restrained and lacking. It is that VibeDeck itself does not seem to promote enough artists, instead depending on the artists to spread the word about their own VibeDeck page.

There doesn’t appear to be an accessible list of members for easy browsing at present, and if the advertising is left solely to the musicians then perhaps VibeDeck needs a little bit of promotional perspective…

- Samuel Agini is heavily involved in Dotted Music. His interests range from the performance of dot-com companies listed on the stock-exchange and the marketing methods they employ, to consumer trends in e-commerce.

In 2007, online radio revenues stood at a reported $500 million. Such figures surely convinced Spreaker’s co-founder and CEO — Francesco Baschieri — that there is a demand for the live broadcast of user-generated live radio streams before they are stored as downloadable podcasts.

Spreaker Logo

According to Baschieri he was “driving while listening to this great podcast,” before thinking, “wouldn’t it be nice if these guys were able to broadcast this live.” His love of user generated content saw the conception of Spreaker.

The website’s rising popularity is evidenced by the increase of 170 per cent in the number of internet users who have visited Spreaker.com over the past three months. Spreaker plays host to several live broadcasts at once, and if the live broadcasts aren’t to one’s taste, there are countless podcasts stored on Spreaker, covering topics as diverse as Finance, Music, and Sport.

In spite of Spreaker’s strengths, some users have expressed concerns regarding the songs that are available via the website’s own database, with one user telling Dotted Music that, “it [Spreaker] doesn’t have any pre-loaded well known songs”. The user was also disappointed with upload speeds, but Dotted Music had no trouble uploading songs.

Spreaker would arguably benefit from some sort of access to Spotify’s song database, but whether the website can negotiate some agreement with Spotify remains to be seen. Another cumbersome aspect of the service is the thirty-second advertisement that preludes the broadcasts – thirty seconds seems a long time for a thirty-minute radio show, while the fact that the advertisement (spoken in a voice eerily reminiscent of Spotify) is usually, if not always, the same.

Similarly to Spotify, Spreaker offers the options of a basic or premium account. At the moment the premium account doesn’t seem to offer enough to encourage the user to sign up, but perhaps offering a greater music database or more front-page coverage to premium account holders will change that.

Spreaker DJ Console

Spreaker use of social media to boost its profile is also a vital factor to its growth since its inception in Bologna, Italy in 2009. With a quick connection to facebook, podcasts can be immediately shared with facebook friends online. Spreaker’s iPhone application also ensures its services can be accessed anywhere at any time.

The website also scores highly in terms of its functional design, and its video tutorials make the whole process an easy one. Spreaker’s development over the coming months will be exciting to watch.

I tip the Italian-American project to shine in the coming months, even if there are concerns over how Spreaker regulates the upload of illegally accessed content for use in one’s radio broadcast. How Spreaker will be affected by the increasingly stringent laws regarding the distribution of digital content remains to be seen, but in Spreaker we have perhaps one of the most promising amalgamations of social networking and music media the web has yet played host to.

- Samuel Agini

In times gone by, such words would refer to an exceptionally busy A&R division or a hands-on industry executive, but the inexorable advance of the digital revolution dictates social networking play a role in the way aspiring musicians go about their business.

Signing up to Munite is a routinely swift process, but the real crux of the matter is whether the website stands up to its promise to connect with fellow musicians in a matter of ‘a few clicks’.

The numerous options available after sign-up belie the simplistic layout of the page; it is all rather too congested for what is meant to be a base from which the musician must act. I found myself having to increase the size of the page so as to distinguish the different hotlinks, whilst it is not immediately intuitive exactly where to click. Munite’s promise of networking with fellow musicians in a matter of clicks is often a true, but the time spent gazing at all of the available options is a bulwark against making the clicks.

Munite.net

But Munite’s real battles can be found hidden in Alexa’s statistics. The US-based internet information provider shows that Munite’s daily traffic trend (DTRT) over a three month period is well below the DTRT of popular music websites, such as Bandcamp and Reverbnation.

However, in the past three months, Munite’s traffic rank has risen from 888,407 to 595,319. Over the same time period, the number of global internet users who visited Munite.net increase 200 per cent. Although the trends show Munite’s online significance to be increasing, concerns remain over the long term sustainability of the current trends.

Part of Munite’s problem is its youth – having only recently entered the scene there is still a lot of work to do in order to convince visitors that the website does offer an online environment in which they can collaborate with other artists. Whereas websites such as bandcamp.com actively advertise successful artists on their main page, Munite does not.

Although Munite’s framework has not yet resulted in the mass flocking of users, the framework for success is there. With some tweaking, Munite could be onto something; whereas in the days of old finding a manager or agent was a matter of luck or employing a friend, Munite has several members perturbing to be managers or agents. If Munite can bridge the gap between musician and manager, then the organization is onto something. Should Munite recruit independent record labels to the site, the website’s own profile will gain credibility.

The real question at hand is whether there is room for a website that encourages online collaborations. Whereas Reverbnation and Bandcamp focus their respective energies on promoting the work of musicians across the world, Munite makes the bolder claim that it can help to facilitate the creation of ‘web-bands’.

Meanwhile, the ‘band in a garage’ paradigm is challenged by new media like Munite.

