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.

Saving recording in iPhone app

Users are now able to instantly record audio to their SoundCloud profile from a “record” button.

Accessible via the website or SoundCloud app for iPhone, the new feature enables anyone to capture sound on the move and then share it anywhere – across their social networks, websites, SoundCloud community or simply between friends.

SoundCloud also announces the upgrade of its free iPhone application. The app includes the ability to instantly record and upload, as well as the option to add an image and location to accompany the sound.

Since becoming available in the App Store a year ago, the app has been downloaded more than 60,000 times (I use it daily myself). Check out the demonstration video at the bottom of thispost.

Since launching in 2008, SoundCloud has been largely embraced by the music industry, with artists as diverse as Kylie, Deadmau5, Moby and Caribou using it to upload, promote and share music. But more recently, the same functionality has been applied to a far wider range of sound creation, including: Tyler and Tara, a couple cycling round the world and sharing the meaningful sounds of their journey, or the Royal Society of Literature who upload and share all of their lectures.

If you have already tried the new features, let us know in the comments!

The Fader app offers exclusive features, fresh editorial content from the magazine, a slideshow of images from each issue, a music player featuring podcasts and exclusive mixes, mobile access to Fader TV, information about Fader events, and so on.

“We are very protective of The Fader brand, and we’re extremely selective about anything we output to our specific and loyal audience of tastemakers,” said Andy Cohn, EVP and Group Publisher of Fader Media. “The Fader’s mobile app is another dynamic platform in which our readers will be able to consume all kinds of the original content we’re known for, including music, video and photography.

The Fader app

“In 2006, we were the first magazine in the world to make full issues available on iTunes as a free PDF,” continued Cohn. “Wherever our readers are, and whatever technologies they’re using, we’re right there with them.”

In early 2010, The Fader released a mobile application through Mobile Roadie for its annual Levi’s Fader Fort festival held in Austin, Texas with up-to-date news on concert schedules, music streaming and official photos.

Another brand who took advantage of Mobile Roadie Pro is Ninja Tune, with an app that features profiles for all 90 of its artists, including photos, a video stream, and the option to buy songs and gig tickets.

As suggested by Sandbox.fm, Mobile Roadie might simply want to offer extra features due to Apple’s unhappiness with the large number of ‘cookie-cutter’ apps appearing on its App Store, using the same platforms and looking the same.

You have to pay more for such additional customization, though.

Slash's Arcade Rocker app

The newest game is worth playing at despite anything though (especially at the $.99 price tag). Slash’s Arcade Rocker allows the guitar legend’s die hard fans to play along with three pre-loaded songs from Slash’s solo début album – By The Sword, Watch This and Doctor Alibi – as well as any Slash song in their music library (and not only Slash, just as in the regular AR you can play thousands of songs if they are in your iPod music library).

In addition to the music/rhythm game, the Slash Arcade Rocker app provides access to the latest news, blog, tour dates and other exclusive content from Slash’s official website, which was as well developed and is hosted by Ultimate-Guitar.com as part of its partnership with the guitarist.

“The Arcade Rocker iPhone app is one of the coolest apps I’ve seen yet,” said Slash. “I’m having a blast with it!”

The mobile version of Slash Arcade Rocker is available for iPhone/iPod touch/iPad users from the iTunes Store for $0.99 (a limited time offer). A free online version is available at slash.arcaderocker.com.

Don’t be greedy for a buck :) Share your thoughts in the comments if you buy the app!

So here we go, Slayer just entered the “app age” with the launch of Slayer: Pinball Rocks, a new pinball game app developed in conjunction with American Recordings/Columbia Records, Sony Music Entertainment and Gameprom.

Slayer: Pinball Rocks

“As a life-size pinball player, this looks so awesome,” said Slayer’s Kerry King. “It looks really fun and entertaining, with a shot of evil, and it could definitely keep me up all night with a few shots for myself…”

Slayer: Pinball Rocks should appeal to both long-time and new Slayer fans, as well as any pinball enthusiast, by giving gamers multi-ball play and tap-along mini-game, as well as cool visual elements like spinning razor blades, guitars, amps, concert lights, and a skull that eats your ball and spits it out through its eyeball. As you might have guessed, this is all accompanied by music courtesy of Slayer.

Slayer: Pinball Rocks is available worldwide for $2.99 from the App Store. The game includes original voiceovers from Slayer members as well as songs from Slayer’s latest American Recordings release, World Painted Blood.

This app has been developed by Gameprom, a company famous for its series of Pinball games for iPhone and iPad.

See a video of Slayer: Pinball Rocks below:

Have you tried this out? Thoughts?

