Music Ally

Last year, our 200 Digital Music Startups of 2008 blog post went down a storm, so naturally we thought we’d repeat it for 2009. We’ve changed the format though: it’s in alphabetic order this time.

Some caveats to cover our backs. The list is based on startups we’ve covered for the first time in the Music Ally Daily Bulletin this year. It’s not a list of the best or most successful companies/services/sites – it’s a snapshot of what people were launching this year, or talking about launching (a few, like Rdio and Kik, won’t go live till the new year). Some are already defunct.

We think it highlights some interesting trends. Like all the sites springing up to do music stuff with Twitter. Or the huge interest in building communities around live music. Or more user-friendly torrent sites. Innovative mobile apps, legal music search engines, web games… As we said, it’s a snapshot.

What’s that? You launched a music-related startup or service this year and it isn’t on here? Please post a comment and tell us about it – this post will be updated regularly over the coming weeks with people we’ve missed. If you’re on the list but have changed tack or added major new features, please also let us know in a comment, and we’ll reflect that too.

Obligatory plug: we wrote about all these firms in our Daily Bulletin, alongside news about industry trends, digital marketing campaigns, legal/licensing developments and all things digital music. You can sign up for a free two-week trial to see how it works.

Anyway, enough preamble: read on for the startups! And for sharing purposes, we’ve turned it into a Scribd document, which is embedded at the foot of the post. And yes, we do know a more accurate title would be ‘The 9 to Z…’

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MidemNet and Music Ally are on the lookout for the hottest new digital companies for 2010. MidemNet Lab aims to seek out the most enterprising, innovative and inspiring new digital business models and provide a high profile showcase for their talents throughout the whole of MidemNet and the overall MIDEM event.

MIDEM is the world’s music market which takes place in Cannes, France from 23-27 January 2010. The MidemNet Lab is a project taking place in a dedicated area in the trade show. MidemNet Lab will showcase the talents of 15 start-ups bringing exciting new digital solutions to the music industry. Each company will be able to present their business models through presentations, video demonstrations and face-to-face meetings with MIDEM delegates.

The 15 companies will be selected through a ‘Call For Entry’, managed by Music Ally and by the MidemNet Lab judges:

* Matthew Daniel, R2G/Wa3.cn
* Daniel Ek, Spotify
* Loic Le Meur, Seesmic

* Alexander Ljung, SoundCloud
* Ian Rogers, Topspin
* Anthony Volodkin, Hype Machine

Apply HERE

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The countdown has begun for the Popkomm “Innovation in Music and Entertainment Award” – UK industry analysts Music Ally partner in this business award – Information and applications at  www.popkommawards.com

The search is on for the best new business ideas, the smartest companies and the hottest new start-ups in the worlds of music, media, technology and entertainment. Popkomm-IMEA (Innovation in Music and Entertainment Award) is an opportunity for new start-ups to present their ideas to an audience of managers and executives from international music and technology companies at Popkomm. Popkomm-IMEA is regarded as the main networking and matchmaking event at Popkomm.

Last year saw over 70 entries Popkomm-IMEA entries with the finalists being mentored by Julie Meyer, Charles Grimsdale, Michael Bornhausser for their final presentation. Previous Popkomm IMEA winners include PlaylouderMSP, Sonicbids, Gracenote, Royalty-Share and Kyte.

* To apply, please visit the Popkomm-IMEA entry page HERE.

We’ve written separately about the IFPI’s Digital Music Report, which has just been released. But if you just want the hard numbers, here’s some of the main ones.

OVERALL FIGURES

- More than 1.4 billion legal single-tracks were downloaded in 2008, up 24% from 2007. The top-selling digital single was Lil Wayne’s Lollipop with 9.1 million sales.

- Digital album sales grew by 36% in 2008.

- Digital music generated $3.7 billion of trade revenues in 2008 – up 25% year-on-year.

- Digital now accounts for 20% of all recorded music sales, up from 15% in 2007. By contrast, the games industry generates 35% of its revenues digitally (but newspapers, films and magazines are way behind with 4%, 4% and 1% respectively)

- The IFPI estimates that more than 40 billion songs were downloaded illegally in 2008 – that’s 95% of total music downloads

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Music industry body the IFPI claims that more than 40 billion songs were illegally downloaded in 2008 – 95% of all music downloads.

The figures have just been revealed in its annual IFPI Digital Music Report, which presents them as further proof that ISPs should be co-operating more closely with the music industry to clamp down on piracy. That 40 billion figure is based on collating separate studies from 16 countries over a three-year period, apparently, with France and Spain singled out as being affected particularly badly by online piracy.

How about the positive side? Well, digital music generated $3.7 billion of trade revenues in 2008, up 25% year-on-year. The problem is that this growth is pretty poor, given the continued decline in physical revenues – digital’s share of overall recorded sales has risen, but only from 15% to 20% from 2007 to 2008.

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2008 has been a startling year for innovation in digital music. We’ve been covering startups all year in our daily bulletin, not to mention our work with the Popkomm-IMEA and MidemNet New Business Showcase awards. So we thought we’d round up some of the most interesting startups from this year.

We ended up with 200 everything from social networks to streaming sites to recommendation engines to mixtapes to online games to… well, you get the picture. They weren’t all successful (or, indeed, legal), and they’re presented in no particular order within their categories. Oh, and some are less startups and more projects from established firms.

But even so, we thought the list below provides an overview of some of the innovation around music that’s happened this year. Bear in mind this is startups or projects we’ve written about this year for the first time – so the likes of Imeem, Project Playlist, Napster, SpiralFrog and the rest aren’t included, because we covered them in 2007 or before.

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Pupils in the UK went back to school last week, and it seems there’ll be a few new elements on the curriculum. English lessons will feature more modern novels, geography will have more focus on climate change, and there’ll be new music classes on ‘the use of technology in music’, which will cover issues like intellectual property rights in the music industry, and how that relates to downloads.

Trying to teach The Kids not to steal music might raise a smile, but this is as important a part of the music industry’s strategy as the much-vaunted Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the industry and ISPs to fight file-sharing. That’s as long as the lessons aren’t just ‘don’t do this’, but are as much about looking at the different legal ways to download and/or consume music online.

What’s your view? Not just in the UK, but elsewhere in the world, is there value in putting these issues on the educational curriculum? And if so, what elements do you think are important to include? Let us know by posting a comment.

Nashville-based blues artist Von Johin has signed a record deal with Reality Entertainment. Not particularly interesting in itself, but the way he was discovered is. See, Johin made his name playing virtual gigs in his own venue in Second Life, where he was spotted by Reality Entertainment’s scouts. The company says he’ll (more…)

Extracts from the hour long panel session at MIDEM 2008 on the changing relationship between fans, artists and the music business chaired by Music Ally director Steve Mayall