Tech — GigaOM

Tech

Songkick says that its decision to develop a Spotify app is paying dividends, bringing 100,000 new users to its concert-finding service in the last four months. Read More »

Spotify is relaunching its Spotify Radio feature, enabling unlimited channels and skipping and more targeted channels in a bid to better take on Pandora. The improvements are limited to the desktop for now, but a mobile version is coming soon. Read More »

 
 

Many people had the hopes up for something truly revolutionary coming out of Spotify’s mystery event this Wednesday. Instead, we got an app platform that’s restricted to a desktop client, doesn’t offer partners any revenue and suspiciously smells like another platform bully power play. Read More »

Spotify is opening up its service to developers to create free applications inside its desktop app. The company is now enabling much more robust integration of apps inside its desktop client, allowing developers to tap into Spotify’s 15 million songs and fast growing user base. Read More »

Music startups test their mettle in Europe

Brightcove VP Rags Gupta explains why music start-ups should test the waters across the pond before coming to the U.S.: “According to conventional wisdom, consumer start-ups should move to San Francisco for access to capital, talent, and ideas. But if you’re launching an online music company, … Read More »

As media and entertainment went digital, many looked to the music sector as the canary in the coal mine. Digital comprises over 40 percent of consumer sales, but the whole market was worth only $5.9 billion in 2010. Even digital felt stagnant. But that’s changing. Read More »

Music streaming service MOG just released new growth figures, and it turns out that the music platform launched by Facebook in late September has given it a big boost. MOG now has 160,000 monthly active users, representing 264 percent growth for the month of October. Read More »

Last year, I did a back of the envelope estimate of revenues for Spotify for 2010 at $134 million, of which $80 million came from subscriptions and rest from advertising. It’s time for a mea culpa: I blew it. Here are the updated numbers. Read More »

955 Dreams, which started out building digital album iPad apps, is now getting into the music discovery and content creation business with a new iPhone app called Band of the Day that introduces an artist each day and comes with a lot of original exclusive content. Read More »

Turntable.fm, the hot New York start-up, is clearing up questions about funding and a mobile app by announcing a $7 million round led by Union Square Ventures and introducing an iPhone app. The news, while not a surprise, keeps up the momentum for Turntable. Read More »

Sonos, the wireless music system, has achieved what it calls the 1 million room milestone. For a web service, such a milestone may not be as notable, but for a hardware maker that has been selling gear since January 2005, it’s a big deal. Read More »

Bolstered by the success of its partnerships with services such as Pandora, Rhapsody, Rdio and Spotify,consumer electronics maker Sonos now wants to launch an API that would allow any music service to integrate with the Sonos platform. To me that seems like a great idea. Read More »

More Must Reads

Last week Om broke a big story on Facebook’s plans for music. But is music Facebook’s next billion-dollar business? It will be hard for the company to cash in big on music. Here are three reasons why. Read More »

Pandora finally went public last week, and with its focus on radio, the company has a better chance for mass adoption than most other digital music services. While it may be losing money now, here are a few steps it could take to raise revenues. Read More »

Even under the best of circumstances– standing desks, ergonomic keyboards, customized chairs– typing can be a major pain. Voice recognition technology startup SoundHound hopes to eventually be a part of the solution by allowing people to simply talk to our computers rather than type. Read More »

Rdio, the social music subscription service built by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, is one of the later entrants to the digital music space. But it’s working hard to catch up by tapping developers to make its service widely available. Read More »

Hot music startup Spotify may have won over millions of users in Europe, but it still hasn’t launched in America. That hasn’t stopped it trying to take on Apple, however, by making a surprise move to try and replace the increasingly-bloated iTunes. Read More »

In the four years since CBS bought online radio service Last.fm, the site hasn’t changed radically. Now, however, the London-based music service is looking for its second act — and product chief Matthew Hawn tells GigaOM what that might mean. Read More »

It was home to the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, but EMI is on the block again after a takeover by Citigroup. It’s the final proof that the sprawling record label is dangerously outmoded — but there’s little suggestion the industry can really learn from its … Read More »

Nearly two-thirds of web users are purchasing digital goods, subscriptions and access to premium content. The real surprise is on how few of those purchases are for e-book titles and mobile software applications given record sales of e-reader devices and the growing demand for smartphones. Read More »

New and most existing customers of Mobile Roadie’s app maker platform are deploying on Android equally with iPhone, though most are having difficulty making any thing close to the money they make from iPhone apps, said Michael Schneider, CEO of Mobile Roadie. Read More »

Apple’s updated digital music strategy will reverse commitments to desktop software and ownership of music files. Here are five ways its acquisition and integration of Lala reflect a paradigm shift in the way mainstream consumers will listen to music in the coming decade. Read More »

Exits for digital music investments are far from strong these days and as such, while VCs aren’t giving up on them, they are starting much smaller. At least that was the sentiment expressed during an afternoon panel concerning venture funding at yesterday’s SF MusicTech Summit. Read More »

MOG’s $5 monthly, all-you-can-eat subscription service is finally live. Was it worth the wait? Let’s just say the short preview I took this morning has my music glands sweating more than John Bonham did after Led Zeppelin concerts in the 70s. Read More »

It’s been a busy September for the digital music business. Steve Jobs reappeared onstage to introduce the iTunes LP format and a series of new iPods. Anticipation grew around European streaming music service Spotify, which is due to arrive on U.S. shores in the … Read More »

Nine out of 10 Americans don’t listen to music on their cell phones, according to a Forrester Research note released today on “The Future Of Music On Cell Phones.” The report gives a bunch of reasons for this, but all the conclusions are bad news … Read More »

Mercora, an early entrant into the social music and music search space that recently rebranded itself as Social.FM, has shut down and suspended operations. After being tipped off by a source, I tried reaching the company’s executives, but haven’t heard from them. The site has … Read More »

EMI, one of the global music majors, is shutting down some of its offices in Asia. Offices in Thailand and Singapore have already been shuttered, while regional headquarters in Hong King are ready for the grim reaper, Read More »

Amazon.com (AMZN) has added DRM free downloads from Warner Music Group to its MP3 store, something Apple is yet to offer on its iTunes music store. With 2.9 million songs available for download, the Amazon MP3 store is a very legitimate player in the digital … Read More »

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