The game, based on the Katrina & The Waves‘ hit “Walking On Sunshine,” has been developed by Primary Wave Music publishing company and features the premier of a newly recorded version of “Walking On Sunshine” by the South African Soweto Gospel Choir. It is available for purchase on the iPhone for 99 cents and a free demo flashed-based version is available on the Primary Wave Games website.

Walking On Sunshine

The app’s concept isn’t too deep, but not that simple either – having an environmental (!) angle. Gray clouds have covered the sky and prevented the sunlight from breaking through. Slowly, all the beauty and life is fading from The Earth. In order to complete each level, players must swipe away clouds to reveal the sun behind. By collecting sunlight (kilowatts) players help replenish and re-grow the beauty and vitality of four distinct climates of Earth.

California artist Nathan J. Crow designed the game graphics. The game includes Facebook connectivity allowing players to share scores with friends, and the levels feature unlockable content which reveal exclusive album covers, photos and sketches from Katrina and The Waves.

This thing kept me interested for a while, but checking out the demo might be enough for you. If you are a fan – then buy the app without further thinking.

What I loved in this news (besides the tender emotion after playing the game) is that more and more music companies invest in their own divisions responsible for creating games and apps, instead of outsourcing such development tasks. “Walking on Sunshine,” for example, is a creation of Primary Wave Games, a division under Primary Wave Music.

And after all, having a LoFi branded mobile app is ten times better than having no app at all.

In the Linkin Park 8-Bit Rebellion! app players embark on an adventure taking them through six districts in the game, each featuring the distinctive style of a band member. The master goal is to retrieve the band’s stolen music track – Blackbirds, an unreleased Linkin Park song made exclusively for the game. The song is unlocked upon completion of all missions inside the game (I’ve heard it doesn’t take that long to do it, which is logical).

Production on the game began more than a year ago, with the band (vocalists Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington, drummer Rob Bourdon, guitarist Brad Delson, DJ Joe Hahn and bassist Dave “Phoenix” Farrell) working with Artificial Life, Inc. on various aspect of the game, such as storylines, gameplay, character design and music. Mike Shinoda designed the band members’ avatars and edited every line of dialogue.

The iPad app renders the adventure with HD graphics, and a user interface that has been redesigned to utilize the iPad’s larger screen.

Among the game’s highlights are original and 8-bit remixes of Linkin Park tracks including “New Divide,” “One Step Closer,” “In The End,” “Crawling,” “QWERTY,” “Hands Held High,” “Faint,” and “No More Sorrow.

Linkin Park 8-Bit Rebellion! game screenshot

Additional game features, according to the press release:

• Personalization of players’ avatars and apartments provide a unique community experience
• Non-player characters (NPCs) inhabit the world, adding drama to the gaming experience
• Shopping for virtual items with coins awarded by winning fights and completing missions
• Earning trophies for adding friends to the rebellion
• A news feed to stay up-to-date with Linkin Park
• Facebook and Twitter integration connecting millions of social network users worldwide

But the main feature of the app is probably that it’s not a rhythm based game!

For more details about Linkin Park 8-Bit Rebellion! visit this website. And check out the trailer below:

On a side note, don’t forget to enter our latest giveaway for a chance to win 1,2,3’s colored Confetti 7″ vinyl for simply “liking” the Dotted Music Facebook page!

Let’s take a look at two iPad apps released this week: Korg’s iELECTRIBE and GrooveMaker from IK Multimedia.

iELECTRIBE

Korg‘s popular among electronic musicians hardware Electribe Series is now also available as a dedicated iPad musical instrument app – the Korg iELECTRIBE virtual analog beatbox.

iELECTRIBE

“Korg Electribe products have been popular due in part to their interactive, easy-to-use front panel controls. The iPad’s 9.7″ multi touch display offers an intuitive layout that will be familiar to previous Electribe users. Just as on the original Electribe, users simply choose one of the eight parts (or sounds) and touch the 16-step sequencer to quickly build patterns and grooves.

The iELECTRIBE faithfully recreates the historic Electribe’s entire sound engine – including analog synthesis modeling and PCM synthesis, along with virtual Valve Force tube modeling. The sequencer can record instrument parts as well as advanced Motion Sequencing – the recording of knob movements as part of a pattern.”

The iELECTRIBE is currently available from Apple’s App Store. Regularly priced at US $19.99, a special introductory price of $9.99 is being offered until June 30, 2010.

GrooveMaker for the iPad

The infamous IK Multimedia‘s GrooveMaker series of remixing apps is now released as an iPad version as well.

GrooveMaker for iPad

“Released for the iPhone and iPod touch in August 2009, GrooveMaker has become one of the most popular mobile loop remixing apps. The GrooveMaker Free version has consistently been in the top 100 music apps with over 600,000 downloads, and the entire GrooveMaker family features 11 style-based apps for the most popular genres of music.