- Samuel Agini

Takes Questions “has been created to give anyone from celebrities and musicians, to bloggers and hobbyists the opportunity to more deeply engage with their fans, followers and friends in a simple-to-use and personal way.” Initially this services was created by SoundCloud’s developers in collaboration with Imogen Heap at MIDEM Hack Day earlier this year.

Takes Questions

Check out pages of those already signed up to trial the platform: Grammy award-winning singer Imogen Heap; BBC Radio One DJ Nihal; pop singer Diana Vickers; rock band The Blackout; pop punk band All Time Low; R&B act Encore; electropop band Fenech-Soler and legendary anti-folk duo Herman Dune.

And, of course, shoot us some questions: Dotted Music takes questions, too!

Everyone who signs up to Takes Questions receives their own customisable webpage, where anyone can record their questions straight from the browser. In response, they can then be answered from a browser, iPhone or Android phone and easily connected so the ‘Q&A’ is played back in sequence. As each question is answered, a tweet will automatically alert the individual and in turn, all of both of their followers.

Anyone interested in receiving a beta invite can register at takesquestions.com.

If you don’t want to wait, secure your own Takes Questions page using the link inside this article. I got 30 invites to give away on Ultimate-Guitar.com this evening, but you will get yours easily as well if you act quick.

Don’t forget to share a link to you Takes Questions page in the comments! More information on Takes Questions can be found in step-by-step guide and FAQ.

The Musician’s Point of View

I’ve interviewed a number of musicians in my time and during every interview, I’ve asked the question, “Do you use MySpace and what are your sentiments?” I’ve listened to the responses, and they’ve been for the most part, uniform. Musicians hate Myspace.

Myspace is dead to me. What it was, was that there was a bunch of other social sites, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and such. The thing with Myspace was that Myspace didn’t stick to its whole form. Myspace didn’t stick to Myspace. Myspace started to try to be like Facebook and Twitter and Youtube… That’s Twitter, and Facebook being such a big social network nowadays and then Myspace started changing things on their format that everybody was like I don’t want to learn new things on Myspace because I liked how it was and you’re gonna change‘em.

– Lil Crazed

Most people I know don’t check Myspace. It’s not dead, it’s on its way out the door. If you look at Myspace it looks really different from what it used to be.

– DJ Neil Armstrong

Totally, absolutely. It’s just a ghost town now. No one goes there. [Myspace] just imploded on themselves. It’s all just advertisements. No one gives a shit and it’s so hard to sit through all the craziness when you go on now.

– Skrillex

So you find your peers forgoing the social networking site. The question you likely have in your mind is, with the obvious benefits of Bandcamp, Facebook and Twitter, and Tumblr (or Blogger and WordPress), what value proposition does Myspace have for musicians?

The Music Critic’s Point of View

New MySpace logo

Let’s take a look at this from a music critic’s perspective discovering musicians. The advantage that Myspace has over competing social networking sites is its crucial renewed partnership with Google.

When I’m interested in a musician by the name of DJ Matter, for example, I immediately type “DJ Matter” or “DJ Matter music” into the Google search query. What the partnership guarantees is that at the top of Google’s search engine results page the musician’s MySpace page (granted that they have created one) will be displayed, which makes finding the musician’s music, tour dates and location, contact information and biography a cinch.

How important is finding this information in a short amount of time? If you’re a musician with an easy to find web presence, you’ve branded yourself in the viewer’s eyes as a legitimate entity.

The Cons Of Competing Social Media Mediums For Discovering Musicians

• Facebook: Musicians using a music player app to feature music on their Facebook page is surprisingly uncommon.
• Bandcamp: Equally rare is the use of Bandcamp among the more established musicians. Add to that, finding a musician’s Bandcamp page requires me to specify a “DJ Matter + Bandcamp” search query because Bandcamp pages are often nowhere to be found on the front page of Google.
• Twitter: I use Twitter to acquaint myself with the personality of the musicians for pre-interview purposes, but listening to a musician’s music isn’t an integrated feature.

Minimal Maintenance Is All You Need

Image credit: humblesound on Flickr

Let’s face it. Myspace is now merely a web based EPK. Connecting with fans and making the crucial connections with industry leaders are for the most part, a whisper of the past and the proof is in the diminishing user base at a rate of 60 million per month. While it’s important to keep in touch with your fan base, Myspace is no longer the venue to do so. Instead, your fans are turning to Facebook or Twitter.

But by leveraging the Myspace and Google partnership, you can keep the potential fans and critics happy by maintaining information that you can make conveniently accessible to visitors searching for the musician and their online presence. At the minimum and maximum, maintain the following categories:

• Music – Keep your band’s tracks updated. It could mean the difference between featuring another band over yours for that day.
• Shows & Events – Update your tours and tour dates. If you’re coming to my city, I would want to request an interview as a preview to your show.
• Bio – This should include positive reviews, band member names, contact information to your manager or publicist, links to your social media presence or website, and a brief background of the band.
• Photos – It doesn’t hurt to make press photos publicly available for use.

Anything else outside of the aforementioned is unnecessary to maintain. Stop by once a week to keep “Last Login” up to date and you’ve maximized Myspace’s utility, while minimizing your time spent on the site.

Francis Bea is a New Yorker turned Chicago co-founder of Musefy.com (in development) and writes Musefy’s blog Musebox.