The annual MidemLab music startups contest has showcased some important firms down the years: the likes of SoundCloud, Songkick, The Echo Nest and Kickstarter have all featured in past events.
Now the contest’s organisers, Reed Midem, have announced the 30 finalists for the 2014 MidemLab contest – big disclosure, Music Ally is a partner for the competition and helped choose this year’s crop.
All 30 will present during the Midem conference in Cannes in early February, with a panel of judges including Public Enemy’s Chuck D and representatives from Pandora, Warner Music Group, Samsung, Vivendi and several high-profile venture capital firms.
Want to know which startups got the nod for the contest? Here’s the full list, with (in their own words) a description of each nominated startup:
MUSIC DISCOVERY, RECOMMENDATION & CREATION
Blitzr (France)
“The ultimate music aggregator backed by a semantic search engine and an intelligent crossmedia player. It also features the world’s largest music databases, new discovery & recommendation tools and the first price comparison service dedicated to music.”
Cubic.fm (Turkey)
“Cubic.fm is a social music platform aiming to connect Deezer and Spotify within a single global network. With a unique approach, the service enables users to “cube” (contribute) songs, and listen to activity/genre based radio stations that are algorithmically created from this user generated data. Users build their profiles or get reputation based on their listening and sharing habits.”
Indiloop (Canada)
“Indiloop is to music software what Instagram is to Photoshop. Indiloop is a gamified cloud based music mixing platform that empowers it’s users to be a DJ in seconds by allowing them to create, and mixes from their favourite artists. Once mixes are created they are able to be shared with the rest of the Indiloop community as well as on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and other social platforms.”
Jukely (USA)
“Jukely is a web/iPhone app that matches its members with concerts and friends to go with based on their collective music tastes. As a result of this sophisticated social matching, it helps its members to start conversations around shows with their friends and meet new like-minded people through their friend-of-friend network. It also makes arrangements with venues and promoters, and gives its members ability to purchase and win concert tickets right in the app.”
Moodsnap (USA)
“Moodsnap is the world’s first Image-Based Music Streaming app, delivering contextually relevant music mapped to personal taste. Uniquely categorizes music stations by emotive photographs, Moodsnap allows you to choose music by simply tapping an image that feels right. In a world where it’s easy to become overwhelmed by excessive choice, Moodsnap’s instinct-driven experience makes deciding what to hear as easy as knowing how you feel.”
Music Gateway (UK)
“Music Gateway is an innovative b2b marketplace for music industry professionals. We streamline the way people manage their projects, conduct business, collaborate and find talent worldwide. It’s a low cost, globally scalable business that works now, and is proven to be needed by its users. With 10,000+ users, 750+ projects and 3,000+ pitches in the 4 months since launch, we look forward to a benchmark year in 2014.”
Muzieo (USA)
“Muzieo’s business model consist of offering a strategic consumer friendly hybrid model that integrates the fan culture of Artist merchandise offering and mobile subscription to have the ability to discover on the go. This strategic business model will enable Brands as well to be part of the experience. Muzieo’s advertising strategy is to successfully connect brands and music fans together by integrating the brands message into the user experience.”
Nagual Sounds (Germany)
“Nagual Sounds developed a unique software and holds the patent on the technology to transform any kind of data into tonal music. The body movements of a person in front of a 3D camera provide the data input. Every move gets translated into music-in real time! It’s not just controlling effects but actually generating own individual music, full of rhythms, harmonies and melodies, produced live by the dancing person.”
Sound Wand (UK)
“Right now there is a massive uncharted musical opportunity between the analogue and digital spectrums. Traditional instruments have “feel,” which knobs, buttons and faders lack. A keen ear can distinguish a guitarist just by how they play a single note. Current digital tools lack this sensitivity and this creates a rift between the energy of the musician and that of the music that he/she creates. Sound Wand technologies harness the motion sensors in mobile devices combined with finely tuned algorithms to allow you to create digital music with the same analogue feel and performance energy of live instruments.”
Soundwave (Ireland)
“Soundwave is a music technology company based out of Dublin, Ireland. Realizing how fragmented the digital music space is, the Soundwave app was built by a dedicated team of designers and coders as a way to offer users a unique and disruptive new way of discovering music socially. By following what your friends, family and favourites are listening to on their smart-phones, users can plug into the latest and greatest tunes as quickly as they are played around them.”
MARKETING & SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
Feature.fm by EQuala.fm (USA)
“Feature.fm is the first music promotion network that allows artists and labels to purchase exposure in music streaming services and music websites/blogs. Feature.fm connects streaming services and artists to form a cohesive network for the purposes of promotion. Feature.fm provides a monetization channel that relies on premium and relevant content for both the publishers and the artists. The Feature.fm publishers enjoy high quality content and revenue with a high CPM rate for every play that originates from them, and the Feature.fm artists enjoy increased exposure and feedback.”
FanPic by Huggity (Ireland)
“FanPic, is an engaging marketing tool, providing post event fan engagement, which allows fans relive the joy and excitement of concerts they have attended.”
Hello Stage (Austria)
“Hello Stage is the new classical music community. Online. For professionals. It connects musicians, ensembles, their managers and promoters. Gone are the times when you searched days and days for the right. On Hello Stage promoters can find relevant talent for their concerts. Musicians and ensembles present themselves on Hello Stage with their public Pages to the community as well as to the interested audiences. All the relevant information is easy to put in and ready for promoters and managers at a key stroke.”
Lalilala by Appiway (France)
“appiway, French company created in 2013 develops and published apps and websites. With successful brands such as lalilala, appiway is recognized as an expert in mobile and social gaming. Located in EuraTechnologies, Lille cluster dedicated to new technologies, appiway is creating a powerful tool for Web & Mobile games creation tailored for music brands.”