GrooveMaker for the new iPad offers the same smart features and streamlined workflow as the iPhone/iPod version for making music with loops, but also takes advantage of the new larger multi-touch surface to provide enhanced operation with an integrated, advanced controller.

Also, GrooveMaker for iPad adds even more control when working with loops, providing a new level of creative flexibility. Users can now switch “snapped” grooves with a single touch, plus control the number of loops that are automatically combined during a random mix. GrooveMaker iPad is the perfect addition to a DJ set, providing unlimited creative flexibility in live remixing and DJ applications.”

There are 4 GrooveMaker packs for the iPad available now: Free (a 120-loop pack with a mix of House and Hip-Hop), House, Hip-Hop, Drum & Bass. GrooveMaker House, Hip-Hop and D’n’B contain over 300 loops each and are $9.99 from the iTunes App Store.

Check out the demo video below:

I’m wondering, will we ever see Ableton Live on a tablet?

Ultimate Guitar Tabs iPhone app #1 in App Store’s Music category

Obviously, this is the most important news of the current week for me. Ultimate Guitar Tabs, an iPhone app for searching and viewing guitar and bass tablature from Ultimate-Guitar.com, made it to the first spot in the Music category of the App Store in the US and four other countries, displacing the infamous I Am T-Pain app (UPDATE: after the price increase, UGT is again at 2 – I think this is temporary :)). UGT was also on the 8th place in the general top of the US App Store, which is neat.

Ultimate Guitar Tabs iPhone App

Gorillaz release an addictive online game

Gorillaz announced a simple, but quite well-done online Flash game, Escape to Plastic Beach. “‘Escape to Plastic Beach’ is the first game of its type merging numerous levels of Flash and Unity formats along with a new single MP3 to create an audio, visual, graphical and gaming experience to expand fans’ experience of an album. Increasing the experience beyond traditional album release – the game features original artwork, voiceovers from the band and numerous other tracks from the new Gorillaz album.” This is a part of the act’s broad marketing campaign, which was greatly covered over here.

Noisia spread the Infection, an online music game

And another online game, this time a rhythm based one – from Dutch producing trio Noisia (one of the best drum&bass acts in the world). Noisia have released a Flash music game to coincide with the release of their new single “Machine Gun“. Check it out, pretty interesting experience.

The Chemical Brothers prepare films for their iTunes LP album

The Chemical Brothers are set to release their seventh studio album, called Further, on June 8, 2010 on Freestyle Dust/Astralwerks. This album is said to be the band’s first to be released with corresponding films made specifically to match each of the 8 audio tracks. The films will be included on an iTunes LP and special edition DVD. If the Chemical camp will keep creating and adding worthy content to the iTunes LP, similarly to Gorillaz, then this is definitely an album I am looking to myself.

And last, few cool links from Twitter:

• How to make a great music app (via Forrester Blogs)
• Plastikman launches innovative iPhone app for live gigs (via Sandbox.fm)
• Lou Reed’s New iPhone App For Aging Eyeballs (via Hypebot)
• 8 people you’ll find hanging out in a music store (via Guyism)

By the way, just as with our Arcade Rocker game, you (precious Dotted Music readers) hear about this project first.

What is UGT?

Ultimate Guitar Tabs is an easy and convenient application for viewing guitar and bass tablature and chords. What differs it from similar apps in the App Store is that this is the only mobile application giving you an unlimited and licensed access to the world’s largest database of tabs from Ultimate-Guitar.com. Everything is legal. And it’s relatively cheap, you can buy the app for just $1.99.

Here are the main features to get some of you hooked, hopefully:

• Simple Search. Find Tabs quickly by entering artist name or song title.
• Advanced Search tool. You can search for Tabs by specifying Tab type (guitar Tabs, chords, bass Tabs), part of the song (intro, solo, chorus), difficulty level, tuning, and rating.
• Favorites. Add any Tab to your favorites to make them available for offline browsing.
• Tab Packs. Collections of pre-selected Tabs that are preloaded into the application. Tab Packs are based on skills level (Easy, Medium, Advanced), music genres (Rock, Metal, Punk), and special occasions (Love songs, Xmas songs). Tab Packs are frequently updated.
• Top 100 Tabs list for each Tab type (Guitar, Bass, Chords or overall).
• Auto-scroll feature. View Tablature in the text viewer using the handy Auto-Scroll functionality – The App will scroll Tabs for you!
• Portrait and Landscape modes are available. You can scale Tabs too.

Here Come The Screenshots!

Share your thoughts! Found any bugs, glitches, or just have an idea on how to improve the app? Please let me know via the contact form or in the comments below.