Music Ally

Popular digital music industry service SoundCloud has just launched its official iPhone app, letting users access tracks sent to their account from their device as well as their desktop. It’s aimed at artists, producers, A&R folk and label managers.

The app also allows people to send tracks via email from their iPhone – its App Store blurb suggests this is likely to be done “while meeting potential clients or partners right on the spot”. Naturally, the app requires an existing SoundCloud account to work. It’s available on the US App Store now for $0.99, although at the time of writing (8pm GMT) it’s not yet made it to the UK App Store.

We write a lot about consumer-focused iPhone music apps, including those launched by artists. But it’s a mark of iPhone’s evolution that B2B music apps are also being released on the App Store. In separate news, Apple today announced that the App Store has officially passed the 100,000 apps milestone.

UPDATE: SoundCloud have got in touch to say the app wasn’t supposed to go live last night – it’s actually launching officially on 17th November, so has been whisked off the Store until then.

UK newspaper The Guardian is to host the first ever Music Hack Day this weekend, with 200 participants monkeying about with APIs provided by several online music firms.

It’s being organised by SoundCloud’s UK manager Dave Haynes, and his company will join 7Digital, BBC Music, Echo Nest, Gigulate, Last.fm, People’s Music Store and Songkick in opening their full APIs up to the attending developers. Attendees will work through the night to prototype and build new projects based on the APIs from these sites, with prizes awarded to the best examples.

“It’s time for the music industry to start working with web technologies and innovation, not against it,” says Haynes. “Instead of suing the people coming up with the most popular new music apps, we should be embracing them.”

German startup SoundCloud emerged victorious in today’s Music Ally / MidemNet New Business Showcase, grabbing 25% of the audience’s votes to top the field of seven new music startups.

The company’s stated aim is to make it easier for people in the music industry – artists, labels, producers and more – to share music files with each other, and the wider world (i.e. legal B2B file-sharing, usually prior to release).

It revolves around storing files in the cloud rather than people emailing or FTP’ing them to one another, with a slick web-based service and a built-in player for listening to files – complete with commenting facilities.

MC Hammer is using it, and that proved recommendation enough for the audience (plus a very good presentation from CEO Alexander Ljung). “Everybody has the same problems,” he said. “You can be a big-selling artist or not, but the problem [of sending, receiving and distributing files] you’re trying to solve is the same.”

Congratulations to SoundCloud, and to the other six startups who were shortlisted in the contest. For more details on them, and a blow-by-blow account of the session, read our liveblog.

It’s the highlight of MidemNet Day Two! I’m contractually obliged to say this. It’s the Music Ally / MidemNet New Business Showcase, which spotlights seven of the hottest new music startups, and gets the audience to vote on which is most exciting.

Or, as I’m renaming it this week, it’s the ‘can six innovative music startups possibly prevail in an audience vote against a lightsaber-shaped gadget that lets you scratch Jimi Hendrix tunes?’ contest. You’ll see what I mean.

The startups are Catch Media, Passionato, SoundCloud, The Echo Nest, MPTrax, Instinctive, and a device created by an industrial design student at the Eindhoven University of Technology. That’s the lightsaber thing…

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