LISNR (USA)
“LISNR is an audio platform that activates the sound around consumers to deliver meaningful content intelligently and easier than ever before. Our audio-based marketing and distribution platform allows exclusive content to be delivered to mobile devices through associated inaudible signals. These inaudible tags can be played through any standard speaker, attached to forms of media like music or broadcast and trigger any type of content dynamically as well as experiential interactions passively.”
Noise Fish (UK)
“Noise Fish is a business networking platform for the music industry: A one- stop shop where artists, musicians, labels, producers and the entire music business ecosystem can connect, generate work and discover new talent. Noise Fish aims to become the online home of the Music Industry.”
Rushmore (UK)
“Connect directly and effortlessly with the artists you love through live interactive experiences, artist news and releases, and a passionate community of fellow fans.”
Starlize by Mobile Motion (Germany)
“Starlize is an app for smartphones, which enables teenagers to easily create own music videos of their favorite stars. While the music is playing users can perform and dance in front of the camera. Starlize automatically creates a high quality music video combining the song of the artist and the video recordings of the user. The automatic process includes rearranging the recordings and adding various filters and effects. Finally, users can share their masterpiece on all common social networks.”
Tunespeak (USA)
“Tunespeak is a loyalty platform for musicians. We help bands & artists engage and grow their fans bases. We launched Tunespeak in January 2013 and have since run over 600 campaigns and worked directly with more than 120 artists including Kings Of Leon, John Mayer, My Morning Jacket, Zac Brown Band, Gramatik, Darius Rucker, Big Boi, Michael Franti and more.”
Vidrack (Canada)
“Easily gather video content from your website visitors. Great for video reviews, testimonials, auditions, opinions and interviews. Place a record button anywhere on your website that activates a visitors webcam or mobile camera. Videos are collected privately and can be used for marketing or feedback purposes. We will offer a free version with basic features and a paid version with more advanced features.”
Direct-to-consumer Sales and Content Monetization
3Plet (Estonia)
“3Plet is a digital publishing platform and service for music and visual artists to jointly publish, share and monetize their content on mobile platforms and connected devices.”
10tracks (Russia)
“10tracks is a cloud storage and streaming service for owners of large music collections to enjoy it over iOS, Android, WP8 devices. We’re proud of our storage system which helps to upload music to the cloud faster, save space and lower costs. Songs can be uploaded to our cloud storage from iTunes, Winamp, different devices and services. After uploading music’s sorted by artists, albums and folders. Tracks can be listened even without internet. We have plans to create smart playlists based on users mood. Recommendation engine will help to discover new tracks based on user’s collection.”
BandstandMobile (Ireland)
“Bandstand is an innovative ‘Artist to Fan’ app platform, enabling artist’s to manage and monetize their fan-base including social networks, giving exclusive access to the latest content, and never released media assets. By subscribing fans can access the latest music releases alongside a host of exclusive content & experiences in real-time. A compelling app, it creates an “always on” connection for deeper long- term fan engagement and new sustainable revenue streams. An access-based (subscription) model allowing artists to stream their media assets directly to their fans with tools to analyse data, publish video messages and manage their app all from their own smartphone.”
Capsule.fm (Germany)
“Capsule.fm is creating audio narratives from your online content like news, weather, social media and – well – pretty much anything you would normally read online. It’s listening to your personalised online content in a live, interactive audio experience for when you’re on the go or simply relaxing. Capsule.fm combines our own technology with natural language generation and text-to-speech technology, creating an audio experience, much more advanced than simply reading out the news. As screens get smaller and technology becomes wearable, audio is the solution to connectivity, information and entertainment.”
Kicktone (Australia)
“Kicktone makes it easy for bands to sell music to their fans, and for fans to share music with their friends. We’re making music discovery social.”
Metable (UK)
“Metable is a Metadata and Asset Management platform for rights holders in the music industry. Our aim is to prepare rights holders, be that a label, publisher or manager, for today’s ever changing and data driven industry, by providing a single platform for them to manage their rights and data. Metable’s platform creates efficiency, saving time and money for rights holders by allowing them to enter their metadata once and upload all their assets, including audio, video, photos, press releases, sales notes, press reports, etc”
Pulpix (France)
“Artists and labels, take back control of music premiering with Pulpix. Our online software enables you to organize exclusive premieres of your music and video releases. We offer you a turn-key solution to broadcast content (news songs, albums or music videos) during a scheduled, invite-only event on the web. Sell tickets for the event to your fans who will enjoy exclusive material before everyone else and have the unique opportunity to share with you. This way, you offer a premium experience to your most engaged fans, generate a marketing buzz and monetise it.”

Screenburn (UK)
“Screenburn is a Facebook video on demand platform enabling the sale of concert films, documentaries and other video content from an artist’s Facebook page. It works well for monetizing the existing audience, increasing distribution and finding new fans. We have previously sold concert films on Facebook for artists such as Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones and LCD Soundsystem.”
Songspot (France)
“Songspot is a great experience that allow users to pick their favorite music at any spot, right from their phones. Restaurants, bars, and public places easily run SongSpot through their sound system connected to a computer or tablet. We also offer a social jukebox for private parties (birthdays, weddings, etc..). Music has never been so interactive.”
Weezic (France)
“Weezic introduces the Augmented sheet music, the new digital standard for both musicians and publishers. It’s a smart, interactive and connected sheet music available on any device thanks to html5 technology. The Augmented sheet music reinvents daily practice for 250M musicians with automatic page turning, customisable and synced HD play-along tracks as well as gamified real-time polyphonic assessment. It is also a revolution for publishers as any paper sheet music can be turned into an augmented version without any graphical loss.”
Disclosure: Music Ally has provided consultancy to one of the nominated startups, Huggity.
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